The HTC 7 Mozart

 

It’s only been about a month or so since we’ve been formally introduced to the HTC 7 Mozart back at the Windows Phone 7 Workshop, and our impressions on the phone back then were a newfound respect for the platform and a reverence to the Mozart’s form factor. Since then, we’ve had the privilege to be lent a unit to put through our rigorous review process – and we even gave you our first impressions on the phone. But first impressions aren’t conclusive – we were curious to see if underneath the polished, shiny interface and sleek exterior hardware, we could find any kinks in the armor. Does the new Microsoft OS stand up against the stiff competition of Android and iOS? Is the new software stable? Fast? Does HTC’s hardware and software touches make it a venerable Windows Phone 7 device? The answers are here. Welcome to our longest article yet – our HTC 7 Mozart review! (Our contest for HTC freebies is after the article too, so read on! Plus there’s more!)

 

 

 

DESIGN

 

Shiny Gorilla Glass front

 

As you could see in our unboxing and hardware review video, the HTC 7 Mozart is built upon one of the more popular form factors for touchscreen mobile phones. The 3.7” screen, all glass front, unibody aluminum, thin frame, and tapered edges all fit into the category of size that most users will call “just right”. It is, in fact, just right – but we’d venture to say it goes beyond that. The width, thickness, and weight of the phone afford a level of handling-ease that we’ve rarely seen in recent years. We could easily pull the phone out of our pockets, flip it, rotate it, use it in landscape, and reach the edges of the screen and buttons – on just our non-dominant hand. We’ve never had trouble in fishing it out of our pockets and slipping it back in – even if you’re wearing a pair of jeans and sitting down. And you will barely feel its in there – it leaves no bulges on pockets, and we’ve caught ourselves wondering where it was sometimes when we couldn’t feel it on us.

 

The aluminum triangular design is a striking visual flair

 

Gorilla Glass dominates most of the front, and keeps the phone looking sleek and shiny. The bezels around the screen are kept at a minimum size so you won’t feel like you’re staring at a small screen surrounded by black borders. The aluminum chassis surrounds the phone top to bottom, and rounds the back in the triangular design that covers about 60% of the rear surface. The aluminum itself on the back has a textured groove that adds an aesthetic touch, but also adds extra grip over the smooth metal surface. The plastic bits that house the battery cover and camera module are recessed into the frame to prevent damage – with the aluminum acting as some sort of roll-bar and bumper.

 

Button ergonomics are great. There’s three capacitive buttons on the bottom – Back, Start, and Search. They’re sensitive and work without hitches or missed taps – in fact, we’d like to note that it can sometimes be too easy to hit the Bing Search button (bottom right) or Back button (bottom left) when typing or doing other touchscreen actions. We got used to it eventually – and for the most part hitting Back quickly fixes an accidental Bing Search tap – but for games, it will restore the game status and that may take some time. The power/lock button on the top is of the usual excellent HTC nature. Squeezing the phone with your index finger on the button does the trick more than having your index push it in.

 

The volume keys and USB charging port

 

The volume and camera keys on either side of the device are less wieldy. Being on the thin, tapered edges of the phone, there’s very little grip for your fingers and if you’re not used to it, will slip instead of pressing the button. This is more apparent on the volume keys as the groove on the aluminum securely puts it in the thinnest part of the phone. Resolving to hit the volume buttons while holding the phone in a portrait grip and using our right-hand’s index finger solved this problem. As for the camera button, we’ve managed to find the right way to grip it to take photos – but it is a little stiff on both stages of the key – which could lead to blurrier shots.

 

 

 

USER INTERFACE

 

 

The HTC 7 Mozart runs on the Windows Phone 7 mobile platform. It is a completely revamped system that got it’s visual touches from the Zune family of devices and the equally attractive Zune player for Windows. It’s a graphically intensive, fluidly animated interface built entirely for high resolution screens with 3D transitions, zoom, blur, cascade, notification popups, and various other visual flourishes. We were constantly wowed by seeing these visual transitions during our review process – and we’re pleased to say it never gets old either. If you want to see it for yourself, check out our video tour of the user interface here.

