Microsot's Hero

Look at this device, guys. This is the device responsible of keeping Microsoft's Windows Mobile pretty much alive in the market, the device responsible of making us believe, for a brief period of time, that Windows Mobile can actually play at the same level as webOS, iPhone OS and Android, although it clearly doesn't.

Anyhow, this device is so important, it has set a new standard and a new concept of "high-end smartphone"; this is a device that will probably never become old, because it's so impressive, any other device looks from the past in comparison. It's important not only for Windows Mobile, but also for HTC, since the hardware of this device is pretty much the best we've ever seen tucked up in the same device, setting a new benchmark, and making us wonder whether this monster is actually better than Apple's flagship product. Let's dive into HTC's work of art.

This is the most impressive smartphone built by HTC to date, including the more recent Nexus One sold by Google. But what makes it so special? Many things.

The device runs Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6.5, which was announced nearly a year ago, at 2009's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, where it was heartily welcomed into the industry, even though there wasn't much to be happy about. Windows Mobile 6.5 is still essentially 2004's Windows Mobile 5 with patches to make it look nicer, making the OS very inconsistent, since there are parts where Microsoft has improved the usability and the functionality of the Operating System, but there are many, many other parts which remain the same, and that's a problem, because WM5 isn't good in this era.

Introducing HTC's HD2

The HTC HD2 was announced in August, making all Windows Mobile fans happy, and making the mobile industry happy knowing that HTC would tweak the OS, and ship it with an updated version of their TouchFlo 3D UI, which is now called Sense. The Sense UI has many elements of TouchFlo 3D, but it also has a lot of improvements of its own, and yes, it does share stuff with HTC's Sense UI for Android. But more on Sense UI later. It was released in Europe last November, and it's expected to be available in the US this year.

Technically, what we have in front, is nothing less than an engineering feat. The HTC HD2 is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip, which runs at 1 Ghz, and is the most powerful CPU you can put into a smartphone today, so yes, it's definitely good. This CPU is aided by 448MB of main memory, but actually has 576MB, 128 of which are reserved for the 3D Accelerator in non-US versions, but in the US, you do have those awesome 576MB of memory for your applications to run in. The HD2's CPU is complemented by an AMD z430 Graphics Processor Unit, which meets Open GL ES 2.0 standards like the iPhone 3GS (although we believe it's less powerful than the 3GS' GPU), which means the HD2's performance is nothing less than impressive. (Teardown picture below)

However, chips are not everything in a smartphone, especially if it has a touch-screen as primary input. We're going to be honest here; even if the HD2 had a lower-spec hardware (meeting some requirements), we would absolutely buy this phone only for its massive 4.3" capacitive touch-screen display. This is the biggest screen any mobile phone has ever had, and even better, it's capacitive, being the first Windows Mobile phone with a capacitive display. The Toshiba TG01 was the first smartphone to be powered by the Snapdragon processor last year, but it had a resistive touch-screen, which is not as sensible as capacitive screens, requiring a stylus. The HD2's display is very, very sensitive, and we consider it the benchmark right now, even if smaller 3.7" screens like the Droid and Nexus One share the same resolution (and therefore, look crisper), they are completely shattered by the HD2's screen. And the best part? This monster is only 11mm thick, so it genuinely is an impressive engineering feat by HTC here, and we can't stop congratulating the Taiwanese handset maker for it. As a separate note, we will, in later issues of TechTalk, cover the Snapdragon processor, what makes it so special, and more; we will also cover capacitive and resistive touch-screens, so don't worry, you'll know what they're all about.

To get an idea of the HD2's monstrous performance, look at the video below, in which you can see the HD2 running a Sony PlayStation emulator, playing Medievil 2.

We certainly can't wait to see the HD2 running Final Fantasy VII!!!

HTC, quietly brilliant

From the moment you slide the screen to unlock the phone, and enter its home-screen, you feel the warmth of HTC's Sense UI. HTC has made Sense UI nearly omnipresent in the device, rebuilding most of the apps you'll use, including the home-screen with widgets, the Mail application, the Calendar application, the YouTube application, the Media Player, and more. HTC has done so much, we need to go step by step.

