HTC Explore RS-8500-9000 BUZZ RATING 8/10
The Explorer is a budget handset aimed at first-time smartphone users, with a focus on keeping things simple and easy to use. It's a small but chubby handset which fits nicely in the hand, with a rugged plastic casing that feels sturdy and has a rubbery surface that helps with grip. Despite its budget price, the Explorer comes with all the usual smartphone features, including a 3-megapixel camera, GPS, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and access to the Android Market.
Our first worry was the small 3.2in screen, which has a small 320x480 resolution, but in practice we found it bright and colourful, with very little noticeable pixellation. There's not a lot of room, however - widgets on the home screen feel far more cramped than we're used to, and web browsing requires landscape mode. You'd also need to scroll around a lot to look at Office documents, but there's no document viewer installed as standard.
The phone is powered by a 600MHz Qualcomm Snapdragon system-on-a-chip, and despite its low clock speed the operating system still felt fast, even with a few applications running. The phone could also play HD video files, although of course they're downscaled to fit on the lower-resolution screen.
One major problem is the small 85MB of free storage space for apps. Most apps range from 3-5MB in size, whereas games can be 20MB or more, so you'll be very limited in what you can install. You do get a microSD card slot, so if you're careful you can stretch out your storage space by moving some apps to the SD card.
A major surprise is the camera: despite its lowly 3-megapixel sensor, it produced crisp, bright shots with very little noise. This was most evident in our low-light test, where we managed to capture reasonably detailed images, even though the camera doesn’t have a flash. Videos were crisp and colourful too, with much less jerkiness when panning than we've seen from other smartphone cameras. The low 480x320 video resolution is the only downside.
The Explorer runs a later version of HTC's Sense interface than the larger Sensation XE, but we didn't notice any major differences. You still get all the social networking features, such as merging your contacts across a variety of services such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, although not all Sense apps are installed by default - you can choose to install the missing ones through the HTC Hub app, which gives you more control over how much space is taken up with apps.
One small but important addition is the inclusion of a data monitor, which gives first-time smartphone users more control over their data usage and allows them to get an idea of how much surfing or YouTubing they can get away with. This is especially useful as many people interested in such an inexpensive smartphone may want to pay for their data as they go; in fact, most of the contract deals we saw for the Explorer came without data.
HTC Explorer review: Camera
For a starter smartphone, the HTC Explorer offers a 3.15MP camera with no flash, which isn't amazing, but for its purpose of snapping quick pictures to upload to networking sites, it serves nicely.
The phone's camera is simple, straightforward and low on functionality, so there are no editing options to choose from besides adding a filter to your images.Plus, if you haven't got a microSD card, you're looking at being able to fit a meagre five or six images into the tiny internal memory.
There's no tapping to zoom either, although you can manually toggle the zoom on the touchscreen or with the volume rocker.
For some reason, sharing images with your networks isn't as simple on the HTC Explorer as it is on many HTC handsets. Normally you can simply dip into the gallery and tap Share in the photo menu, but not this time. On the HTC Explorer you have to go into the network app itself and then upload your images. It's not the end of the world, but it is a bit irritating that that functionality isn't included.
HTC Explorer review: Internet
Navigating the web browser is intuitive, and there's pinch to zoom and double-tap to enable text reflow. Pages don't look too bad zoomed out or in, but be warned you will get pixelated images if you zoom in too far, which is a shame because the display on the HTC Explorer is nice and bright, and decently visible in direct sunlight.
Also, a clever trick on the HTC Explorer is that if you pinch to zoom rapidly from the outside corners of the screen to the centre, you'll automatically be brought to the windows page, where you can zip between open windows or add a new one to the mix.
A nice addition to the usual QWERTY keyboard when browsing the web is an extra .com button, which is really helpful when you're tapping out a URL.
The Bookmarks page is made up of attractive thumbnails of your favourite sites, and is easily accessed via the capacitive menu key.
Of course, if you're not a fan of the HTC in-built browsers, then there's always the option of downloading Opera, Dolphin or Firefox from the Android Market. But with such a functional browser and low CPU, it's probably not worth it unless you're particularly attached to those options
HTC Explorer review: Battery life and connectivity
The simplicity of the HTC Explorer is to thank for the good battery life you can eke out of it if you're not hammering the Wi-Fi every day. It's supplied with a Li-Ion 1230mAh battery, and even with a quoted talk time of around seven hours, we found it actually fared better than that with heavy usage.
Having used maps, a good dose of 3G internet and intermittent film watching with texts and a couple of calls thrown in for good measure, we could leave it until the morning to top up on battery power.
Sure, if you're going to be using the Wi-Fi every day it'll need at least one charge per day, but most new smartphone users will probably be able to get a couple of days out of a full charge.
Connectivity
On offer for HTC Explorer connectivity we have A-GPS support, HSDPA (900/2100) Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g/n), micro USB and Bluetooth 3.0 support. Connecting to a computer to drag and drop files is best left to the USB cable, since we couldn't get it to wirelessly pair with our machine.
