HTC Snap (Alltel) – with HTC Inner Circle

For:

This phone offers world roaming capabilities and also has HTC’s Inner Circle feature. The phone is sleek, with comfortable QWERTY keyboard and features like Gps, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. Call quality is superb.

Against:

No support for overseas 3G bands, speakerphone quality could have been better

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

HTC Snap is 2.4 inches wide, 0.5 inch deep, 4.6 oz high and weighs around 4.2 oz. The phone is based on WCDMA (UMTS)/GSM bands with support for WCDMA (UMTS) / GSM 850/900/1800/1900 band. The handset has a candy bar design. Some other features include vibrating alert, call timer, call conference capablity, speakerphone, voice recorder, and polyphonic ringer. For phone navigation there is trackball. Wireless interface options include IEEE 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 2.0 EDR

The OS is Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard. The Messaging & data services include Mobile Email, GPRS (General Packet Radio Service), EDGE (Enhanced Data Rates For Global Evolution), Internet Browser, JAVA applications, HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access). The phone has a two megapixel camera with automatic focus adjustment. Camera Light Source is flash and the camera also records videos. GPS System features include GPS Navigation, GPS receiver. Organizer features are Alarm Clock, Calendar, Reminder, Calculator.

The display is 2.4 inches with resolution of 320×240 pixels. Supported audio formats are AMR, AAC, QCP, MP3, WMA, WAV, AAC+, MIDI , eAAC+. There is one connector – Data port – 11 pin HTC ExtUSB. The phone runs on 1500 mAh lithium ion battery with 510 minutes rated talk time and 480 hours standby time

Razzle Dazzle: Alltel’s HTC Snap looks quite similar to the Verizon sibling. There are a few differences like inclusion of Inner Circle key on the keyboard, battery cover, and different navigation array.

Inside Dope:

Alltel is the latest carrier to get HTC Snap. This handset is available from a lot of other service providers like Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile. This phone is message centric and it also has the HTC Inner Circle feature which lets you prioritize your e-mail with just a button press. This handset also offers dual mode functionality along with world roaming capabilities. Looking at the price, we would recommend this phone as a nice alternative to BlackBerry phones from the same service provider. This phone is yours for $79.99 and you have to sign a one year service agreement after a $70 mail in rebate. Compare this to Alltel BlackBerry 8830 which costs $249.99. The manufacturer gives this phone with reference manual, software disc, audio adapter, USB cord, wired stereo headset, power adapter, and 4 international adapters. This phone has a good QWERTY keyboard and our fingers didn’t feel any fatigue even after we typed on it for a lot of time. Other features worth mentioning here are GPS, Bluetooth, and Wi-Fi.

Messaging

This is the most important feature of HTC Snap. We will start with the voice features first. This handset offers dual mode international roaming functionality just like the Ozone. The dual mode technology means the phone is compatible with both GSM and CDMA bands. In the US, the phone uses the CDMA network and if you are flying out, the Snap will use the GSM network with the SIM card slot. You can both receive and make calls when you are overseas. The only disappointment here is that the phone doesn’t support international 3G bands so all you get is EDGE. There is Wi-Fi too. HTC Snap has support for IMAP and POP3 accounts along with Microsoft Direct Push Technology for delivering your e-mail in real time and it automatic synchronizes with your Outlook calendar, contacts, and tasks through Exchange Server

Features

Some of the phone features include multimedia and text messaging, conference calling, speed dial, speakerphone, and smart dialing. Alltell has a My Circle plan which lets you make up to 25 groups and gives unlimited calling facility. There is no limit to the entries in phone book and a single entry can take in multiple phone numbers, IM handles, birthdays, and e-mail addresses. You can attach a picture to a contact and also make groups of your friends. The Bluetooth on the HTC Snap supports stereo and mono Bluetooth headsets, personal area networking, hands free kits, file transfer, object push, video/audio remote control, etc.

This phone shares a lot of features with HTC Ozone from Verizon like two megapixel camera, Windows Mobile 6.1, 256 MB internal memory with external card slot and GPS/A-GPS. There are another set of services from the Alltel like Alltel Navigation for voice-guided directions, Alltel Pocket Express and RealTone JukeBox for ringtones. For more, visit the Alltel shop.

Inner Circle

This is the last button on the HTC Snap keyboard’s bottom row. Pressing it will give you a preselected group of people’s e-mails in the top of your inbox. This lets you prioritize your e-mails. Setting it up is really easy. All you have to do is press the Inner Circle button and you will get your contacts list for including them on the Inner Circle. This will be boring if you have a huge contacts list but HTC gives you a search feature which will save a lot of time. Though there is no limit to the number of contacts in the Inner Circle feature, we wouldn’t recommend you to put too many since you will lose the benefit of having this feature in the first place. We did try this in our labs and it worked quite well. We as reviewers gets lots of PR and advertisement stuff in our inbox. Filtering all this mail was really easy.

Call Quality

We finally tested the HTC Snap for call quality and it was really good. The voices sounded rich and there was no background noise to disturb us. On their side, our friends too were impressed with the sound quality. Speakerphone quality is not that good though, our friends sounded as if they were far away from the phone and their voices too were a bit harsh. This is not a deal breaker but we were expecting better after looking at the microphone call quality. Next, we paired this phone up with some Bluetooth headsets and the pairing up was quick.

Verdict:

We would recommend this device to Alltel customers looking for an affordable message centric smartphones. This is a good less expensive alternative to the BlackBerry phones from Alltel