HTC Gratia deals & review

The HTC Gratia is essentially the European version of the HTC Aria that was released onto the Asian market. The Gratia runs on Google Android 2.2 with the HTC Sense UI on top and comes with a 3.2" screen employing a very sharp HVGA resolution. The Gratia features a soft wrap around cover which eliminates hard edges and also comes in a number of unique colours, including green, white and black.

The Sense UI offers superb social network integration thanks to Friend Stream which pools information from the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Flickr and combines them into a single and easy to manage flow of updates. This allows you to keep up to date with the latest goings on online without the need to open up the phone´s browser. The operating system has been upgraded from the Aria´s Android 2.1 to Android 2.2, but this is the only significant difference between the Gratia and the Asian Aria.

The connectivity options for the Gratia allow web access with ease, with high speed 3G and Wi-Fi connections available. The phone also features Bluetooth with A2DP, as well as microUSB to easily transfer files to and from the Gratia. The 512MB internal storage capacity is greatly enhanced by the inclusion of a microSD card slot that provides you with plenty of room for music, video and other media content. The Gratia supports up to 32GB worth of microSD cards and HTC even throw in a 2GB microSD card with the phone.

The Gratia comes with a wealth of entertainment features to make use of including the media player and YouTube integration, and also comes with an FM radio with RDS. As an Android phone the Gratia also has some great Google features present, including Google Maps, Google Talk and Gmail. Other email accounts and instant messaging clients are supported on the Gratia which, with the threaded SMS and MMS support, make the Gratia as superb phone for messaging.

While the 3.2" TFT screen is a joy to look at it is not quite as high quality as some of HTC´s flagship phones like the Desire. There is still a 256k colour depth, sharp 320 x 480 resolution and capacitive technology for extra responsiveness. The Gratia also includes a number of sensors for additional functionality, including an accelerometer and proximity sensor. A nice little feature that has been added by HTC is the ability to mute calls by flipping the phone over.

The Gratia is almost identical to the HTC Aria released in Asia, but with an updated version of Google Android. Like many of HTC´s Android phones this has had a makeover with their own Sense user interface but still provides all the exceptional Google functionality. In terms of the UK market, the Gratia is very much in keeping with the HTC Legend released earlier in 2010 and while perhaps not quite as high performing as some of HTC´s other Android handsets still provides more than enough to offer exceptional value for money.