HTC Snap

Product: HTC Snap
Website: www.htc.com/snap
System Specifications: Qualcomm MSM 7225, Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard, 2.4-inch TFT-LCD QVGA, Quad-band , HSDPA, GPS, WIFI, Bluetooth
Price: Dependent on contract

HTC'S FOCUS has been on mobiles running Google's Android OS lately, but it's gone back to its roots with its HTC Snap handset.

The Taiwanese company has had a history steeped in Windows Mobile or Windows Phone operating systems, as they're now known. HTC occasionally reminds us about this lineage, even though it normally customises its handset software almost beyond recognition as with the Touch Diamond2 and Touch Pro2.

The HTC Snap is one of those handsets where the company has returned to form, as HTC has more or less adopted the Vole's current mobile OS without making many changes and has instead concentrated on slim-lining the phone for the business user.

This is the first HTC messaging phone to appear for some time, and it seems to be designed almost for the sole purpose of email and nothing else. The nearest model to this new handsest was the HTC S620 from 2006, whereas more recently it has concentrated on touch-screen handsets and Google Android OS flavoured devices.

Processor
HTC Snap runs on the Qualcomm MSM 7225 528MHz processor which last featured in its late 2008 Touch 3G model, an update of its very first touch-screen handset from 2007. It's an okay chipset since the phone is designed primarily for email without any need for handling flashy graphics, running video or any other processor demanding tasks.

User Interface
HTC hasn't spent a lot of time working on the Snap user interface, so it's a very basic version of Windows Phone with a home screen that's reminiscent of the colourings of the TouchFLO 3D GUI functionality seen in the latest handsets.

That initial home screen presented at boot-up provides easy access to the main applications and functions of the phone without any major frills, where it has obviously been purposely laid out in such a way that everything is right at hand from the get-go.

Appointments and setting them up are well presented, followed by SMS messages and Emails that all follow on from each other in simple menus that provide no real opportunities for getting one lost or bamboozled.

Setting up the phone for email access was simple and very easy to do. Even the trials and dilemmas that most handsets and email software go through in order to access pop Gmail were completely avoided in the Snap phone. Just adding a Google mail account address and password was all that was necessary, with everything else taken care of behind the scenes by the handset.

Underlying the home screen is the basic version of Windows Mobile 6.1 standard. This is accompanied by a lite version of Microsoft mobile office for viewing documents only and the HTC Snap's secret weapon - the Inner Circle.

Inner Circle
The Snap has a rounded theme throughout the handset which matches up with this function of the phone, but more on that later. Inner Circle is a natty little capability of the mobile, which is either accessible from an icon on the phone's OS or just by pressing the green Inner Circle button on the handset's QWERTY keyboard.

Pressing this button simplifies the email inbox by reducing it down to a small pre-chosen set of addresses, thus breaking down a ridiculous number of emails to those from just a few key people - your chosen Inner Circle.

Alright, it's a bad pun but a darn useful feature nonetheless and one that is sadly missing from other mobiles' email systems. If this came as a standard feature on a Blackberry RIM would hail this as bigger than the second coming, as the difference it really makes in an email inbox stuffed with a few thousand emails is huge.

Setting all this up is a fairly simple task, with an option presented on all emails for adding that address to your Inner Circle. The only beef we have with this function of the HTC Snap is that there's only one list of Inner Circle contacts. What could be more useful is one Inner Circle for friends and family and another for important business contacts. This could then extend the overall usefulness of this ability by offering a non-business, out-of-work-hours feature set in a corporate handset.

Form factor
The HTC Snap is one of the slimest, lightest handsets we've seen. When we mentioned that HTC more or less just added the Windows Mobile OS and worked heavily on the handset's design, we really weren't kidding.

The similar functioning Blackberry Bold handset weighs 136 grams, while the Nokia E63 is the previous lightest weight we've seen in a smartphone at 126 grams. But the HTC Snap is lighter than both at just a measly 120 grams.

It's very lightweight and we've not really seen anything quite like it before in a corporate mobile that's backed with a sturdy build, which looks like it can take some abuse and bouncing off surfaces.

On profile the Snap is only 12 millimetres thin, a good deal thinner than competing handsets such as the Blackberry Bold and close enough to the Nokia E63 to be called an equal. All of which just makes it stand out against the crowd, if only on the handset's design and weight.

