HTC HD 2 Mobile Phone

Camera
The on board 5 megapixel camera has a dual LED flash for better low light pictures and also incorporates touch focus. The latter feature hasn’t been too well developed in the mobile industry and the HD2 hasn’t been able to do better. The focus very rarely remains on the designated subject. Other features include White Balance and ISO levels up to 800, a self timer, a few basic effects and geotagging. You can also use the Footprints application for capturing images and stamping them with location details.

Pictures in normal daylight are well lit. Settings are quite crisp and focused with just a little bit of jaggy edges showing up here and there. That’s something you’d expect to find in most mobile phone cameras. Low light images look ok at first view but at native resolution there’s quite a bit of artifact and blending of colors.

Battery
One of the other minor issues with the HD2 is the battery life. It’s not designed to sustain prolonged use of the large display for videos even on low brightness settings. The battery life is not by any means poor though. On an average the talk time ran up a count of about 4 hours and change. That’s better than average but for the kind of price tag attached to the handset it should have been able to offer much more. You’ll be able to use the handset for over a day and half with nominal usage which can include downloading emails, listening to music, surfing the net with a few calls and messages thrown in. But one full length movie will have the battery gasping for breath.

The Bottom Line
HTC’s HD2 is priced at a whopping Rs. 37,800 (approx. MOP). It’s a feature rich handset that’s well designed for comfort of use and manages to offer quite a bit for that price. There’s absolutely no need for a stylus although one has been designed for a specific purpose i.e. for digital signatures. It’s the closest thing to a tablet PC and its closest competitor is Samsung’s Omnia HD, which is a better value for money as a multimedia handset as it supports copy/paste video playback and is equipped with an 8MP camera, not to mention it costs quite a bit less.

However the HD2’s primary demographic is the business user, who’s used to the Windows Mobile platform and functionality. When it comes to hardcore business functions the HD2 is definitely better.