HTC Radar review

HTC's budget Windows Phone may not be as glamorous as other handsets, but it shouldn't be dismissed out of hand. Julian Prokaza gets to grips with the smartphone in our review.

IT Pro Verdict

Limited storage capacity may limit its appeal and the camera could be better, but those aren’t major complaints for a smartphone at this cheaper end of the market and the HTC Radar is otherwise a good-value Windows Phone 7 device.

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Connected Media is a useful addition too it's essentially a more versatile version of the stock Windows Phone 7 multimedia manager with added support for DLNA servers. However, with just eight outdated movie trailers available, the HTC Watch online video service is a waste of storage space for UK users.

The HTC Radar only has 8GB onboard and only 6.5GB is free fresh from the box. There's no user accessible memory card slot either.

Speaking of storage space, the HTC Radar only has 8GB onboard and only 6.5GB is free fresh from the box. There's no user accessible memory card slot either Windows Phone 7 wasn't designed to support user-replaceable storage and the recent Mango' update did nothing to address this lamentable oversight.

Better news is that HTC is paying more attention to the digital camera components in its smartphones and the Radar has a backlit sensor just like the Titan (and the iPhone 4/4S), albeit with a lower five-megapixel resolution. Reduced pixel count aside, images are nowhere near as crisp or as well saturated as the Titan's, and are marred by noise in less than ideal lighting conditions. The slow autofocus and spongy shutter release button also make it tricky to take a good photo.

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