HTC Trophy Hands-On Review

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Windows Phone 7 was introduced last year and has garnered a lot of interest from all corners of the industry, including carriers, manufacturers, the media and the public. After the short-lived debacle when it was announced that Microsoft would not be offering Windows Phone 7 support for CDMA networks (Verizon and Sprint) at launch, we finally have the first Windows Phone 7 device on Verizon’s network – the HTC Trophy. Is this phone a trophy worth taking home, or should you leave this one behind? Can Windows Phone 7 compete against the established Android OS and the iPhone? We’ve spent time using the phone, and we’ll tell you how it stacks up.

The HTC Trophy is a smaller phone, as far as modern smartphones go these days. It isn’t a 4.0- or 4.3-inch monstrosity like the newer Android devices, but it’s got an 3.8-inch screen that is bigger than the iPhone’s screen, meaning it will be an improvement for many folks.

The device is a typical HTC design. It’s slender and thin, and the shape and styling of it remind of me of the (also HTC manufactured) Droid Incredible 2 which I reviewed recently. It is heavier than the Droid Incredible 2, but still is a fairly light phone. Those who don’t want a bulky phone will be happy with the HTC Trophy as its fair small and sleek.

That 3.8-inch screen is not a retina display like on the iPhone or an OLED display, but it does appear to be a “Super LCD” display, which in many people’s opinion, is just as good as OLED in terms of sharpness and quality of the colors. You’ll be satisfied with the quality of the Trophy’s display, especially if coming from a “dumbphone”.

The Trophy uses soft keys for the three guide buttons on the bottom of the screen (back, home and search). On the edges of the device, it’s rather simplified, with just a volume control switch as well as a hard shutter button for the camera. A microUSB port is also included for charging and data transfer. Although some techno nerds may be disappointed by the lack of HDMI, or extra programmable buttons, we liked the lack of clutter on the edges of the device. There’s also a headphone jack on the top of the device.

As industry watchers will know, Microsoft had previously offered “Windows Mobile” for mobile devices. Windows Mobile was old and aging, and came from the pre-iPhone era when smartphones used hard keyboards and styluses. Last year, Microsoft (in a move they were praised for almost universally) proverbially took Windows Mobile 6.5 out behind the woodshed and came out with an all new (and rebranded) Windows Phone 7. So, how is it?

Microsoft (a company which often catches flak for copying innovations made by Mac OS X to their Windows desktop OS), deserves credit for an original UI. Rather than going with the “grid of icons on a homescreen” approach that the iPhone and Android devices use, they went with a different sort of tiled approach. Some may argue that you’re still basically hitting icons on a gird of sorts, but that grid with the different tiles and the way you use it is different enough in that it should be celebrated.

If you like the heavy customization afforded by Android, you won’t like Windows Phone 7. There are no widgets, and customizing the look of the UI and tiles is limited. The on-screen keyboard is not very good, and is less responsive compared to the screen keyboards of Android, iOS and other phones. Because of that, I cannot recommend this phone to heavy text messagers who are used to tapping out 100 words per minute on another phone.

Windows Phone 7 has an extremely heavy focus on social networking. To enjoy the HTC Trophy, you should connect your Facebook or Twitter account to the device. You’ll the phone and its tiles fill up with pictures of your friends. It will fill your contacts list with your Facebook friends (you can turn this off) and the status updates of your pals will be close to their phone numbers. If you want a general overview, you can go to a “What’s New” page and get a general feed from everybody. An app called “Me” lets you easy push out Tweets and Facebook updates to friends.

For people coming to smartphones from “dumbphones”, I think this is one of the most innovative approaches to social networking yet, as social networking is closely tied into software itself. There were some rumors about the “Facebook Phone” and HTC has released two Android devices with dedicated Facebook buttons that take you right to the Facebook app on those devices. But, in many ways, the HTC Trophy and Windows Phone 7 devices already are the Facebook phone in that the popular social network can be so closely integrated into the phone if you want.

Without the social networking stuff, the HTC Trophy and Windows Phone 7 is, quite frankly, boring. The pre-installed applications, like email, are terrible. This phone was clearly designed for use with Microsoft’s Hotmail. While it lets you connect a Gmail account, it doesn’t thread the email conversations like Gmail, so your Gmail account is a jumbled mess. If you’re coming from a corporate email account, or a Hotmail or Yahoo account, you won’t notice a difference. But the email application on this phone is so poorly designed that Gmail users (whether it be on the iPhone, computer, Android device or whatnot) will find it borderline unusable.

The design of the App Marketplace is fantastic. A common complaint of the Android Market is that it’s hard to ‘discover’ apps you didn’t know you were looking for (like the iOS App Store), and it’s easy to see new and upcoming apps in this Marketplace. It’s beautifully designed. Taking some cues from Microsoft’s Bing search engine, it has a simple UI with great imagery.

As for the apps themselves, there is an above average selection. It doesn’t have the quality and quantity that the iOS App Store and Android Market have, but it is good, particularly for a new operating system, and it is more complete than the BlackBerry App World and Palm App Catalog. Still, it isn’t complete and if you choose to use the HTC Trophy (or any Windows Phone 7 device) without the social networking integration, you may find the phone boring, as mentioned.

I was pleasantly surprised by the picture qualify of the HTC Trophy’s camera. The tech specs on the device list a 5-megapixel camera, so I wasn’t expecting anything particularly great. Yet the camera can capture particularly good color and depth. It’s a notch or two above your average smartphone camera.  Check out our sample shots below and compare them to my controls (the Canon PowerShot G12 and the original Motorola Droid X.)

The HTC Trophy has great battery life. Even with additional radios on like WiFi and GPS (that usually drain battery life), I think you’ll be satisfied with the battery life on the Trophy, if that’s a major concern for you.

At the time of this writing, Verizon is asking $150 for the HTC Trophy with a two-year contract, or $430 for the device without a contract (“Full Retail”). Ultimately, it’s up to the consumer to decide if the value proposition is right, but it’s this reviewer’s opinion that both of these prices are very attractive for the device you’ll be getting, especially when compared to the Android/iPhone alternatives.

You may have noticed that this reviews as much a review on Windows Phone 7 as it was a review on the HTC Trophy itself, which I think is warranted considering this is the first Windows Phone 7 device on Verizon’s network. The HTC Trophy itself is a quality device, with a slender size, nice screen, excellent battery life and surprising camera.

What the hardware lacks is 4G connectivity. Verizon’s 4G LTE network is quickly covering most of the United States, and soon there won’t be an excuse not to have a 4G phone. Buying a HTC Trophy now and committing to 3G for another two years may be a mistake. One advantage to 3G phones now is that all current 4G phones have to have both 3G and 4G baseband chips, because there is no bimodal baseband chips yet. What that means in English is that all 4G phones on Verizon currently are thicker and heavier than their 4G counterparts, and they’re a bit more battery hungry. If you want a thin, battery-friendly phone and don’t mind the lack of 4G, then the HTC Trophy is a fair choice.

As for the software, that depends on the user. The software’s only distinction from iOS and Android is its near-flawless integration of social network (and who are we kidding here, we’re talking about Facebook). Without the Facebook connectivity, the Windows Phone 7 experience is a little empty, and dull.

Our bottom line, if you’re a heavy Facebook/Twitter user who doesn’t care about the bad on-screen keyboard or lack of 4G, then the HTC Trophy is the phone for you. If you aren’t attached to the hip with your Facebook account, or you want a phone with a near limitless app selection, then there are other phones out there for you.

Dislcaimer: Verizon Wireless provided us with a loaner phone to use for our review.