HTC Mozart - hardware bits

Okay hardware specs is everything for a phone. Especially in windows phone 7. Microsoft has pretty much underlined the base specs for the OS and phone companies try to differentiate their product through the hardware. Bigger screen. Better camera. Better sound. HTC approached it a bit differently, instead of putting the ultimate hardware into just one phone, they spread it up across their wp7 offering. HD7 got the big screen, the Mozart got the camera, Surround got the slide out speakers etc. Samsung went with the AMOLED screen route. You get the idea.

So what does the hardware specs look like for the Mozart.

1 GHz Scorpion processor, Adreno 200 GPU, Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon chipset - this is somewhat standard across all HTC initial wp7 offering. Performs well in terms of sprightliness and smoothness in handling the requirements of wp7. The Mozart comes with 8GB of storage with 512 MB of ROM and 576 MB of RAM. I think the RAM is one of the highest amongst all the wp7 phones launched. Dimensions of the phone is 119 x 60.2 x 11.9 mm and weighs just 130 grams. The phone build quality is excellent. It has that premium device feel to it, well that's probably down to the whole brushed aluminum thingy it got going on.

HTC 7 Mozart

The display is 3.7 inch S-LCD, 480x800 resolution. SLCD is no amoled, but i found the display quite good but still, under direct sunlight u do have to squint la a bit ;).

The camera is 8 megapixels with auto focus and xenon flash. Impressed? Well specs alone won't do it la for a camera. I have some issues with the camera. The two step flash, the auto focus in capturing videos, can't save camera settings - if u set the videocam on HD and exit, it will revert to normal resolution. Been reading other reviews on the camera and they said that the flash was weak and the images are not at par to what an 8 megapixel mobile phone camera with xenon flash should behave like. But, but, but so far the images that i got all look rather okay to me. So i guess its a personal preference thingy?

the camera, flash and speaker grille 

The sound quality however is indisputable. HTC has bung in Dolby Mobile and SRS Enhancements into the phone and the music playback on the phone is excellent. I mean u can use it as your own personal beat box its that good. Well i'm exaggerating of course but it's really good.

Here's some more shots of the phone.

the battery cover slides open..

sim card slot under the battery..

3.5 mm jack and power button..

micro usb slot for charging and data transfer, 

volume rocker on the left side

camera shutter button, activates the camera even from sleep.

touch sensitive buttons..

Next i'll give my overall thoughts on the phone.

HTC Mozart Review - Windows Phone 7

I think I'm gonna break this review into two parts. First touching on the operating system side of things and the other on the general hardware of the phone. I've been using android more recently and before that I've used symbian. Windows phone 7 presents an opportunity to get to know a new OS, like what I experienced with android. So how does the OS fare?

live tiles..

Now if someone is used to iOS or android and to a certain extent symbian, the windows phone 7 UI marks a totally new reinterpretation of how a mobile OS should look like. The main component of the start screen are the live tiles. This is where snippets of information are shown, kinda like strip down widgets of sorts. WP7 organizes itself into hubs, with the user having easy access to the information they require by browsing the People, Picture, Music and Videos and the Office Hubs. It's pretty self explanatory.

people..

By default, WP7 requires that u have a windows live ID. Lucky my first email address was a hotmail account. You also have the option to set up Facebook, Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo and other email accounts. Now the people hub is where all your contacts are shown. Recently used contacts are shown neatly on a page. The recent status of your Facebook contacts are also displayed. U can update your Facebook or windows live status right from the people hub. Now to me what's missing here is twitter integration. It would be handy if one could see twitter updates here too. Apparently this feature is coming in future wp7 updates.

Speaking of updates wp7 was updated recently. The NoDo update brought some enhancements such as copy past and better marketplace search functions. Woop ti doo. Copy paste is handy. I mean beats typing everything all over again right?

music..