To begin with, it's easy to see which parts of Windows Mobile are buried under Sense UI, because they share a common sliding mechanism at the bottom of the screen, which allows you to switch between tabs. From the home-screen for example, you switch between HTC's apps like People (contacts), Messaging, Mail, Calendar, Peep (Twitter Client), Music, etc. and all of them look stunning; for example, the Weather app displays cool animations, which can be used as background for the home-screen setting them as a live-wallpaper, and they look amazing. You also get the Messaging and Mail apps, which show you your sms and emails inside sheets of paper, and by swiping up or down you can go through all of them. It's just so easy to see HTC's magic all around these basic apps, you actually feel you're living inside HTC's OS and not inside Windows Mobile.

Browsing gets better with the HD2, in which HTC made Opera 9.7 the standard browser, and even though it has some minor issuses, it's a pleasure to use due to the amazing screen and the multi-touch pinch & zoom HTC built inside the browser, so yes, this device is becoming nearly perfect. The HD2 also ships with Internet Explorer, but we reckon it'd be best if you only started it out of curiosity.

With media, the HD2 just delivers. You get a standard 3.5mm jack, and both the Media and YouTube applications have been revised by HTC; in the music player, we get an interface very similar to Apple's Coverflow with cool animations, and for pictures we get multi-touch built-in too, besides animations in which the pictures either fall down on a stack or fly up when swiping up/down. Even better, multi-touch is implemented in the video player (we cannot confirm if this works in the YouTube app, but we think so), and when you try to zoom, you actually zoom, and a small "map" of the portion of the screen you're seeing is shown on the right, allowing you to move around the video with your desired zoom; we're out of adjectives for this functionality, it's just plainly amazing. If this wasn't enough, the HD2 is capable of, using CorePlayer (Windows Mobile 6.5 does not support 720p playback by itself), playing video in Divx or H.264 formats with a bitrate of up to 10Mb/s... do we really need faster hardware? Yeah we do, we always want more.

Anyway, what in our opinion, deserves a gold medal, is HTC's work on top of Windows Mobile 6.5; the reason why the HD2 is the first Windows Mobile to have a capacitive touch-screen (which are better than resistive touch-screens, in our opinion) is because WM does not simply support them. HTC made Windows Mobile capable of working with capacitive touch-screens on its own, and rebuilt apps like the Opera browser or the Adobe Reader so that we could use pinch & zoom with them, besides their own apps which are part of the UI. This is such an amazing work by HTC, we start doubting whether their software department should build an OS of their own, but that's where the Sense flavour of Android comes in. Really, what HTC has done with Windows Mobile 6.5 is just amazing, and the performance of the device throughout all apps (including WM ones) means HTC spent a lot of time trying to get the best out of each one of the Snapdragon processor's beats, not just putting it in the device and relying on plain horsepower; that wouldn't have worked out so well. (Review by TechnoBuffalo below)

Down to earth

Well, yeah, God's smartphone has to land on Earth, and it must do so with a couple of issues. To begin with, the camera at the back sort-of breaks with the whole device's aesthetic, although we could get on with it, we just don't get why it has to be that way; it just makes using the device on a flat surface a bit weird because you think you're scratching the camera lens. Even so, this is passable, and we can get adjusted to it. There are some other issues though, which cannot be fixed so easily.

Many users reported that the pictures and videos taken with the camera had a pink hue in the center; this has been fixed with a software upgrade for pictures, but not for videos. Also, there are reports suggesting that the touch-screen is too sensitive, and that it misplaces the user's fingers, causing weird actions. What is most alarming though, is that there's a bug preventing the sms' of HTC's app to be sent, which is a huge deal; a software update was supposed to fix this, but many users reported that they still had issues, and we hope HTC quickly fixes this.

You would believe, that with a 1 Ghz Snapdragon processor, the HD2 would have a giant battery too, but it doesn't, it has a 1230 mAh battery; by comparison the other Snapdragon smartphones use a 1000 mAh battery (Toshiba TG01) and a 1400 mAh battery (HTC's Nexus One). We would've put at least a 1400 mAh battery, but we can understand it, due to the insane thinness of the device. Surprisingly though, with a moderate use, the device can make it until the evening on a single charge, but stressing the device more will start draining the battery a lot faster, since Windows Mobile 6.5 (WM 5) was not designed with constant data connections in mind.