 

The phone has two main screens – the Live Tile grid-based screen (Start button) and if you swipe to the right, you get the full app list and settings menus in alphabetical order + icons. You scroll through them top to bottom and the end of scroll is signified by a nice squishing effect on the graphics. You can pin most of anything to include it on the Live Tile menu and some of them provide animated icons with information like the number of messages, calls, e-mails, the latest status updates of your pinned friends, the weather, and Marketplace updates. We weren’t able to check the limit of the items you can pin into this menu, but we’d gather that you’ll have enough. We did however, notice that even though you can pin just about everything – people, pictures, songs, apps, web bookmarks, and the like, we couldn’t pin the WiFi settings menu into the main screen – you needed to dig into the menus to disable/enable the WiFi antenna and/or to change WiFi hotspots. SIM services also don’t show up in the main menu or app list, so if you’re using SIMs with SIM services – like checking your prepaid balance – you’ll need to use other means – like remembering the right keywords for it and texting the specific number.

 

Messages are arranged in conversation view

 

For calling, texting, or e-mails, the interface works like a charm. The buttons on the dialer are well spaced and the in-call interface are simple and easy to use. When receiving calls, a picture of the caller is shown filling the screen – with simple Answer/Reject buttons or swipe prompt when the phone is locked. The on-screen keyboard is one of the most comfortable touch keyboards we’ve tried – its well spaced, accurate, with great feedback. We think the sounds the phone makes when you’re typing are the most pleasing keyboard feedback sounds we’ve heard on a mobile phone. There’s even a different sound for when you hit keys like the spacebar, shift, symbols, backspace or return – so you know exactly if you’ve pressed the right key. We found ourselves happily texting on this phone for hours without feeling tired or slowed down by the input methods. The keyboard is also flexible, as some applications have buttons underneath it and it will shift the keyboard up for an extra bar on the bottom. The landscape mode keyboard is also quite interesting, as it doesn’t spread out onto the wider sides of the screen – it stays relatively the same size in the middle of landscape, and the left and right sides of the screen are kept for vertical bars of icons. These bars usually have buttons for common tasks like pinning, bookmarking, sending, editing, and the like. If the icons seem unclear, pressing the (…) button slides the bar to reveal the description of the buttons and some extra hidden options.

 

The keyboard also comes in white – it’s normally black

 

As good as the messaging and typing goes, there are drawbacks to having the simple interface. There is no way to back up your messages for future reference – it is fixed on the phone so it either stays there or gets deleted. There are also no ways to make message drafts – so you either send the message, or discard it.

 

The People Hub – Contacts list

 

The contacts list is synced through your Windows Live, Facebook and Google account. We had most of our contacts on Google so we synced through that and it worked like a charm. We also added our Facebook account and it managed the linking process and image-relating automatically – and if the names are familiar, the interface will suggest if it thinks that the contact is the same person on the other account. This takes away the tedious step of scrolling through your entire list of contacts that don’t have the same names on your phone and on Facebook.

 

The People Hub – Recent Contacts

 

Speaking of scrolling through contacts, the People Hub doesn’t have a way to quickly scroll through them. You can kinetically scroll through your list, but you can’t grab the very small scroll bar on the right. You can, however tap on a letter index in between contact names – where an A-Z menu pops up – and point your way there. Still not as fast, since you might spend some time scrolling before you could chance upon a letter index to tap. The People Hub also has features that you can view if you swipe left and right. These show you recent Facebook updates, recently contacted people, and pictures they’ve uploaded. This seems to sync only when you run the Hub and won’t update in the background – so if you prefer to know what your friends are up to, you need to keep checking manually. The phone OS also doesn’t have a built-in feature for Twitter or Instant Messaging, so for now, you can tweet and IM through the web browser or a third party client. (Twitter will be implemented in the next update, Microsoft says.)

