HTC HD Mini review
The HTC HD Mini was the less exciting launch of Mobile World Congress, but that doesn’t mean it can be forgotten. We review it to find out if it's worth remembering.
The HTC HD Mini is a light and attractive Windows 6.5 device. It speeds along, even with multiple apps open and the Sense UI makes it easy to use. Battery life is tip top and the screen is still bright and colourful. However, what does disappoint is that certain UI touches feel a little dated and the emotional among us would perhaps be led to think that the development of the device has been neglected in favour of HTC’s Android offerings.
Instead, there's a scroll bar along the bottom that takes you to your most used applications. As default, there's the home screen that displays a clock, your call history and calendar.
The next screen is the People tab that allows you to add your 16 most used contacts as shortcuts. Simply tab the empty box to add a contact.
Email and messaging are two more tabs along the bottom.
Mail is quick and easy to set up and you have the choice of doing so either when using either the Mail tab or settings menu. The third option is setting it up using the start up wizard when you first turn it on.
The keyboard is one aspect of the HTC HD Mini that is deeply affected by the size of the screen. It doesn't even rotate when you turn the HD Mini to landscape mode, and cries out for the use of a stylus, unless your fingertips are the size of matchsticks.
The HTC HD Mini features a Qualcomm 7227 600 MHZ processor and, although it's not as powerful as the 1GHZ number in the Toshiba TG01, apps run smoothly and it can handle multitasking effectively.
At times we did struggle to connect to the internet, when our BlackBerry also on O2 worked fine, and both displayed full 3G signal.
On a more positive note, the battery life is a lot better than on the HTC HD2. This is probably down to the fact that it doesn't have to power such a large, bright screen. After running the HD Mini with 3G switched on for a day, Twitter and email running in the background, we still had around 50 per cent of power left.
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