HTC’s mid-range Windows Phone 7 launch handset, the HTC 7 Mozart, boasts high fidelity audio and a slightly better camera than the HTC 7 Trophy and HTC HD7. But will its smaller screen size let it down?
What we like
The music quality on the HTC 7 Mozart truly is a treat; the HTC Sound Enhancer app allows you to switch between Dolby Mobile, Equalizer and SRS HD Wow, which is a virtual surround-sound tool. It’s particularly brilliant when watching films and trailers – sound really does feel like it’s coming from all around you.
The operating system is just as beautiful to look at and slick and quick to navigate as we found on the HTC HD7, thanks in part to that 1Ghz processor.
The camera takes good quality photographs and has a nice range of options to tinker with – and we particularly like being able to open the camera straight from the lock screen by holding the shutter button down. This can mean your camera starts taking pictures in your pocket, although we think it’s unlikely.
Although the HTC 7 Mozart’s screen is slightly smaller than the HTC HD7’s, it still does a pretty good job of video playback. Where it suffers is in web browsing – you have to make good use of pinch-to-zoom, but luckily text renders perfectly when zoomed in so it’s as pleasurable to use as possible.
What we don’t like
There’s no real multi-tasking on the HTC 7 Mozart, other than that you can play music while using other apps. We found even this a little temperamental, with icons flickering in and out.
Overall we like the camera, but the Xenon flash on the HTC 7 Mozart really slows things down. The shutter sound goes off before the flash does it’s double-flash thing, so you often end up moving th ecamera before the photo has taken.
Just as we found on the HTC HD7, the Windows Phone 7 operating system feels quite restrictive – but there’s potential for apps to make us feel that we have a little more control.
Conclusion
There’s not a great deal of difference between the HTC 7 Mozart and the HTC HD7, and we recommend you check out our review for a more indepth look at the operating system itself.
So what does set the HTC 7 Mozart apart from its fellow Windows Phone 7 launchmates? Not much – but we do like the slightly jazzier design that HTC has gone with, as well as the camera’s 8-megapixel power. For music playback, the HTC 7 Mozart will be hard to beat, but it’s still let down by Windows Phone 7’s lack of features.
Specification
| OS | Windows Phone |
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