By Damian Koh
23/01/2008
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/mobilephones/0,39051199,42048145p,00.htm

The C500 was one of the last few devices that came from Dopod before the company was acquired by Taiwan-based High Tech Computer (HTC). Since then, several handhelds have emerged under the HTC umbrella, starting with the Touch to the more recent P3600i, TyTN II and Touch Dual. Although the handheld lineup was almost entirely refreshed within a relatively short time, the smart phone category has stayed quiet until the HTC S730.

Design

Although the S730 (105.8 x 51 x 19.4mm; 150g) is marginally larger and heavier than the C500 (101.5 x 50 x 18.6mm; 140g), the handset remains compact like the latter. It is still considered small for a device with a QWERTY board cleverly hidden beneath a 2.4-inch QVGA LCD and alphanumeric keypad.

The front of the S730 has undergone some changes, but it's a rearrangement of what's already on the C500. So the S730 is still instantly recognizable as having the same form factor as the C500. On the S730, the left/right softkeys are slightly bigger and the numeric pad more tightly packed together. The strange thing is, the softkeys don't have backlighting. That isn't an issue since the buttons are large enough, so users won't miss it even in the dark.

Unlike the C500, the directional control is now in line with the softkeys, allowing the LCD screen to sit lower, while making way for the front-facing VGA camera at the top right corner for video calls.

When held upright, the spring-loaded QWERTY keyboard slides out to the right and locks into place with a fluid motion. The Taiwan-based company has also made some modifications to the layout here. For example, the Q button is now directly above A, which is a more logical arrangement and closer in resemblance to the traditional keyboard.

The QWERTY keypad has a bluish-white backlight. Above the Q button are two tiny lights which alert you when the Shift/Cap and function key have been pressed. Each key is a button on its own and there's decent tactile feedback when typing.

Another change on the S730 is the relocation of the SIM card slot from the underside of the C500's top lid to beneath the battery on the S730. Unless you swap SIM cards every other day, this shouldn't affect most users.

Features

HTC not only made changes to the outside of the S730, it also souped up the components within. The company announced in September 2007 that it planned to roll out more devices based on the Qualcomm MSM7xxx-series chipset. The S730 is apparently the first Windows Mobile 6 Standard smart phone from HTC to receive that treatment with a faster Qualcomm MSM7200 400MHz processor compared with the TI OMAP 850 of the C500.

The ROM has also been doubled to 256MB, though the total RAM remains at 64MB. After a hard reset, there was just 17MB of RAM and 128MB of storage memory on our review set. A microSD expansion card slot on the right edge of the handset provides additional storage.

Most of the data connectivity features have remained intact. The handset works on quadband GSM networks with support for EDGE. Wi-Fi and Bluetooth stereo are still standard. The only addition is the HSDPA/UMTS 2100 connection which should be useful for downloading data, surfing the Web and making video calls.

HTC has, interestingly, decided to use the modified Home screen on the S730. Unlike the handheld, the S730 doesn't have a touchscreen LCD, so navigating the shortcuts is via the directional control. The Home screen employs a dual-tone gray color scheme and features a large digital clock with six shortcut tabs below. These lead a weather report, favorite contacts list, messaging and call logs.

The 2-megapixel camera on the S730 is a very basic setup with only an accompanying self-portrait mirror. The lens is a fixed focus one without any built-in flash, so it's going to be tricky to snap in dim-light environments. Next to the camera module is a nondescript onboard speaker.

Performance

HTC ships the WM6 S730 with a 1,050mAh Li-ion polymer battery that's rated for slightly over 5 hours of talktime and about 12 days on standby. In real-world conditions, making calls, sending text messages, surfing the Web, listening to music and taking pictures prompted the cell to wind down after two days.

Although the S730 uses the Qualcomm MSM7200 400MHz processor, we didn't find the smart phone very responsive. This was most obvious when switching from portrait to landscape mode as we slid the phone open. When we ran our test video clip on the review unit, we also noticed some occurrences of dropped frames, although that was nothing disastrous.

At the time of this review, there was an ongoing debate about underperforming HTC devices that were using the Qualcomm MSM7200 chipset due to missing drivers. We are still awaiting the official response from HTC and will update the performance should a reply be forthcoming.

Audio quality was decent but we found the S730's video call capability dismal. When used outdoors, we could barely hear the other party and had to bring the handset closer, which gave the other person an unflattering close-up of the hairs in our nose.

As for picture quality, the camera module tended to oversaturate the blue channel making it very unrealistic. The lack of autofocus meant you'd have to gauge the minimum focus distance, or risk ending up with tons of blurry shots.

Conclusion

If you're shopping for a QWERTY device with a numeric keypad (or the other way round), you don't have a lot of choices, which makes the S730 look like the default champion. Of course, if you go one level up, there's the Nokia E90 Communicator, but your pocket might protest.

As much as we like the S730 for its dual keypad, we think HTC could have thrown in a better camera module and, at the same time, increase the RAM for better performance. The lack of a dedicated A/V port also makes the S730 a less-than-ideal device for music playback. That said, we do have to give credit where it's due to HTC for having addressed issues like the CPU and ROM shortcoming on the earlier Dopod C500.