 

Reading a Word Document

 

Word, Excel and PowerPoint are supported via the Office Hub. You can make your own Word or Excel documents in a simplified interface, but it works well. You can only view or edit PowerPoint presentations but not make entirely new ones – which is just as well, because it doesn’t support all the transitions and features of the desktop version. It has to be noted though that the files aren’t saved in the device. It either needs to be opened as an e-mail attachment, downloaded via Microsoft’s document sharing services, or linked from the web.

 

Speaking of file management, there is none – a fundamental limitation of Windows Phone 7, and the Zune devices before it. Files can only be transferred into the device through the Windows-only Zune software – and it is limited to music, pictures, movies, and applications. You also can’t send or receive files through Bluetooth so cross-phone transfers are a no-go. But you could still e-mail the files as attachments.

 

Note: If you want to access your mass media on a Windows Phone 7 device, we’ve put together a USB spoof for you to access it without problems. The phone won’t recognize what you put in there – except if you put accepted files in their right directories – but if you needed extra storage or manual control over the files in your phone, this is an option for you. Disclaimer: We hold no responsibility over your device and its warranty if you so choose to do so.

 

For fans of customized ring tones and notification tones, it has limitations. You can’t just bring a file over to the device and assign it as a ring tone. You can, however assign specific built-in tones for specific contacts. We believe Microsoft will introduce custom ringtones for Windows Phone soon, but no announcements have been made.

 

Another disadvantage (or advantage, to some) of the interface is its lack of multitasking. This ensures that 100% of the processing power is left for the current task at hand, and should save on battery life. The downside here is that you can’t switch between running applications – so complex multi-application tasks are currently impossible. You can, however, use the back button to switch to your previously active application. Though switching out or locking the screen while playing a game can lead to it losing your game progress – or at best, take a bit of time to wake up from a saved state.

 

 

 

FEATURES

 

 

The web browser on the HTC 7 Mozart is a custom-built mobile version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. We’re happy to say that it is one of the best browsers we’ve had the privilege to use on a smartphone. It runs smoothly, zooms, pans, swipes, double-taps, and even squishes with nary a hint of lag. And you can do this even while the page is loading – a feat that other OSes have a hard time to match. You can watch our non-official browser test on our comparison video here. Like calling and texting, web browsing is clearly one of Windows Phone’s best features – even if it doesn’t have Flash or Silverlight support. We found that we wouldn’t hesitate to fire up the browser for even the smallest tasks because it runs quick and doesn’t keep us waiting for the page to load before being able to navigate.

 

Interface for the Marketplace

 

There is a Marketplace Hub to download apps and games for the platform, but there isn’t as many or as powerful applications on it as competing ecosystems. Games however, are well supported with Xbox live functionalities and big game franchises. Many of the apps aren’t free but can be played as a demo – so if you’re on an app budget, Windows Phone can be a little limiting.

 

Bing Maps – no detailed maps of the Philippines, sadly

 

For the most part, apps run on their own Hub type interfaces. Foursquare, Twitter, Facebook, and third-party Instant Messenger apps are available – though is limited in some way. Foursquare won’t locate you through WiFi or other positioning methods – you need to walk out in the open (it would help to run Bing Maps) and get a GPS lock. Twitter, Facebook and IM works, but without multitasking, they can only update or send/receive messages when the app is active. Facebook in particular, isn’t as snappy as the rest of the interface so it can be jarring – in the long run, we stuck to the People Hub’s Facebook feed.

 

HTC Hub, HTC Notes, HTC Photo Enhancer, and an HTC Flower app (for fun)

 

HTC provides you with its own set of productivity and entertainment apps to play with. Chief of which is the HTC Hub and Live Tile. The tile provides weather and other ambient information so we like to keep it pinned. Opening the Hub features more elaborate weather animations on more locations, as well as links to their other applications. Two more notable apps that you should get besides the ones above, are the HTC Attentive Phone and the HTC Sound Enhancer. The Attentive Phone app gives you the popular Sense ringing customizations like flip-to-silent, flip-to-speakerphone, pocket-ringing, and the like. While the Sound Enhancer gives you sound boosting options with SRS or Dolby presets.

