Ion Juggernaut

Shrinking The Hd2 Into The New Htc Hd Mini

The Taiwan based mobile phone maker HTC takes a swan song to the Microsoft Windows Mobiles 6.5.3 with one of the few smartphones left running the platform that once catapulted that brand as among the leading players in the industry.

This is the HTC HD Mini, a minimized version of the promising giant that was the HD2 encumbered by a platform that really has no place to go but settle in the dustbins of failed smartphone platforms, especially now when MS has unveiled the new Windows Phone 7 OS that has the muscle to take on the Android and iPhone juggernaut.

The HD Mini can be considered one of the last hurrahs of the WinMo OS but admittedly, it is as capable and powerful as any on the market.  The nice thing about the HD Mini is that apart from a couple of features, it does everything else the HD2 can do.

Shrinking a Giant

Admittedly, there’s only so much shrinking you can do and still leave the giant recognizable for what it can do.  In the HD Mini, you have to shrink the extravagant 4.3-inch display onto a 3.2-inch Half-VGA display as a  monolithic body measuring 103 x 57.7 x 11.7 mm can accommodate only this much.  You still get the same capacitive touchscreen and multitouch technology, a gravity accelerometer, proximity and ambient light sensors found on the HD2.

With a reduced display size, a reduced CPU-intensive graphics no longer needs the 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon that powered the HD2.  You now have a shrunk processor power on a 600 MHz Qualcomm 7227 processor.  It also runs the same Windows Mobile 6.5.3 with the same HTC Sense UI.  Don’t expect any upgrade path to the WinPho7 as there’s none and no WinMo smartphone can.

HD2 Features

It’s a tribute to HTC that it only took two features to minimize the HD2 into a compact body that is sure to attract a wider market.  That’s a lot more than what Sony Ericsson did to minimize the X10 to fit into their mini derivatives.

• The HTC HD Mini is a 3G phone on the dual band UMTS/HSDPA/HSUPA(900/2100) and a quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE in 2G. It has WiFi with DLNA and WiFi router support.  There’s al local data connectivity support for Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP and microUSB2.0. A-GPS with digital compass and HTC Footprint are also present.
• Imaging gets the same 5 megapixel autofocus digicam with geo tagging and widescreen photo capture.  HTC is silent about its video recording capability. Mobile entertainment comes with the same media playback support for popular audio and video file codecs including DivX. There’s stereo FM with RDS and stereo listening on either its 3.5mm audio jack or Bluetooth A2DP.

It has the same 512 MB ROM but a slightly reduced 384 MB RAM down from the 448 MB RAM on the HD2.  You still get microSD expansion capability for up to 32 GB.  Talk time is the same decent 7 hours on a fully charged 1200 mAh Li-Ion battery that also allows 14 days on standby and audio playback time of up to 12 hours.

About the Author

To find out more about the HTC HD Mini and other new phones visit www.best-mobile-contracts.co.uk. You can find more reviews for the HD Mini as well as a comparison of the best deals available. You can also find more information on many more HTC phones.