"impressive spec"
No card slot on a £400 phone?!?!
HTC took the lion’s share of the recent Windows Phone 7 launch with three out of seven handsets. Without the big screen of the HD7 or the 8Mp camera of the Mozart, the Trophy looks on paper like the runt of the litter. But its lower price and still impressive spec mean it could end up in more pockets than either of its brothers …
As the specs age, the price of the phones will drop and soon enough they'll become mid-tier and eventually budget phones, at which time they'll have full market penetration. The reason they started out with a high spec was so they didn't end up with the kind of performance disaster that is low-end Android phones. Oh, Angry Birds Lite, anyone?
I think the release of the £99 Orange San Francisco has redefined the expectations of budget Smart Phones. Plays Angry Birds just fine with the correct ROM. Got a nice 16GB sdhc card in it, so it has pretty much replaced my iPod.
Unless Apple or Microsoft really compete at a true budget level, then I predict Android will eventually dominate the mass market. .
"how many off the street punters are going to be jail breaking their phones."
I don't expect any will but the OSF does demonstrate the power that is now available for £99. To be honest the Orange stock ROM is not too bad but it might not get the smoothest performance out of Angry Birds.
At present there are no contenders running iOS or Win7 in this price bracket and I am not convinced that they will even bother until maybe it's too late. We will have to wait and see but my point is "low end Android is not under performing any more".
plays birds better than the £99 WP7 phone....oh right.....
WP7 is stuck in a middle ground where this phone is "budget", surronded on all sides.
In fact I cant see why ANYONE would want a wp7 phone.
Its cheap? androids cheaper, or better value.
its flexible? no its not get an android if that important.
I like Windows? (see above)
its a business phone? nope, defo consumer, get a blackberry, its business and its business NOW!
Its intergrated and works?get an iphone its more intergrated and works better.
Its the most intergrated phone at this price?get a second hand iphone, see above.
microsoft is the daddy?not in the phone market!
I liked WP6.5?your an idiot. or get an android.
it from a known brand?hello! MS! renowned for needing patches, get an iphone while you wait for them to fix WP7.
sombody tell me clarify to me why they got a WP7 phone?
I had one of these for a while, and am impressed. I know as a rule you’re not supposed to like MS phones, and it had tough competition as I was trying it after using the HTC Desire. So what’s so good about it, the battery life is pretty good, the default interface is good. You can connect and pick up your mail easily, on multi accounts (even exchange). Market place is ok, with not as many apps as Apple, but to be honest 95% or greater on there you would probably never use or want. So what is there is ok. Good links if you use Xbox live.
Which then moves to the bad points, for a business tool it’s a backward step (I was reviewing it for work). The phone is aimed at the consumer market, but is also trying to appeal to the business market, with a strange mix of tools provided. It has office, has good links in to SharePoint 2010, which is what every business needs running MS platform. But then fail on the mails side, with the removal or no support for most of the Active Sync abilities that were available in 6.5, with exchange mobile polices. Or to put it another way if you enforce the ‘do no permit provisional devices’ on your policy (you may for example enforce device encryption) then the phone will not connect to exchange, because it cannot apply the policy, or most policy options.
With one move MS are moving to the consumer market, and cutting off their current market at the same time, strange.
MS chose to concentrate on the consumer in the initial release, but included the Business Bits that were completed already. Policy support and full Skydrive support will come soon enough as they start to home in on the Business side more. Eventually we'll end up with an OS that's awesome for consumers (Zune / XBox integration) AND awesome for Business (full office, sharepoint, policies etc etc).
WP7 is a work in progress, but then so are iOS and Android.
I've had one for about two or three months, I really like it although I have a few gripes:
The camera seems a tad unpredictable - sometimes it's really good, others it just doesn't seem to take good pics.
No user configurable ringtones
No RDP client (allegedly coming soon)
No cut and paste (allegedly coming soon)
No Opera mini - yes (hopefully)
No ssh app, again hopefully someone will address this.
Lack of memory card slot doesn't seem to be an issue, I carry a load of the radio4 podcasts and ten or so CDs worth of media on it and it's got loads of memory free.
Office is quite nice. Overall it's a really good phone.
I've had one of these phones for a couple months now, and the battery life is more like 2-3 days as opposed to the 1 day the reviewer mentioned.
Reviewer, was the handset you used brand new? Did you only use it for the one day? Like most HTC handsets, the full battery capacity is only arrived at after a number of full drains followed by recharges, just like my previous HTC Hero.
Perhaps we should define a budget level for a budget phone in these inflation and recession hit times:
I suggest anything under £40.00 is budget, £40-£100 is mid range, £100-£200 is upper range. Anything over £200 should be the "You've got to be joking" range. Maybe force the manufacturers to cut back on their "research costs" and develop long lasting smart phones in the spirit of the new age of austerity (Bankers excepted, of course).
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The three touch screen buttoms (Back / Windows / Search) are a PITA - get too close and suddenly you've BINGed or quit the app....
Battery life is variable, at the moment I'm recharging every night and frequently get the 'critical low battery' message but that could be from too much game use.
Every now and then it looses sound output when playing MP3s.
Other gripes are more general Win7Pho ones....
* no cut'n'paste,
* only being able to sync video and music from my local PC - I have a local contact list and calendar in Outlook and I want it sync'd easily without pasting into Hotmail.
* The conversation style text messaging is a nice feature but it should be optional - I want to file some text messages. Give me an inbox, sent items and delivery reports.
* Zune - enough said.
* crap address book - really some people I know have three mobiles, can I have an entry for each please? My four year old work Nokia 3109c can do it....
* Lack of user defined ring tones or alerts
* one volume level for everything - I want the ringer loud but not the keyclick.
* IE - Can I have a 'set' home page.
Office OneNote - love it.
I love this phone but I hate it too.
Simon
A friend of mine got one of these shortly before Christmas as his first ever smartphone. His previous phone was a Motorola Razr so he definitely is a newbie when it comes to smartphones and he is loving the Trophy. It seems that Windows Phone 7 has a pretty good interface that is easy to learn and from my experience I would say it is better for people who want simplicity than Android. The Trophy itself from what I have seen of his is a solidly built phone with a nice sharp screen and he has mentioned that the screen is particularly impressive.