 

Adobe PDF Reader – no text reflow, better use landscape

 

PDF support exists through the Adobe Reader app. You can view PDF from e-mails and webpages, though in a limited capacity. There is no text reflow and no bookmarking on the PDFs, but it works well enough for reading some pages when you need it.

 

Original Halo video was 1080p. Playing on native WP7 video player.

 

Videos are converted by the Zune software for your phone. So whatever format they are, as long as Zune can play them, will be converted to a WP7 playable video and saved onto the device. YouTube can also be played through the native player if you download the official YouTube app. The app itself only opens the mobile site for YouTube, but its important addition is you can now click on YouTube boxes on webpages and it will load the video onto the native player. If you just want to browse videos, HTC provides their own YouTube app with a great interface to browse with.

 

One of the few apps that can run on the background is the music application. The hub will take you through your music library with ways to search for your songs via Artist, Album, Genre, and the like. You can sync your library to the Zune software via WiFi, as well. The lock screen and notifications bar gets shortcuts for music controls when something is playing.

 

Xbox Live Hub and Extras, Katamari Damacy, and Need for Speed: Undercover

 

Xbox Live is the main method of video game entertainment for Windows Phone 7 devices – including full support for Achievements. They have a great assortment of titles for you to spend money on, but most games have demo versions for you to play around with. We tried the demo versions of Katamari Damacy and Need for Speed: Undercover. The former ran smooth and took the accelerometer inputs without a hint of lag, and the latter had full motion videos in addition to the great frame rates and one of the best tilt controlled racing responses we’ve tried on mobile phones.

 

One nice feature that you can turn on is the Phone Locating feature – should you lose your phone, you can find its GPS location, make it ring, or take necessary actions for securing your phone through the Windows Phone website.

 

Advanced users who want WiFi hotspot functionality might have to look elsewhere. (read: get a portable WiFi kit) The WP7 OS has no hotspot functionality of its own – probably because it can’t run it on the background yet.

 

Sample shots taken from the Mozart (Click for full res)

 

One of the HTC 7 Mozart’s selling points include the 8MP camera with Xenon flash. While it has 3 more megapixels than most Windows Phone devices, we feel that it doesn’t deliver the extra quality to really warrant the bump to 8 megapixels. Phone shots look nice, but show flaws when zoomed in. Focus isn’t fast, and there’s significant shutter lag. That’s not to say that people wouldn’t love to take pictures with it. The Xenon flash is great for social events and taking pictures of friends – as it does a much better job than LED flashes would. It’s not the best Xenon we’ve seen, but we like that its there. The camera interface offers some level of customization, but only goes beyond the basics – you get scene modes, flash modes, metering, and the like. Photos taken show up on the left side of the screen and can be reviewed by merely swiping to the right. It supports full pinch-zooming too – so you can scan and swipe through several past captures quickly.

 

Tapping a button switches the camera to video mode. The Mozart can take up to 720p video at 25fps – and it even has continuous autofocus while recording. The video interface though, is a lot more simple and only offers minimal customization. Plus, every time you exit the app, the settings revert to SD video – you must always remember to switch it back to 720p just before recording. We’ve included a sample video clip below. Quality is jumpy, and there’s wind noise, but we like the autofocus during video recording – and the frame rates aren’t the worst we’ve seen.

 

 

 

 

PERFORMANCE & HARDWARE

 

Performance on the HTC 7 Mozart is top notch. Boot-up is quick and doesn’t straddle you with extra loading lag when the interface starts. 100% of the CPU is used on the current active application and thus there are no problems with stutters or lag. We’ve experienced no memory errors – though some third-party apps can crash the phone at times, especially on resuming states from lock. Games run smoothly with little to no signs of dropped frames and controls are some of the most responsive that we’ve tried on mobile phones. The phone has 8GB of storage built-in, and no MicroSD slot. Since we’re not big multimedia consumers on our mobiles, we think 8GB is more than enough to store the occasional movies and music that we’d like to have on the device. Call audio quality is one of the best ones we’ve heard thus far. We heard the voices from the earpiece loud and clear – we guess the larger speaker grille helps. Callers on the line also remarked that they could hear us clearly from their end without hisses or noise. The phone has WiFI up to 802.11n and the range has been decent for us – gets us slightly farther and better quality WiFi than our b/g devices.

