The HTC Rhyme, codenamed the Bliss, is the first phone to come with HTC’s newest Android skin – HTC Sense 3.5. It’s also the first HTC phone to be dubbed a ladies phone, packing pretty average hardware which will surely turn off the hardware geeks but might prove to be more than enough for a modern woman. The Rhyme also comes with matching accessories, the most interesting of which is a charm. A Charm is kind of hard to explain, it’s a small box with an LED inside connected to the phone via its 3.5mm headphone jack. Its main use is to notify the user of any notifications, this comes in real handy if you carry your phone inside a bag.
Unboxing
Box
The HTC Rhyme come in a moderately sized box which contains the phone itself, a desktop dock, tangle free earphones, AC Power adapter with a removable USB cable, 8GB microSD card and the aforementioned charm itself along with the standard instruction manuals and warranty information.
Specifications
- Quad-band GSM and tri-band 3G support (Also available in CDMA)
- 14.4 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
- 3.7″ 16M-color capacitive S-LCD touchscreen of WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels)
- Android OS v2.3.5 Gingerbread with HTC Sense 3.5
- 1 GHz single Scorpion CPUs, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 chipset
- 768 MB RAM; 4 GB Internal storage
- microSD card slot (class 4 8GB card in the bundle)
- 5 MP autofocus camera with single LED flash; face detection, geotagging, HDR mode, image auto-upload
- 720p video recording @ 30fps and slo-mo videos (2x at WVGA)
- Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA
- GPS with A-GPS
- Stereo FM radio with RDS
- Accelerometer, proximity and ambient light sensor
- Front facing camera, video call
- Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
- microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v3.0
Hardware
The HTC Rhyme is no Galaxy Nexus or iPhone 4S, it’s meant for a more budget and feminine market so such powerful hardware won’t do a lot of good. The Rhyme runs on a single core 1 GHz Scorpion processor, Andreno 205 GPU and 768MB of RAM. It’s available in both CDMA and GSM but not in a two in one Global phone variant. The Rhyme sports a 3.7-inch S-LCD which has impressed me a whole lot, even though the resolution is kind of low, HTC has definitely done some work which makes the screen super sharp with almost no pixelation at all. The viewing angles are decent and you can very well make out the screen in bright daylight so I don’t really have any complaints.
The phone comes with an 8GB microSD card which makes the total storage 12GB (with 4GB of internal storage). The 5MP camera on the back is pretty decent for taking photos in daylight, in moderately dark situations though the pictures start to lose quality. The camera records videos in 720p at 30fps and in slow motion at 2x WVGA. Video quality is pretty mediocre and could definitely be better.
The Speaker is placed right beside the back camera on the Rhyme which produces moderately loud sounds; although you won’t be able to hear your phone if it’s inside a bag, one of the reasons you should always carry the charm with you.
Design
The HTC Rhyme has a pretty standard HTC design with a non removable battery, a trend they started with the HTC Radar. It measures in at around 119 x 60.8 x 10.9 mm and weighs 130 g which makes it a very compact and handy phone. The front is dominated by the beautiful 3.7-inch WVGA display with the standard Android four capacitive button layout below. There’s also a VGA camera for video calls and self photo shoots on the top right corner of the phone. On the back we have the 5MP camera, LED flash and speaker on top, with the HTC logo engraved on a silver strip which cuts off right above the removable battery cover. There’s also a trio of electrical connectors right below the camera used to connect the phone with the desktop dock. Under the battery cover you can find the microSD and SIM card slots above the 1600mAh battery.
The right side of the phone sports the volume button while the left side holds the microUSB protected by a rubber cover, unfortunately there’s no dedicated camera button. On the top of the phone there’s the 3.5mm jack and lock/unlock button. On the bottom of the phone you can find the sole mic.
Overall the phone looks exceptionally good, the build is solid and feels very good in the hands. Consider me impressed.
Video Sample
Still Photo Samples (Click To Enhance)
Software
The HTC Rhyme runs on Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread and is the first phone to come with HTC’s propriety skin – Sense 3.5 as we mentioned at the start of the review. It’s a minor update to Sense 3.0 which came with the HTC Sensation. HTC has greatly optimized 3.5 as compared to 3.0 which lagged even on dual core phones.
Sense 3.5 on the Rhyme has a newer look as compared to 3.0. The wheel on the bottom is now gone and is replaced by a menu and phone button on the homescreen, it’s still present on the lockscreen though. New widgets have been added along with old ones being updated. Sense 3.0 lagged a lot, this is where 3.5 shines the best – navigating Android on the Rhyme is smooth and there’s almost no lag at all. There’s also a new color scheme replacing the usual black in the menus and app drawer, which if you think about it should have been done a long time ago.
Battery life on the Rhyme is excellent, the 1600 mAh battery lasted me over 34 hours with moderately heavy browsing, gaming and watching videos.
You can also sign up for HTC Sense to get more wallpapers, themes and other neat stuff for your phone. The HTC Rhyme unfortunately doesn’t come with Beats by Dr. Dre but the Sense music player is pretty good, it even comes with a full blown equalizer which results in audio just the way you like it. Overall using Sense 3.5 was a wonderful experience, although TouchWiz is still my favorite Android Skin ,HTC’s latest effort comes in at a very close second. HTC has in short, has fixed everything which was wrong with Sense 3.0.
Performance
As I mentioned before the HTC Rhyme is a very smooth phone, I faced almost no lag whatsoever while using the phone so consider the performance excellent. It scored pretty well in the benchmarks too, in AnTuTu the Rhyme scored an impressive 2709. In CF Bench it did 3935 which is a bit off the previous vanilla Android flagship – Nexus S. The phone scored 1695 in Quadrant which is 400 points more than the Nexus One, which is also running a 1 GHz single processor.
Conclusion
The HTC Rhyme is a very good phone with beautiful hardware and HTC’s best attempt at a propriety Android skin. Initially though of as a lady’s only phone the Rhyme handled me pretty well. If you’re looking for a good looking mid range Android smartphone and do not plan to do major multitasking and gaming, then the HTC Rhyme could be the phone for you.
TechDeville awards the HTC Rhyme 4/5 stars.
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