Screen size and ports
The 2.4-inch screen is capable of 240x320 QVGA resolution, which is reasonable enough for the messaging market HTC is aiming for. It's not exactly an amazing display to behold, but then again it's been built to be a mobile email handset just as the Blackberry's initially were before they went all consumer-esque with their designs.

We discovered the volume button on the HTC Snap presents the same interface that's in the HTC Touch Diamond2 and Touch Pro2, so there are elements of the TouchFLO 3D GUI appearing throughout HTC's entire series of handsets.

Hidden behind a cover flap on the side of the phone is a standard micro USB port for charging and connecting the accompanying headset. The port is hidden away in a style we're now seeing in sockets enclosed on the likes of Asus netbooks, which does make for a sleeker casing and overall better professional look.

As with every other HTC mobile phone the company has put the microSD slot under the phone's battery cover, which results in the arduous task of removing the handset's casing to gain access to the memory card. We say arduous task only because the backing cover on the Snap was hardly designed to be removable and required a real effort. It appears to have been manufactured by the looks of things to be used once and once only, when the SIM card is inserted.

Keyboard
Not every keyboard on a smart phone should resemble a Blackberry, despite the market that the HTC is clearly going after with the Snap - that very Blackberry one. HTC hasn't just cloned a Research In Motion device, though. In fact it has added a new design and layout whilst taking a little bit of inspiration from the Nokia E63 smartphone.

The Snap's rounded, raised keys have a larger feel to them than what's on offer with the BlackBerry Bold, whilst incorporating the rubberised texture of the Nokia E63 at the same time.

What the Snap gains in raising the surface of these keys to achieve a larger footprint is immediately taken away by these same keys being so darn close together. At times it's a tad awkward for fast typing, where other devices such as the Blackberry Bold and Nokia E63 offer a better experience with more space provided between individual keys.

This is a shame as just a fraction of a millimetre between these keys could have stopped frequent 'word bleeding', where two keys are pressed at once and the word ends up being completely unrecognisable by man, woman or spell checker.

There is also the misplacement of the 'A' key on the keyboard. Instead of being in the usually expected place just below the Q, it's inset and the tab key is now in its place. On every QWERTY based phone of this ilk, from the Ipaq to the Blackberry, the arrangement of keys is standard. Writing an email on the Snap results in large spaces in every document written as the tab key is always pressed instead of the 'A' key. It does take some time to get used to this little annoyance.

Just above the keyboard is an oh-so-familiar trackball for navigating around the GUI. If this doesn't remind you of the trackball on Blackberry handsets then you really don't know your Blackberrys, as nearly everyone of those phones has one of these built in.

In RIM's latest 8520 budget mobile it abandoned the trackball in favour of a touch sensitive trackpad. With HTC aiming the Snap at the budget business handset market it could clean up as many will assume the HTC Snap is made by Research In Motion.

Battery life
HTC has bundled in with the Snap the same 1500mAh Lithium-ion battery that accompanies its Touch Pro2 handset, which provided that device with eight hours and 45 minutes of life in our tests.

The Snap doesn't have the massive power drain of the Touch Pro2 with its resistive touch-screen, slide out QWERTY keyboard and everything else that phone entails.

In the array of battery tests we exhaustively put the Snap through we produced some rather startling results. We made numerous one hour calls over a day with a fairly heavy load of emails coming down over that period of time before the battery eventually died.

This wasn't until a good 11 hours and 25 minutes of talktime was squeezed out of the HTC Snap, producing the longest life span of a phone's battery we've ever seen.

In Short
The first impression of the HTC Snap is that it's a rather lacklustre, uninspiring Quad band Windows Mobile corporate phone. After a period of time in use its features become more and more evident, such as the Inner Circle function, and it does eventually shine as a decent corporate mobile.

There are some minor niggles, which it would be remiss of us not to mention, but the HTC Snap could prove to be a good alternative to a Blackberry handset. µ

The Good
Long, long battery life, the Inner Circle, a light, slim handset.

The Bad
Keys too close together, no frills version of Windows Phone OS.

The Ugly
'A' key on the keyboard is out of place which causes problems.

Bartender's Report
8/10