 

 

Our Sunlight legibility shot

 

The Mozart uses an SLCD capacitive touchscreen display at 800×480 resolution. When the brightness is set to full, or the room is dark, you’ll notice that blacks are dark gray – a normal attribute of LCD systems. That said, HTC’s SLCDs have improved drastically since they’ve adopted them last year – the screen looks great and the colors don’t fade when viewing from acute angles. Rest assured you can safely show your friends pictures, websites, videos, and games without them needing to strain their eyes from bad LCD viewing angles. Sunlight legibility is ok, but only to what you would expect. You’ll need to bring the phone to a shade to be able to use it more effectively.

 

Battery life lasts a little shorter than we’re used to on smartphones of this caliber, especially on a 3.7” screened device. It would last approximately 12-14 hours on us before it gets too low. We’re not sure if this is because the review unit has been used before and no longer have a brand new battery, or if it is just the norm. Either way, we found ourselves needing to top up faster than what we were used to. It’s a small inconvenience, so consider a portable USB charging unit if you’re planning a longer day.

 

Sub-section: NoDo Update

 

 

During our time with the Mozart, we were fortunate enough to catch the NoDo update for Windows Phones shortly before we needed to return the device. We quickly fired up our Zune software and gave our Mozart the first ever firmware update for Windows Phones. NoDo is said to bring Copy/Paste functionality and performance tweaks to the OS – chief of which are much faster game load times.

 

We found that Copy & Paste is implemented well into the new system. Holding down your finger allows you to select blocks of text, then gives you the options for cut, copy, and paste. It works well and doesn’t seem out of place on the device.

 

The largest improvement we found was with game load times. With the NoDo update, games loaded 2x+ faster than they did before. It was a lot more easier to jump into quick gaming sessions when you didn’t have to spend a bunch of time waiting for the loading screens to finish.

 

 

 

CONCLUSION

 

The HTC 7 Mozart feels right at home in a classy atmosphere

 

If we had two words to describe the HTC 7 Mozart and its Windows Phone 7 experience, it would be, “Production Values,” – it stays extremely high on every turn. Everything from the fluid transitions, the high resolution interface, fast browser, animations, Hub pages, and Live Tiles on the software gives it a highly polished, attractive style that we love to keep coming back to. Its physical design is something we’d gladly call sexy – the thin aluminum body provides the right curves to give it wide-ranging appeal, and there’s a decent toughness, heft, and feel to the device when held in your hands. The design flair is such that we’d feel like placing the device underneath a silicon case for protection does the device a disservice – but we know it is the popular method for most users when adding extra protection.

 

The Mozart excels best when put to use on the most basic of smartphone tasks – calling, texting and web browsing. They’ve managed to streamline this process so well that we’d like to think its become an art form. You will not find any device that can handle these three tasks more quickly, attractively, and fluidly than the Mozart’s Windows Phone OS. For advanced users, the feature set can become a little limited. The Windows Phone OS doesn’t allow the extra level of customizability, multitasking, and even app depth to provide more compelling experiences for people that absolutely need more than just quick, common mobile tasks. Certain limitations like the lack of message backup features, background sync apps, Twitter support, IM support, customizable ringtones, and WiFi hotspot functionalities might deter potential buyers.

 

Overall, we like the phone as it is. Catering to a more advanced userbase will require sacrificing more positives than it would gain. Complex menus, multitasking problems, system crashes and incompatibilities are tedious and we love that they’re not prominent on the Windows Phone 7 OS. We like its fast boot-up, simple, quick, fluid interface, great keyboard, and top notch web browsing. The Mozart brings back the joy of device simplicity without sacrificing too much in customizability. What it lacks in advanced features, it more than makes up for in sheer enjoyment in use. Even as we’re more technologically-inclined here in The Technoclast, we wouldn’t mind using the Mozart as our primary device solely for the reason that we found ourselves enjoying it too damn much.