Wp7 is heavily integrated with microsoft's Zune offering. You have to sync your phone with Zune on your PC to transfer music and videos into your phone. You also have to connect via Zune to check for phone updates. Basically Zune is your "PC Sync" client. I don't have a problem with that. Well apart from Zune not playing nice with the computer at the office. Must be the lack of RAM or something like that. But it runs well on my netbook at home though. The music client is quite the eye candy. The background changes according to the music which is playing. You also have access to band biography and any links to the tracks on marketplace. Sad thing is Malaysia is not actually supported and u need to find a way to create a US based windows live account and link a credit card for u to actually purchase stuff.

zune marketplace

I wonder. The Apple appstore is supported in Malaysia. Android Market and Windos Marketplace is not. Why is that? Makes fully utilizing your mobile OS a bit of a drag la. I'm digressing here.

marketplace..

The Picture hub shows you all the media that is available on your device. Recently captured photos, and recently updated photos from facebook are all displayed in the hub. Pinch zooming is there. Double tap also available. It does the job. I think its on par with the android Gallery. You have options to upload your pics to facebook or SkyDrive. That's pretty handy with the limited storage on your phone. But that's a hardware thing.

The staple functions you would expect from your phone, calling, messaging are all fairly done. An incoming call whilst the phone is on standby would result in a screen popping up with the call details, a simple swipe up gives u the option to answer or ignore. Threaded messaging is quite minimalist. Nothing to brag about. Email on the other hand is excellent. One quirk is you can't set it so that it automatically download the images in an email. U have to click on it first. That should have been an option. Microsoft says its for your own good. but hey i wanna be able to decide to take the risks in downloading my emails and stuff like that. Outlook synchronization is excellent, well that is once you get ur IT people to supply you with the correct certificates and what not. I am surprised by the lack of Task synchronization for Outlook. Er infact, there's no default Task or Todo app for windows phone 7?? Thats a bit weird. Is it not a core function of a smartphone cum organizer? Maybe its coming in another update.

email..

The software keyboard is one of the best default keyboards i've used. I say default because the swiftkey for the android is also one of the best keyboard i've used. Don't let the simple minimalist design fool you. Its pretty accurate. So far i've not yet seen any ways to change the keyboard so i guess its good that the one it came with does the job well.

image from wpcentral.com

WP7 also extends your mobile experience to the web via windowsphone.live.com portal. there you can manage your phone in so many ways. You can ring the phone even if its on silent mode - very handy if you misplaced it in your house, find it if u lost it, lock and erase the phone content right from your computer. This is also where you access all the photos synced to your SkyDrive and what ever information u need. I think this is very nifty.

Basically WP7 is still in its infancy. Before you take the leap to give it a go, u need to consider a bunch of things, if u need apps such as whatsapp, evernote, dropbox, skype etc. U need to check if it is supported first. So far for the apps i mentioned, there is no official support from the developers. Most of them say unless Microsoft relaxes some of the dev requirements, they won't come up with a version of those popular apps for WP7. That actually sucks la. WP7 has a lot of potential but as Apple has successfully shown, the apps that maketh the phone. If Microsoft can't get the developers on board, it would be very difficult for them to sway people to choose WP7 over the competion.

Next: HTC Mozart Hardware bits.

HTC Mozart - First Impressions..

HTC Mozart

So I made the switch to windows after giving up on the random reboots I experienced on my xperia x10 eclair device. I considered going to blackberry. Really I did. Contemplated getting the bold 3. But the underwhelming tech specs just killed it for me. The senorita wanted me to get a torch. She swears by it and I think its a wonderfully crafted device. But again its essentially the same baseline spec as the bold 3 apart from the screen. So, I gave bb a pass for now.

The first windows phone that I thought was cool was the LG optimus 7. But being a sucker for a good camera I opted for the HTC Mozart.

eye-catching design..

Its a beautifully crafted device. Carved out of a solid aluminum block. Which is somewhat of a thing with HTC these days. Starting from the legend.

My first impression is I like how smooth everything seems to be. I guess that's just the thing with the UI. Setting up your accounts is a breeze. Well apart from the exchange account. Had to get my IT  guy to pass me the certificates for exchange to work properly. Never had that problem with Android though. Even IOS was pretty straight forward.

But once you managed to sort everything out it really is decent how email is handled. Anyways will probably strategize on a proper review in a bit.

The keyboard is excellent. That's for sure. Yes there's no multitasking per se but even Apple got IOS to multitask in its 4th iteration right? Hopefully it would be a shorter wait for windows phone users.

No copy paste but that's supposedly coming.

I guess overall the initial experience has been very pleasant.