HTC HD7 review

Does familiarity really breed contempt? Chris Finnamore finds out after having spent some quality time with the HTC HD7 Windows Phone 7 smartphone.

IT Pro Verdict

HTC's HD7 has a great screen and feels well-built, although battery life needs improvement. The Windows Phone 7 operating system is fast, easy-to-use and looks great. It's also a very capable office tool, thanks to powerful email and calendar apps and useful document editing capabilities.However, the numerous rough edges in Windows Phone 7 are just as grating now as they were when the operating system first became available. From the lack of copy and paste, the simplistic file and app management, the odd contacts handling and the connectivity issues with our Exchange 2003 server are all big drawbacks for serious business use.As much as we like the HD7 as a piece of hardware and as promising as Windows Phone 7 is, we can't recommend either over the iPhone or an Android phone until these issues are resolved.

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While email and the Office Hub work well, we were less convinced by the phone's contacts handling. You can import your Windows Live, Google, Exchange and Facebook contacts, but there's no way of selecting which ones you bring in or electing to display only certain contacts - such as those with phone numbers, for example. We didn't find this a particular problem in normal use, as the combination of a great keyboard and fast search makes finding contacts easy.

All this personal information makes your phone an identify theft nightmare, but Windows Live gives you some tasty security features. The Windows Phone 7 web interface lets you locate your phone on a map, remote lock it and display a custom message on screen (such as "give me back") or even erase all personal info. If you've lost it at the bottom of a laundry basket the "Ring it" function will make it ring with a special ringtone, even if the phone is set to silent.

The big screen leaves plenty of room for web pages, and the browser has no problems loading and rendering graphics-heavy sites. There's no Flash or Silverlight support, although you can play YouTube videos with the YouTube app from the Marketplace.

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