HTC Smart On 02 Pt 1

Last week I joined the smartphone revolution by buying an HTC Smart on O2. It's a budget, entry level smartphone with many limitations and not intended to compete with the high end iPhones and HTC Desires of this world. For the money and my needs it's rather nice. This is the first of a few posts about both the HTC Smart and O2. As a Linux / FOSS advocate you'd imagine an Android phone would be ideal for me, however a couple of things ruled that out.

1. All of the Android phones I looked at had a font size small enough that I'd need to carry my reading glasses just to navigate the menu, and no way to increase them. Android developers have been deafening in their silence at the 1,000's of people demanding a global font size adjuster as a basic accessibility issue.
2. I hardly use my phone for anything other than the basics. Calls, SMS, alarm clock, scheduler and the odd time I need a calculator. Everything I use comes installed on even the basic touch phones. Even on the stuff like calls or SMS, I hardly use those, so any may monthly contract would be a waste of money for a long time.

Like anything, you get what you pay for. When I started investigating smartphones I loved the SenseUI on HTC phones. The HTC Smart has the SenseUI, much like its more sophisticated Android cousins, albeit much more limited. What it comes down to is whether or not you're happy with those limitations for the price. Remember this phone is priced at £90 as a Pay&Go deal.

As I've said, the HTC Smart is not aimed at the mid or high end smartphone user, nor is it aimed at users with more advanced needs. It's aimed at people who either don't need, want or are willing to spend money for all of the wide range of features of a regular smartphone but want something modern and slick to use. It is a smartphone but only just.

The Good

• The interface is very slick, despite being a fraction of the spec of the high end phones it flies around the screens, complete with fades, transparency etc. It looks just as good as the more expensive phones.
• The touchscreen is very responsive, although as this is my first smartphone I can't compare it to anything else.
• Due to the small resolution 320x240 the font size is very readable.
• The build quality of the hardware feels excellent, it feels like a proper tool, not just a toy with clicky buttons etc.
• The headphone socket is a regular jack, not some proprietary socket.
• The sound quality is excellent considering radio / mp3 playback is a kinda secondary feature.
• It does have bluetooth although I've not had a chance to test it.

The Average

• The MicroSD card slot is inside the back cover, but at least you don't need to remove the battery to use it, so it keeps it out of the way. I'd rather have this on the outside so you don't have to take the back off at all.
• It's Brews not Android, which I believe is closed source.

The Bad

• Surfing websites which are not optimised for mobiles is a horrible experience as you have a LOT of scrolling to do. The screen resolution of 320x240 is a problem here. It's perfectly fine for mobile optimised sites however. The experience has convinced me to ensure that every site I build will have a mobile optimised version; stay tuned for an update to this site.
• The browser has no Flash, or at least no way to stream content, which at least helps ensure you don't run up too many bandwidth bills.
• You can't install any applications, it has no marketplace, so you're stuck with what HTC gave you.
• HTC's FriendStream only supports Facebook and Twitter with no option for Identi.ca.
• Both the video camera and still camera give pretty poor results.
• There is no wifi so all internet use is through the data plan. I don't have wifi at home so this is not something I personally miss as yet.

Overall it's a lot more limited than I expected, but it still has almost everything I need from a smartphone, so I'm reasonably pleased with it, specially considering the price. I'd imagine that maybe in a year or two I'll be at the stage where I'm after a high end smartphone. At which time I hope the font size issue will be noticed by the Android developers.

The Brews OS is neither good or bad. Yes I'd prefer it was FOSS, maybe one day it will become FOSS although since Qualcomm made it, I'd doubt that. Yes I'd prefer to be able to install a few more applications, mainly for Identi.ca and IRC, which may be possible at a later date as it does have a Java application which appears to be a manager for Java applets.

This of course is dependent on developers producing applications for Brews, which I can see being a struggle, given the juggernaut known as Android goes from strength to strength. I'm fully behind the open platforms like Android in this battle, even though it means I may never see any new applications on my phone.

For what it's worth, the HTC Smart with Brews and SenseUI is slick and responsive, it does not look or feel like a low end device. The Smart may be the first in a new range of entry level smartphones HTC bring to the market with Brews, so it may be an emerging platform rather than a final setup.

The next part deals with 02 specific issues.