HTC HD Mini in da house

Lately Daph old faithful Nokia 5310 Music Express is giving up the last breath. The battery has worn out. S we went to Low Yat to search for an ideal phone for her. We had in mind on that time is Nokia N97 Mini, BB 9700, Iphone 3GS and HTC.

After loitering and tested a few phone there, alas she concluded that she wanted to try touch screen phone. No point getting back a basic phone she thought. Blackberry Bold 9700 came close after HTC. N97 mini out as the form factor is a little too bulky. Iphone 3gs is out of budget. We even tested some Android phone from Acer. After deep and long consideration, she got down to HTC model. The form factor plays a major role here as she prefers this HTC HD Mini over other brand like the bulky N97 Mini. It only weight about 110g which is 18g lighter than my Nokia E72. Then, she compared HTC Touch 2 and HTC HD Mini.

She choose HTC HD mini over HTC Touch 2 mainly because of the screen resolution. The HTC HD mini displays a superbly vivid colour over Touch 2. It also has the function of pinch to zoom, flip and others. It run on a higher CPU speed of 600Mhz. HTC HD mini platform is Winmo 6.5.3 and is not upgradeable to future Winmo 7. Anyway, I am sure there will be cook ROM at XDA Developer once Winmo 7 is launch.

Winmo 6.5.3 with HTC Sense really blows me away. I remembered my first and the only Winmo phone I owned, an O2 XDA II Mini. That time Winmo 2003 is consider as latest OS. Fast forward to today, Winmo 6.5.3 with HTC Sense look simply marvelous. It support multi touch function, accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate and a proximity sensor for auto turn down volume when you pick up the phone. There is lot of small thing that make life easier. The most notable is under one contact you can click into it and it will show records of all activity you had with that particular person. There are records of all sms conversation you had, calling log and others. Neat indeed! It's really a fun phone to explore with.

The only cons which are consider a major con to me is touch screen keypad sms! I still hate to sms by using a touch screen keypad. I can only manage to type accurately by slowly touch each of the alphabet. I also hate that one need to end task to free some memory space as there is no proper ‘X’ (kill) application button.

Overall, I enjoyed using this HTC HD Mini. These phones really impress me a lot and have changed my view towards Winmo. Maybe this was due to HTC Sense UI. Daph still a little bit struggling using her first touch screen phone. Can't blame her though as it was quite a big jump from a friendly user Nokia 5310 to a sophisticate and technology advance HTC HD mini. Just give her sometime and I am sure she will get used to it.