A great messaging smartphone, and one of the best Windows Phone 7 handsets available.
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| HTC 7 Pro Open |
It’s been a long time coming, but HTC has finally launched a Windows Phone 7 handset for email addicts - the HTC 7 Pro. The chunky 16mm-thick smartphone lacks the 4.3-inch screen of the HD7 and the 8-megapixel camera of the Mozart, but has an extra that helps makes up for both - a full QWERTY keyboard, which slides out sideways from the 3.8-inch 480x800 pixel display.
The slide action is a little rough, but with practice you can open the phone with one hand. When it's open the screen sits at an angle, so you can even type on a desk like a laptop. The keyboard has illuminated keys so you can type in the dark, and the shift and alternate function keys light up when active. There are no surprises to the layout and the keys are large enough to make typing easy, even if you have larger fingers. The only problems are the small backspace button, but Windows Phone 7's usually clever text autocorrect means you won’t have to use if particularly often, and the lack of a dedicated key for the @ symbol - you have to press FN-2 when writing email addresses.
For slickness, Microsoft’s Metro UI sits between Android and Apple's iOS. Microsoft's tough hardware stipulations mimic Apple's controlled approach, which results in silky smooth animations and predominantly fast performance from the 7 Pro's 1GHz processor. It's also more stylish than Android but lacks some of the core features of its main competitors, including multitasking for non-preinstalled apps and copy and paste, and there are fewer apps available. Copy and paste is coming in a future update, though, and new apps arrive all the time.
You access programs from 'live tiles' on the home screen, which are animated with useful information such as unread messages and missed calls or a slideshow from your photo album. The phone's Facebook integration populates your contacts book, which is useful. The operating system may not be perfect - it needed a couple of restarts during our time with the phone, but on the whole it’s stable, extremely easy to use and in a better state than iOS and Android were six months after launch.
As you'd expect from a Microsoft smartphone, the 7 Pro supports Office documents, including streamlined versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. You can create Word and Excel documents from scratch, and edit documents emailed to you as attachments. Setting up Windows Live and Gmail accounts is easy, but there's no support for spaces in Exchange usernames, so we couldn't set up our office Exchange server.
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| HTC 7 Pro Back |
The camera is disappointing. Images taken in low light show a lot of noise, even with the flash, and the focus can be slow to adjust. Colours are accurate, though, avoiding the blue tinge from the HD7's sensor. It's fine for casual snaps.
The 7 Pro is an impressive handset which is great for messaging. Its keyboard is easy to use, the display is crisp and responsive and as well as being comfortable to hold, the handset feels well made. It's one of the best Windows Phone handsets on the market - you just need to make sure the apps you need are available from the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace, and we'd hold off buying one until the operating system has been updated.
Hardware | |
|---|---|
| Main display size | 3.6in |
| Native resolution | 800x480 |
| Second Display |  |
| CCD effective megapixels | 5-megapixel |
| Video recording format | MPEG4, H.263, H.264 |
| Connectivity | Bluetooth, Wi-Fi |
| GPS |  |
| Internal memory | 8192MB |
| Memory card included | N/A |
| Operating frequencies | GSM 850/900/1800/1900, 3G 900/2100 |
| Wireless data | GPRS, HSDPA, HSUPA |
| Size | 117x59x15.5mm |
| Weight | 185g |
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