 

 

We give the HTC 7 Mozart 4.5/5 Stars.

 

 

 

HTC GOODIES CONTEST

 

The Windows Phone 7 Jacket

 

If you’re still with us after that lengthy read, then you’re in for a treat. We’re giving away two bags of HTC goodies for our small contest. Our main prize will be a sweet black XXL Windows Phone 7 Hoodie jacket that we would actually love to keep for ourselves – but it wasn’t in our size. Our second prize is a a sweet metal 4GB USB drive that looks as classy as the Mozart itself. Each prize will come in an HTC bag with HTC colored pens + any other HTC goodies we can find.

 

 
HTC Colored Pens and HTC USB Key

 

Joining the contest is pretty simple. First, make sure you “Like” us on Facebook. (Here is our FB page if you need to do that now.) Then on the comment area below this article, you will find the Facebook Like button for this article and Facebook comment system. All you need to do is click “Like” on this article below, then write a Facebook comment down there as well. The content of your comment should be based on the review. Tell us – after reading the review (or some parts of it) – what you like, or don’t like about the HTC 7 Mozart or Windows Phone 7. The best comment – positive or negative, we don’t care – will win the sweet Windows Phone 7 jacket, while the HTC USB key will be awarded in random – so everybody has a great chance of winning something!

 

But we’re not done yet! As a means to apologize for the delay in our review article (we’ve had a catastrophic HDD crash in the past weeks), we’d like to add an entirely new prize and mechanic for this contest. We’d like to know if our detailed style of reviewing – the long article like this one above – is something you like, or you prefer shorter, more simplified reviews. Just tell us in the same comment you wrote for the contest entries above if you like it longer/detailed or shorter/simpler. All input from this will be entered onto another contest where you could win another goodie bag. We’ll fill this with random items of different brands of tech and/or non-tech related, but we’ll make sure it is filled with good stuff! (We’d gather we’d put about 3-5 items in this bag.)

 

That brings us to a total of 3 prizes to improve your chances! (You can’t win more than once though – to let everybody have a chance.) This is open to residents of the Philippines only – and we’ll notify you via our Facebook page who wins. We’ll set the deadline for entries to two weeks from now May 12, and we’ll pick our winners the next day. We wish you guys the best of luck! That’s all! Hope you guys enjoyed reading the review and we hope you like our little contest!

 

P.S.: For our PXB friends, you’re also eligible for a “secret” prize draw! Just add “PXB FTW!” in your comment somewhere and you’ll be entered for it. We’ll double check if you’re really PXB members so you’ll need to be completely legit. No fake entries! PXB FTW!

 

DISCLAIMER: As a disclaimer, we wish to say that we are not affiliated with HTC/Microsoft and they do not pay us to write about these products nor do they reward us for promoting it. (In fact, we’re probably misrepresenting them if we don’t add these disclaimers.) That said, we just wanted to give away the related promotional materials and thought that it would work best if the product related to the prizes was involved.

 

 
Big thanks to Bialetti Caffe for letting us take pictures!

 

Bialetti Caffe

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Location: 44 Matino St. cor. Matahimik St., Bgy. Malaya, Quezon City, 1101 Quezon City, Philippines
Hours: Mon – Thurs: 8:00 am-12:00 am; Fri – Sat: 9:00 am-1:00 am
Parking: Ample Street Parking
Attire: Casual
Payment Options: Cash / Card
Services: Walk-Ins Welcome, Good For Groups, Good For Kids, Take Out, Outdoor Seating
Specialties: Coffee, Drinks
Phone: (02) 3557027
Facebook: Bialetti Caffe
WiFi: Free and speedy!

 

Another shot of the Windows Phone Jacket for our Facebook Like thumbnail