HTC HD7 review

Does familiarity really breed contempt? Chris Finnamore finds out after having spent some quality time with the HTC HD7 Windows Phone 7 smartphone.

IT Pro Verdict

HTC's HD7 has a great screen and feels well-built, although battery life needs improvement. The Windows Phone 7 operating system is fast, easy-to-use and looks great. It's also a very capable office tool, thanks to powerful email and calendar apps and useful document editing capabilities.However, the numerous rough edges in Windows Phone 7 are just as grating now as they were when the operating system first became available. From the lack of copy and paste, the simplistic file and app management, the odd contacts handling and the connectivity issues with our Exchange 2003 server are all big drawbacks for serious business use.As much as we like the HD7 as a piece of hardware and as promising as Windows Phone 7 is, we can't recommend either over the iPhone or an Android phone until these issues are resolved.

By
published
in Reviews

Sending emails highlighted one omission in Windows Phone 7 copy and paste. Most of the time it didn't bother us, as the software recognises email addresses and phone numbers and responds appropriately when you tap on them offering to send a mail to the address or call or text the number. We came unstuck when wanting to forward a portion of an email instead of the whole thing, though. Microsoft has promised to add copy and paste in a software update due in the New Year though.

Both Windows Live and Google Mail let us send and respond to meeting requests; in Windows Live you can accept or decline from within the email application, but Google Mail loads a web page with accept or decline links. It's slightly clunky but works. We were impressed with the phone's attachment support. We could open documents from within a zip file, and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. PowerPoint presentations displayed flawlessly, although you can only edit files saved in the newer .pptx format. Excel spreadsheets would display charts and tables were present and correct in our test Word file, but embedded graphics wouldn't display.

Chris Finnamore
Latest News