HTC is a company that has always concentrated on releasing smartphones, and as such the Smart marks a noticeable deviation from this trend. Some people have already referred to the Smart as HTC’s first ‘dumbphone’ as it is their first release to not make use of a smartphone OS.
HTC has typically focused on using Windows Mobile and Android operating systems for its mobile phones, such as the HD2 and the Hero, but for the Smart HTC has instead opted for Qualcomm’s BREW platform. This provides much of the same functionality as the MS and Google operating systems but is much cheaper to implement. It requires much less processing power to operate effectively, which means that the Smart is able to offer much of the same functionality as other HTC phones but at a far more affordable price.
HTC Smart Physical Dimensions, Appearance and Screen quality
The Smart measures up at 104 x 55 x 12.8mm making it an ideally sized handset and weighing at just 108g it is one of the lighter touchscreen phones on the market. The front of the Smart mainly consists of its 2.8″ TFT screen, which is fully touch sensitive, and three other buttons underneath. These are the standard home, call accept and call reject buttons, as most of the interaction is provided through the screen.
The display employs 256k colours and a QVGA resolution (240 x 320) for a sharp and brightly coloured interface. An accelerometer is included with the Smart which allows the display to be easily rotated between portrait and landscape orientations.
The Sense UI employed on the Smart allows you to make use of ‘Scenes’. These allow you to have different phone settings for different environments. There is a work scene that has quick homescreen access to email and the web, while the weekend scene provides you with quicker access to entertainment features such as the camera and media player. There is a third scene which can be customised to your own personal liking.
HTC Smart Media & entertainment
The Smart features a very easy to use media player with excellent support for music and video. There is support for the most popular file types including MP3, AAC and WMA for music and WMV and MP4 for video.
The HTC Smart only comes with 256MB of internal storage space, which may seem quite low for storing your music and video. However, through the use of microSD cards the phones internal storage capacity can be increased to a hefty 16GB.
The Smart features a 3 megapixel camera that comes with autofocus and LED flash. The camera also comes with video recording capabilities so that you are not just limited to still images. Through the use of integrated apps you can quickly upload photos and videos to your favourite online services such as Facebook, Flickr and YouTube.
The YouTube app also allows for quick and easy streaming of your favourite online videos, and apps for Facebook and Twitter mean that you can make use of these popular services without needing to access them through the web browser.
HTC Smart OS, Connectivity and Battery Life
The Smart runs on Qualcomm’s BREW Mobile platform with HTC’s Sense UI. The HTC Sense interface makes the Smart look and feel like many other HTC phones that operate on smartphone operating systems such as Windows Mobile. This is powered by a 300MHz processor and 256MB RAM. Although the CPU may sound a lot slower than some of the 1GHz processors on the go, its use reflects the fact that the BREW platform requires much less processing power compared to other operating systems.
The HTC Smart is a quad-band GSM phone with support for 3G through HSDPA and WCDMA. There is additional connectivity available through GPRS, EDGE, miniUSB and Bluetooth (with A2DP). The only letdown in this area for the Smart is the lack of Wi-Fi support.
The Smart uses a 1100 mAh Lithium-Ion Polymer battery that provides up to 7.5 hours of talk time. Battery life is extended up to an impressive 450 hours while on standby. The battery employed should help to ensure that even with heavy use you will not need to be too concerned with losing power.
HTC Smart Email and Messaging capabilities
The Smart comes with excellent support for email, SMS and MMS. SMS messages can be displayed in threaded view which is a much more intuitive way of reading and writing messages. Threaded viewing displays messages per contact in a conversation style rather than in separate inbox and outbox folders. This makes it much easier to keep track of your correspondences with individuals in your contacts list.
The Smart supports push email which means that new emails will be received as they are sent, with a notification being displayed directly to your homescreen. With push email you can ensure that you do not miss an important email as you do not need to actively check a remote server to see if you have new messages.
HTC Smart summary
The Smart marks a move away from high end smartphones by HTC, but still offers much of the same functionality. The Smart provides the look and feel of a smartphone, and the integrated apps make it highly tuned for social networking.
While the BREW OS employed allows the Smart to retail at a much lower price than other HTC phones, the Sense UI still provides the Smart with the same feel as many other devices in HTC’s product line-up. Some commentators have speculated that this is an attempt by HTC to make it easier for people to become familiar with their phones and that the Smart is intended as a stepping stone to HTC’s more high profile devices. Even if this is the case, the Smart still offers a much more affordable alternative to costly smartphones and is an ideal phone for heavy social networkers. Check out the most recent HTC Smart Deals or read some more HTC Smart Reviews.
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