Windows MANGO
A breath of fresh air in today’s world of BlackBerries, androids and iPhones. A tile-based menu aimed at making everything you do on a phone so simple that you don’t even think twice. The OS does a great job of linking together all your various social profiles with your email and phone contacts, you can find ALL your contacts under one section called people. The phone also makes multitasking very simple, you can press the menu key to go back to the home screens at any time, while holding down the back key brings up all open windows and you can easily switch between them. Windows Mango also features Xbox Live integration, a big plus for XBL players. You can access and play Xbox live mobile games with great ease. Another important aspect is the app support. Though many claim the windows phone OS has very poor app support, it pretty much has what most people need. Sure it doesn’t have a billion apps like the iOS AppStore or android marketplace, but it has the basics. The radar also features HTC’s own apps like HTC hub, where you can access stocks, weather and news... all in one place.
The Build
The Radar features a beautiful full metal unibody design. Easily one of the more elegant handsets available today. The phone has only three physical buttons; the lock/power off key, the volume controls and the dedicated camera button. There are three more capacitive touch screen buttons for navigating through the phone.
Specs and Performance
Though the display is LCD, it’s still pretty good with vibrant colours, and sharp images. The specs claim that the Radar comes with Gorilla glass (scratch resistant), however it doesn’t seem too scratch resistant. Let’s move to the cameras now. The radar packs two cameras, a five mp back camera with a single LED flash and a three mp front camera. Though only five mp, the camera works great for phone photography. The video recording quality, however, is very average, and this coupled with poor speakers is a real low point for an otherwise good phone. The speakers at full volume seem to be pushed over the limit as sound quality is very poor. Moving on to other performance aspects, the 512 RAM and one ghz processor are what really hold it back. While the OS runs smoothly and moving around the menus is great, the problems kick in when you launch apps and games. Occasional pauses and the screen jumping really hampers user experience.
Verdict
While the HTC Radar comes with a great new OS and looks absolutely stunning, it fails to leave a lasting impression. The processor is slower than other mid-ranged Windows Mango handsets and the poor app/game performance really is a phone killer. There is a fine line between good and great and the Radar falls short. The hardware and performance do not justify the 24k asking price, however if you are looking for a great looking phone that performs well enough, the HTC Radar is the perfect phone for you.
PROS
An absolutely beautiful phone, Windows Mango is a brilliant and simple OS. It is also very comfortable to hold and use.
CONS
The phone has poor sound quality. Its slower processor really hurts performance, especially with third party apps and games. Moreover, non-expandable eight GB storage also acts as a negative trait.