Finally, we arrive at the HD2's biggest drawback: the OS. What? What happened with Sense UI? Yes, the HD2 has the incredibly amazing Sense UI, and although HTC has done an outstanding job trying to fix Windows Mobile 6.5, it's just impossible. WM 6.5 is not horrible, it's just not up to today's standards. The platform has survived thanks to Microsoft's huge developer pool and their technologies, like the PlayStation emulator shows, but it feels a bit abandoned by Redmond. What we actually don't like about WM on the HD2, is that HTC cannot rebuild each and every app built for Microsoft's mobile operating system, and eventually, you'll have to return to Windows Mobile apps buried inside the OS, which, to begin with, are designed for a stylus. All the magic surrounding HTC's Sense UI is gone the second you start a Windows Mobile app, in which case, you'll find yourself trying to bridge the gap between current technology and the old OS, which is what HTC did for us. Suddenly, all the the beauty and functionality Sense UI gives the HD2, is ruined.

Afterthoughts

If there were an Olympus of smartphones, the HTC HD2 would play the role Zeus today. Why? Technically, it carries the most powerful mobile CPU to date, a good GPU, 448 MB of RAM (576 MB in the US version) a capacitive touch-screen display which is the biggest smartphone screen ever with a 800x480 px resolution, it supports multi-touch, and it has an impressive build quality (it's really one of the best in this department). Is it perfect, though? Clearly not, since HTC spend its time and effort in fixing Windows Mobile 6.5, instead of using Android, or asking Palm for its webOS.

We get it; HTC could not give all its love to Android, it had to make Microsoft happy, and its Windows Mobile consumers happy too, so it had to give WM to the HD2. But using Android instead would've made this device such a winner, we just can't stop thinking about whether we should or not recommend the HD2. Why? Because if we were HTC, and we were sort-of forced to put WM into the HD2, we would've not given the HD2 to Google for them to put Android 2.1 and release it as the Nexus One. Instead, we would make the HD2 with Android ourselves, which is what, according to rumors, is going to happen, with a device called (for now) the HTC Supersonic. (Long hands on by Noah from PhoneDog.com below)

Conclusion

A smartphone can be sort of perfect, but we all know this perfection is likely to be lost, somehow, since the mobile industry is constantly pushing forward. Our take? The HTC HD2 is far from perfect, but if you add in a Android 2.1 dual-boot (or Maybe just Android 2.1), you'd really have the best smartphone money can buy today. Will the HD2 get lost in time? Never; with a 4.3 inch screen, you're nearly always going to carry the biggest screen around (and we all know that screen size is an important "wow" factor when comparing devices), and even if next year we get an HTC HD3 with Android and twice the performance, the HD2 will always remain impressive. The HTC HD2 reminds me of the Rolls Royce Phantom and similar full size luxury cars, because when you buy one, you're likely to keep it forever, and if tomorrow Rolls Royce develops a bigger and more powerful Phantom, who's going to utter a single word about your old car, when all the other cars look small and cheap in comparison? So, next XMas, when your friends pull out their new iPhone 4G, claiming it's the best smartphone ever made, with twice the performance as your HTC HD2, put it next to their iPhone playing Iron-Man 2, and let them feel embarrassed...

You guys know we love Android and webOS, but the HTC HD2, at a hardware level, is just in a class of its own at the moment (sorry Apple), and it's difficult not to recommend it to everyone looking for a long-lasting powerful smartphone, or if, of course, you want a Windows Mobile device (in which case, this is the best). However, if you're not looking for just a smartphone, or a WM device, and you want the best hardware with one of the best mobile OS' out there, we suggest you wait for an HD2 powered by Android.

References:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_HD2
http://gizmodo.com/5400593/htc-touch-hd2-review-a-tragedy
http://www.mobiletechworld.com/2009/12/18/htc-hd2-review-the-best-smartphone-ever/
http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/25/htc-hd2-review/
http://www.trustedreviews.com/graphics/news/2008/06/12/AMD-Brings-Xbox-360-Graphics-Mobile/p1
http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/17/htc-supersonic-to-ring-in-wimax-on-sprint-android-style/