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HTC 7 Mozart review

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Verdict

The Mozart delivers on its music-playing promises, but for this price we'd expect a little more than nicer sound and an 8mp camera

Review Date: 21 Oct 2010

Reviewed By: Tim Danton

Price when reviewed: Free, on a £35.00 per month, 24 months contract.

Overall Rating

Features & Design
4 stars out of 6

Value for Money
2 stars out of 6

Performance
5 stars out of 6

With Microsoft setting minimum requirements for Windows Phone 7 handsets' screen size, processor speed, storage and physical design, it was always going to be a struggle for manufacturers to build anything markedly different. Not that this has stopped HTC from trying: it has already released the HTC 7 Trophy, HTC HD 7 and HTC 7 Mozart.

So what’s so different about the Mozart? The name gives a hint: equipped with a Sound Enhancer app and a set of highly respectable speakers, it really does produce half-decent sound even without plugging in earphones. Don’t believe the hype on HTC’s website that it’s like listening to stereo, however: switching on the SRS Enhancement was an immediate turn-off for our panel of judges. The Dolby Mobile setting, though, does a surprisingly good job.

There’s one huge impediment standing in the Mozart’s way, however, if it wants to threaten anyone’s MP3 player: HTC only sees fit to include 8GB of flash storage. With no opportunity to expand memory via extra cards (a limitation of Windows Phone 7 rather than HTC’s design team), you’ll need to keep careful track of what you’re synchronising via Microsoft’s Zune software.

We couldn’t help but smile when we saw another of HTC’s claims: “Looks and feels stunning”, goes the headline. While both are subjective judgements, you’ll find few people willing to argue that the Mozart rivals the Apple iPhone 4 for industrial design. The combination of a gunmetal grey finish on the front, black bezel and flash of speaker grille didn’t impress our random sample of five people in the Dennis offices (two female, three male, just for the record).

Perhaps surprisingly, where it did pull ahead was for feel in the hand. HTC has evidently put some real effort in here, with the rounded edges, the cold feel of the brushed aluminium body and slim, compact dimensions winning the popular vote: indeed, all five out of our style judges said they liked the Mozart’s feel more than either the iPhone 4 or Samsung’s Omnia 7.

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Comments

User comments

my iPhone 3G cost £50 plus £35 per month over 24 months. Would you say that was worth the money?

By TimoGunt on 21 Oct 2010

Bad Grammar

Saying it is "twice the speed" of the iPhone makes it sound like it takes half as long to render the page (ie its better).
What you meant to say is it takes twice the time of the iPhone.

And Timo - nah, I'd say you got ripped. I got my HTC Desire which is a better phone for less than that and no upfront :)

By nniillaa on 22 Oct 2010

Upgrade memory

I was under the impression that Windows Phone 7 DID allow you to expand the flash memory in the device by used of a microSD card if the manufacturer thought it fit to install a slot.

The caveat (again, as I understood) is that the card is not hot-swappable and you need to hard reset the phone to use it as you would if you did a rip-and-replace hard drive swap on a PC (although without reintalling the operating system).

Link of source: http://windowsphonesecrets.com/2010/10/12/windows-
phone-7-and-removable-storage/

If there's no interior slot for extra flash in the 8GB Mozart, I'd say that is particularly short sighted of HTC's design department.

By alynsparkes on 22 Oct 2010

Memory upgrade

Alyn hits the nail on the head, the memory expansion is there for manufacturers to implement.

I believe the Samsung Omnia 7 has a slot, at least in some markets...

By big_D on 26 Oct 2010

Build Quality

Thanks to a cock up by my phone company, I have been sent an Omnia 7 and a Mozart. The Mozart's build quality is far superior, to the point that I would say the Omnia is quite badly made! The Mozart's screen is also more sensitive and the whole device more responsive. For real life, I feel the Mozart is the much better phone.

By gregwhitehouse on 9 Nov 2010

In use...

I've had my Mozart (16GB model) for nearly a month.

I only use the audio for listening to podcasts, so the limited space isn't a problem (I currently have 9.9GB free, with a dozen podcasts waiting to be listened to and all my thousands of photos and all my emails synced).

In general, I much prefer it to my iPhone (I've switched SIMs, the iPhone is now my company phone and the Mozart is my private use phone).

The sound quality, both from the internal speakers and over headphones, is much better than the iPhone. Plugged into the car radio, the sound is crisper and clearer.

App wise, WP7 has some catching up to do, many of the apps I use regularly on my iPhone are still missing (LinkedIn and Evernote, for example), but new apps are being added quickly. The Mossboard is good fun :-D Shame Apple rejected it from their store.

The device itself feels good in the hand. The screen has a scratch on it already, something my iPhone doesn't have, even after a year of living in my pocket. It doesn't affect the phone (about 1mm long), but it is annoying, that it scratches so easily.

I prefer the user interface to the iPhone and Android devices I've used.

Annoyances: The volume is global, on the iPhone there is a volume for the speaker and a volume for the headphone socket, which is nice. It is "too secure"; Outlook refuses to connect to our mail server because the self-signed certificate belongs to a different domain name! The iPhone lets you ignore this, WP7 refuses to accept the certificate, until it is valid, good from a security point of view, but still frustrating.

By big_D on 3 Dec 2010

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