Introduction
It truly is a catchy name, but the Trophy is – so to speak – the consolation prize in the HTC Windows Phone 7 lineup. It’s not the big guy in the family nor is it the smartest. The Trophy is a middle-of-the-roader, the mass market choice. It’s the first HTC-made Windows Phone 7 device we’re reviewing and we guess it’s up to them to prove there’s no such thing as an ex PocketPC maker.
Windows Phone 7 is about sky-high hardware standards and Microsoft is not really encouraging out-of-the-box thinking. What does this mean for the HTC 7 Trophy? Well, believe it or not, this here Trophy has come onto the scene to bring the one thing that Windows Phone 7 is obviously short of – device personality.Don’t get us wrong, WP7 is a great looking OS – and one that will only be getting better in terms of usability – but Microsoft-imposed uniformity is making it hard for manufacturers to set their products apart. They are trying to make up for that with better screens or free apps, but they still haven’t hit on a winning formula yet.
The HTC 7 Trophy will do its best to be the WP7 phone that stands out from the crowd. Since Microsoft forbids any customization, HTC took a different approach to giving the OS some individuality. Instead of offering free apps from the Marketplace, HTC have built their own – available to download for free off the HTC Hub. And the hub itself is a pinch of Sense UI sprinkled on Windows Phone 7, with some awesome exclusive apps.
Key features:
- 3.8" 16M-color capacitive LCD touchscreen of WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels)
- Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
- Dual-band 3G with HSDPA (7.2 Mbps) and HSUPA (2Mbps)
- Windows Phone 7 operating system
- 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, 576MB RAM, 512MB ROM
- 5 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash, geotagging
- 720p video recording @ 25fps
- 8GB of built-in storage
- Standard 3.5mm audio jack
- Standard microUSB port (charging)
- Dolby Mobile and SRS sound enhancement
- Wi-Fi b/g/n
- Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP
- Accelerometer for screen auto rotation
- Office document editor
- Facebook integration and cloud services
- Built-in A-GPS receiver
- Stereo FM Radio with RDS
- Comes with HTC Hub and exclusive HTC apps
- Voice-to-text functionality
Main disadvantages:
- Non-expandable storage
- Average display
- No lens protection
- Disappointing audio quality
WP7-specific limitations
- No system-wide file manager
- No Bluetooth file transfers
- No USB mass storage mode
- Limited third-party apps availability
- No Flash (nor Silverlight) support in the browser
- Too dependent on Zune software for file management and syncing
- No video calls
- New ringtones available only through the Marketplace
- Music player lacks equalizer presets
- No multitasking
- No copy/paste
- No DivX/XviD video support (automatic transcoding provided by Zune software)
- No sign of free Bing maps Navigation so far
- No internet tethering support
- No handwriting recognition support
