The HTC Radar initially leaked as the Omega was revealed officially back in September along with the HTC Titan as HTC’s first wave of Windows Phone Mango smartphones and is the first smartphone in the US to be released with Windows Phone Mango. The HTC Radar is sort of an updated HTC Trophy packing the same 1GHz clock speed, 3.8-inch Super LCD screen, RAM, memory and 5MP camera resolution. The main difference is the addition of a VGA front facing camera support of which was freshly added in Mango. So how good is HTC’s latest Mango packed offering? Full review is below.
Box
The HTC Radar comes inside a very compact white box which contains only a microUSB cable and wallcharger along with the phone, yes there are no earphones packed with the phone but you might have some extra ones lying around which you can connect to the Radar’s 3.5mm headphone jack. Warranty information and the standard instruction booklets are also present.
Specifications
The HTC Radar features the following specifications:
* 3.8″ 16M-color capacitive WVGA Super LCD
* Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
* Dual-band 3G with HSDPA (7.2 Mbps) and HSUPA (2Mbps)
* Windows Phone 7 (Mango) OS
* 1GHz Scorpion CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, Snapdragon chipset
* 512MB RAM
* 5 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash with geotagging, panorama and burst shots
* 720p video recording @ 30fps
* 8GB of built-in storage
* Standard 3.5mm audio jack
* Standard microUSB port (charging)
* Dolby Mobile and SRS sound enhancement
* Wi-Fi b/g/n
* Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP
* Accelerometer for screen auto rotation
* Office document editor
* Facebook integration and cloud services
* Built-in A-GPS receiver
* Stereo FM Radio with RDS
* Comes with HTC Hub and other exclusive HTC apps
Hardware
The HTC Radar is not a hardware powerhouse as you might have expected from a second generation Windows Phone device, thankfully Windows Phone is much more hardware optimized unlike Android so you don’t need dual core processors to have a smooth experience. In fact the HTC Radar’s specifications are pretty much the same as HTC’s first generation Windows Phone handsets featuring a 1GHz Snapdragon MSM8255 and Adreno 205 GPU with 512MB of RAM along with 8GB of storage which unfortunately is not expandable with a memory card. HTC’s latest offering packs a 3.8-inch Super LCD which looks very good with Windows Phone’s minimalistic UI, the display run at the Windows Phone standard 480×800 resolution and supports four point multitouch.
The back camera houses a 5MP shooter with LED flash which takes very good pictures, there’s also a VGA camera on the front which is pretty much useless right now since there is no video calling application available for Windows Phone at the moment. Other features include the usual WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1, A-GPS, standard microUSB port, 1520mAh battery and the aforementioned 3.5mm jack but unfortunately there is no Digital Compass without which you cannot use applications like Navigon.
The HTC Radar measures in at 61.5 x 120.5 x 10.9 and weighs about 137 grams. The HTC Radar comes in two different colors, Active White which we have here and Metal Silver. The Radar has an Aluminum Unibody design much like many of the other HTC phones, unlike the others though the Radar’s battery is not removable.
On the left side of the phone we have just the microUSB connector, I don’t know about you guys but I prefer having my connectors on either the top or bottom of the phone, having them on the side just feels… awkward. On the right side we have the volume rocker and camera button which are comfortable to press. The top of the phone house the usual 3.5mm headphone jack and power button.
At the bottom of the phone we have a white rubber cover which houses the SIM card, the cover has been reported to be inconsistent in some units and doesn’t fit perfectly (shown in image below) so you may want to test the phone before buying. The back cover when removed shuts the phone off which ensures that the SIM is safely removed. The upper back of the phone has the 5MP camera and LED flash along with the speakers which are pretty decent to say the least.
The camera has impress me a whole lot, HTC is famed for coupling sub-par cameras with their devices but that’s definitely not the case here. The camera’s f2.2 aperture lens and brand new illuminated sensor makes this one of the better camera phones in the market although there is still room for improvements. The camera records at a resolution of 1280 x 720 at a super smooth 30fps and the quality is pretty decent so we’re pretty impressed.
Software
We’re reviewing a carrier unlocked HTC Radar so there is no carrier bloatware at all but yours may vary. HTC itself installs a couple of applications including HTC Hub, HTC Watch, Notes and Photo Enhancer. There is also a DLNA app called Connected Media which I found pretty helpful, do note that the app will only play videos from your media servers who’s codecs it supports. The camera includes two new options namely Burst Shot and Panoramic Shot.
Now onto something which impressed me a whole lot and that is the battery life. I had a hands-on experience with the phone almost a month ago at Mobilink’s HTC Radar launch event where Brightex head Naeem Tabish informed us that the phone lasted him around two days, he was not lying. On heavy use our Radar survived for around 30 hours which included WiFi always on, gaming, downloading applications, browsing, listening to music and watching videos. We then tried out the handy battery saver application which made the phone last for a whooping 45 hours!
Conclusion
The HTC Radar can be defined in one word: brilliant. HTC has created a great mid range smartphone which will definitely be turning heads. The phone is in no way perfect though; the flash memory is limited to just 8GB and not expandable, the battery is not removable and the camera is limited to 5MP which in this day and age is considered average but if you’re not a power user this shouldn’t affect you at all. If you are a power user then you should grab one of those newer Android phones with ridiculous hardware, Windows Phone is for people who just want to get the job done.
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