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The first thought that entered my mind on seeing the O2 HD Mini was that is is truly miniature in size. After using the HD2 and the Desire the Mini really appears minute in comparison. It nestles in the palm and feels really really small, with no doubt the feeling being enhanced by the rubberised outer covering which surrounds the main metallic chassis.
This housing constructed of heavy plastic should serve well to protect the Mini from hard knocks and dare I say being dropped on the occasional floor. It covers the Mini completely top, bottom, sides, and back and then reduces in thickness towards the front which of course it leaves open for the screen to be displayed.
The covering is so complete that the second thought is how on earth does one get into the machine to insert the SIM card. The only openings are to allow the power button (top right), volume rocker (upper side left), and micro-USB slot / tube (bottom) to protrude through it, as well as piercings for the 3.5mm audio jack (top left), camera (upper rear back), and some screw-like column fixings.
The matter of removing the housing was solved after a few seconds thought, and the removal is accomplished by pressing down on the screw-like columns that protrude through the back of the device. Putting pressure on the two at the rear top of the casing allows it to be popped off in seconds. This locking method requires some force to be applied so it is very unlikely that anything else apart from a determined pair of thumbs will cause the back to be removed.
Third thoughts..... oh WOW that yellow inner cover is bright, as once the back cover has been removed you can see the canary yellow inside that HTC have engineered. A bit bright for my taste, but well it does look kind of impressive. The battery was removed via the insertion of a fingernail and both the Micro SD and SIM card inserted, the battery place back in and the cover re-affixed. A press of the power button and the Mini powered on.
As the machine powered up the white back-lit touch sensitive buttons on the lower front of the Mini lit very brightly and became clearly visible:
- Phone (Call)
- Home
- Windows
- Back
- Phone (End Call)
Whilst describing the above the Mini has finished booting with the anticipated O2 water theme animation rolling past and the OOBE (Of of Box Experience) wizard running - which allows one to configure email, connectivity, social networking, etc. When that has completed the Minis home screen arrives with the Mini version of HTC Sense to the fore.
The screen although relatively 'small' at 3.2" the HVGA (320 x 480) is bright and clear with all text readable and clearly visible, no ghosting or blurring at all.
The mainstay of the display is of course the HTC Sense application which overlays the Windows Mobile operating system. As with other recent Sense creations from HTC the main tabs on offer are:
- Home
- People
- Messages
- Internet
- Calendar
- Stocks
- Photos and Videos
- Music
- Weather
- Footprints
- Settings
In operation generally the Mini feels fast and smooth and in fact is very much on par with its more powerful big brother, the HD2.
So initial thoughts about the device are good, it's fast and smooth and certainly easy to fit into a convenient pocket.
We'll see how it performs over the next few days!
O2 HTC HD Mini - Day 2 - App Loading and General Use
Late last night and this morning before work I loaded up a selection of my usual applications to see how the HD Mini would fare, with the non standard (to a lot of developers) screen resolution. I aimed to pick a selection of application types, from those which modify the system, add functionality, use the GPS system, as well as provide some light entertainment - things that most users would be interested on while on the move.
The applications loaded were:
- uBook
- MobiPocket
- FourSquare
- EverNote
- CorePlayer
- MS Marketplace (downloaded from the pre-configured shortcut)
- MS MyPhone (updated via via Marketplace)
- Bing (via Marketplace)
- HomeScreen Customiser (loaded via Marketplace)
- SynchroTime
Book reading with Mobipocket was not as easy as on the HD2 as with the default settings the text is very small, but increasing the text size solved that issue and book reading was suitably pleasurable.
The only other application glitch noted was with the HomeScreen Customiser - it loaded onto the machine without any issues, but the add on modules for weather, contacts, launcher were not offered as addons. I removed the application and reinstalled but still not offered, very strange.
Thanks to my good friends at ALK a registration code and maps were provided for CoPilot Live 8 (preinstalled in ROM) and that loaded and worked perfectly. It was noted that is was the 'professional' version too which leads me to think that the Mini may have a Navipanel built into it for when dashboard mounted in the car.
While I was in navigation 'mode' I had a brief fling with Bing and Google Maps, both worked as expected with no problems, but one cool thing as noted and that is a GPS activity icon. This appears very similar to the Android GPS indicator as it appears in the top system bar and flashes on and off to indicate GPS activity. Does this mean we can turn on the GPS and not worry about power drain as it'll only be activated when needed? Further investigation is needed here!
When loading up and configuring the Mini (which involved couple of soft resets) it was noticed how quickly it booted up after the reset, and on testing tonight I can confirm that it boots around 15 seconds quicker than my HD2 - maybe the smaller screen and less complex Sense application gives it an edge here. The only drawback of the small screen is that some of the smaller sized text in the configuration screens is slightly blurred due to the small physical size of the font used and the cleartype adjustment applied to it. This not helped by the cleartype toggle being removed from the ROM.