As with most HTC handsets, there's the super easy to use Portable Wi-Fi Hotspot app - just open it and follow the instructions to hitch up your laptop to your mobile phone's internet connection. That said, as a mid-range 'first smartphone', we'd be surprised if there was a contract out there that supplied enough data to make it worthwhile using the hotspot app on the HTC Explorer.
HTC Explorer review: Contacts and calling
The fab thing about the HTC Explorer is that, even on a budget, you still get deep social networking integration in the contacts list. It's the HTC special feature that makes other handsets look worse in comparison if they don't offer a similar function, and luckily the HTC Explorer is well equipped.
However, with the HTC Explorer not coming pre-loaded with Facebook and Twitter apps, it takes a little fiddling, downloading and logging in before you can sync your SIM contacts to your social networks.
But once it's done, the HTC Explorer will automatically populate your phonebook with images and – if synced – the latest network update.
Then, when you tap into a contact, their details card includes not only their phone number and email address but their Facebook and Twitter updates too.
Scroll along the tabs to find your message and calling history thread, their updates and image gallery. This sort of integration in the contacts is fantastic, marred only by the occasional blurriness of images.
Adding a contact is simple - either add one straight from the unknown number or go to your People app and click the '+' sign in the top right corner to be brought to the screen to input contact details.
As for calling, while the speaker volume is quite loud, there's no noise reduction, so any background noise will be transmitted to your ears in a loud series of hisses and bangs. The connection was strong in urban areas, though, with neither side of our test calls experiencing drop.
There's also the usual smart dialling included - start to tap in a name or number, and the applicable contacts will appear in a list.
Description
| The new HTC Explorer is a 3.2-inch touch screen smartphone running the Android OS v2.3.5. It is a curved and compact design smartphone powered by 600 MHz processor with fast and intuitive web browsing. | ||||||||||||||
| General | Network | GSM | ||||||||||||
| Style | Bar | |||||||||||||
| Dimensions | 102.8 x 57.2 x 12.9 mm | |||||||||||||
| Weight | 108 g (With Battery) | |||||||||||||
| Battery Type | Li-Ion 1230 mAh | |||||||||||||
| Display | Display Colors | HVGA | ||||||||||||
| Display Resolution | 320 x 480 Pixels, 3.2" | |||||||||||||
| Memory | Memory InBuilt | 512 MB (Total Available Memory + RAM), 90 MB (Storage) | ||||||||||||
| Messaging | SMS | Yes | ||||||||||||
| MMS | Yes | |||||||||||||
| Yes | ||||||||||||||
| Push Mail | No | |||||||||||||
| Camera | Camera | Yes | ||||||||||||
| Mega Pixels | 3.0 MP, 2048 x 1536 Pixels | |||||||||||||
| Camera Zoom | Digital Zoom with Auto-Focus | |||||||||||||
| Video Capture | MP4, 3GP, 3G2, WMV9, AVI, XVID | |||||||||||||
| Connectivity | Ports | USB Port 2.0 | ||||||||||||
| Infrared | No | |||||||||||||
| Bluetooth | Bluetooth v3.0 with A2DP, AVRCP, GAP, SDAP, FTP | |||||||||||||
| A2DP | Yes | |||||||||||||
| Wifi | Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n | |||||||||||||
| Internet | GPRS, EDGE | |||||||||||||
| Entertainment | Music Player | MP3, AAC, AMR, OGG, M4A, MID, WAV, WMA9 | ||||||||||||
| FM Radio | Yes | |||||||||||||
| Games | Yes | |||||||||||||
| Ring Tones | MP3,WAV Ringtones | |||||||||||||
| Loud Speaker | Yes | |||||||||||||
| Technology | 3G | HSDPA upto 14.4 Mbps; HSUPA upto 5.76 Mbps | ||||||||||||
| OS | Android OS, v2.3 (Gingerbread) with HTC Sense | |||||||||||||
| Touch Screen | Capacitive Touch Screen | |||||||||||||
| Dual Sim | No | |||||||||||||
| QWERTY | Yes | |||||||||||||
| Network | Operating Frequency | Quad-band GSM 850 /900 /1800 /1900 MHz | ||||||||||||
| Talk Time | Upto 7.8 Hours | |||||||||||||
| Standby Time | Upto 485 Hours | |||||||||||||
| GPS | A-GPS, Google Maps | |||||||||||||
| Special Features | CPU Processing Speed (600 MHz), Sensors (G-Sensor, Proximity Sensor, Ambient Light Sensor), Facebook for HTC Sense, Friend Stream, Keep in touch more easily, SNS Integration, Digital Compass, Google Search, G-Mail, Google Talk, Picasa Integration, Organizer, Voice Memo, Predictive Text Input | |||||||||||||
S had this mobile ... i like it ..
ReplyDeleteit had only 600ghz but there is no any lag in web and 3d games....
ReplyDelete