Speaking of Sense the Mini had to be tested out with Titanium as a front end interface, despite not having all the 'panels' loaded that I wishes to use. Titanium proved to be very finger friendly and smooth in operation compared to the HD2 where it feels a little unfriendly as one ends up wishing fingers were a little longer! On the Mini there are no such problems Titanium suits the small screen perfectly and is very usable. If my lost panels were in place I could well prefer using it to Sense!
Three things that surprised me with the Mini today were:
- CorePlayer - this was used to play back a couple of recorded TV episodes, and with it set to play back video in 'RawFrameBuffer' mode the videos played back smoothly and quickly, there were no stutters in playback, no sound sync issues and the screen was rock solid and pinpoint accurate and clear - pretty impressive in fact.
- Footprints - Not expecting it to work I exported all my Footprints recorded on the HTC Desire (*.kmz file) and imported them into the Mini. They all imported fine and are not resident. That was a cool discovery!
- Battery Life - Okay I'm not comparing Apples to Apples here, but with approximate similar use of devices I tried to compare the HTC Desire to the Mini. At the end of the day the Desire had 42% battery life remaining, the Mini had 80% still left. Taking into consideration my HD2 which usually ends the day at between 55-65% charge remaining this is staggering! The Mini had been used with GPS, phone calls, with Exchange push email on constantly, Facebook updating and Tweets coming in as frequently as possible, and it still achieved 80% charge left! Wow!
Okay onwards...... to see how the Mini performed in everyday operation it was taken away for a weekends mini holiday in Wales and was used as my main phone (apart from ebook reading) and it performed wonderfully well.
The first thing of note was that it was run from 7:30am in my pocket mostly while at work, a couple of phone calls were made, etc and a little PIM use. After work I popped home, loaded up and we drove from Manchester to Llwyngwril (in Wales near Tywyn), and arrived at 21:07. Now bearing in mind that a lot of the work environment holds signal dead areas, and that signal loss is high in mid Wales........
So I was expecting the battery to be down to around 60%, I turned the the machine on and the battery use was down to 80%, very impressive. But was it a fluke? No it was not, the machine was used while in Wales to make phone calls, take photos and respond to emails. Typically we'd be out of the cottage by around 10:00am and return around 18:00 in the evening. On all of those days battery life never left below 10% used which is truly outstanding!
Another bonus is it's tenacity in keeping hold of a signal. The cottage we sleep in has walls of stone - 2 to 3 feet thick and the signal is therefore dodgy so say the least indoors. The Mini was pulled off charge on morning and it was noted that it had held the mobile web (O2) connection to the net for over 51 hours, so all day, through the evening and during the night. Calls were also made home through the walls with no problems at all. As a double check the HTC Desire was checked for signal and data connectivity inside. Signal was either 0 or 1 bar, where the Mini had 1 to 3 bars!
Gotchas, there have to be a few gotchas lurking and alas there were.
These were nothing inherent with the device itself but have to be down to the HTC Sense implementation. Both may have been connected as they both tied into data updating. The problem was with both the updating of the Twitter feed and with the weather. Twitter updates were made, but not on the hour as scheduled they seemed to take place randomly during the day. Locational weather updates had a similar problem, and even when triggered manually the update either did not occur, or if the update did take place the correct location was not obtained. It's no good being in Wales and the device insisting we were still just outside Wrecsam!
The final gotcha may be partly down to the user having large fingers as I found it awkward when taking a photograph in controlling the precise focus area with the camera. So a fair few of the shots taken ended up a little of of focus. However with a bit of perseverance decent pictures did result and I'm glad to say the photo quality was good, no dreaded pink tinge at all. A few shots are attached for your enjoyment (All taken using the default camera settings and not resized at all!
More to follow as I move through the working week!
O2 HTC HD Mini - Day 4 - Battery life
I’ve been using the device minimally (no ebook reading as I'm waiting for a fixed uBook), so it has been used for weather watching, push email and general PIM tasks as well as at least two phone calls per day.
One thing that was starting to be apparent, the battery was not going down at all under the first few days of use, so I decided to test it out!
The Mini was fully charged and then removed from all power sources (no mains or USB charge) at 6:45am Tuesday morning and it’s been running 24/7 with GPRS (2G) left on and all functions allowed to auto-update. (Exchange turned off for off-peak night time), the rest of the time operating with full push email.
Battery remaining as of Friday at 16:50..... wait for it... a staggering 40%.
So only 60% battery usage through Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and most of Friday.
This is completely awesome and unheard of for a modern Windows Phone Device!
This mini review comprises four blogs which were posted concerning the device. Please check out the relevant blogs for the accompanying photos.
