youbestbatteryshops: HTC Gratia review

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The HTC Gratia is here to bring back mini mobiles into vogue. After a year of non stop, oversized Google blowers, this baby slots neatly into the palm of your hand. But is it handy to use, or will your fingers struggle to tap at the shrunken keyboard buttons? Let’s find out.

Verdict

In terms of price, you’ll get better specs and newer software on the HTC Gratia than previous model, the HTC Wildfire. But based on size alone, the HTC battery dell vostro 1500 Legend remains best in class.

We love

Android 2.2 is fairly up to date, screen is substantially sharper than the similarly sized HTC Wildfire’s.

We hate

It’s a tad too small for most hands, HTC Sense is missing the extra frills of other recent HTC Android phones

Specs:

Screen: 3.2in, 320 x 480

Connectivity: HSDPA 7.2Mbps, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB

Camera: 5MP

Storage: 384MB plus microSD (Up to 32GB extra)

Battery: 420 mins talktime, 400 hours standby

Size/Weight: 57.7×103.8×11.7mm/115g

Design and build quality

The HTC Gratia bears little resemblance to HTC’s other affordable Android smartphone, the HTC Wildfire. While that hotcake-selling smartie echoes the curves and colour of the high power HTC Desire, the HTC Gratia strikes out on its own with an unusual, unique design.

All the ports are in the prerequisite places: there’s a micro USB charger on the bottom Acer aspire 5920 battery Acer aspire 4720 battery , lock button and headphone jack on top, and a reasonably defined volume rocker on the left hand side.

The front face too, reminds us of last year’s stunning HTC Legend, from the black bezel to the responsive capacitive buttons below the screen and the optical trackpad – which works like a charm for text selection which should keep emailers content.

Where the HTC Gratia branches out by itself is with the back casing. This isn’t one of HTC’s phones with a “chin”. It’s completely smooth, but more noticeably, has a back panel that wraps right around up to the edges of the screen. It’s like a jacket more than anything, and while we like its smooth, smudge free texture, it also makes it appear to be bulging profusely – a strange sensation considering how small and light the HTC Gratia is.

Screen

Comparisons with last year’s HTC Legend are apt, largely because of the display: both sport a 3.2-inch touchscreen with a 320×480 resolution. The result is a very pleasant experience surfing the web and reading long emails on the go: there’s none of the blocky pixellation you’ll see with the HTC Wildfire’s lower resolution 240×320 screen.

Sadly though, the HTC Gratia drops the Legend’s AMOLED display Dell vostro 1520 battery Dell vostro 1720 battery technology in favour of more traditional LCD: that’s easier for HTC to get hold of, but it doesn’t produce quite such mesmerising colours.

What does the same however is responsiveness: the HTC Gratia’s screen gets your taps right everytime, zooming in and out with pinch to zoom gestures on command. With a little bit of practice, you’ll fly on the virtual keyboard.

Key features

Android 2.2 is the highlight of the HTC Gratia: while not technically the very latest build (Step forward 2.3), it is relatively new, and certainly the most important new release of Google’s software in the last year and a half. With it on board, you’ll be able to download and run just about any new app. Only LG Optimus One also offers this new version of Android in a such a small form factor too.

By contrast the HTC Wildfire is stuck on Android 2.1 – an important distinction, as Google introduced many killer features between the two builds, not least improved speed and battery life.

Usability

For better and worse, Android is extremely customisable: HTC’s used its liberty to create its own version of the Android user interface, and we must admit that it’s the most user friendly rendition of it available.

This custom user interface is called HTC Sense, and it’s more than some new colours and dell latitude d620 Dell gw240 battery extra homescreens (seven instead of five). As well as new HTC widgets, it allows you to merge your Facebook, Twitter and Flickr accounts with your phonebook, so you can see at a glance what your friends are saying and where.

After logging into each one, you’ll never have to again: combined with Android’s drop down menu for all your notifications, it’s a great way to social network on the go.

There is one caveat though: this isn’t the same version of HTC Sense as included on the likes of the HTC Desire HD and plastered across billboards. It lacks some of HTC’s clever bits and bobs, like the ability to track your phone down by GPS should you lose it. But if you’re prepared to dig around on the Android Market, you can replicate many of these features with third party apps.

Connectivity

As you’d expect from an Android smartphone, the HTC Gratia comes stuffed with Wi-Fi and 3G for fast download speeds, plus a-GPS for dropping a pin on your spot in Google Maps. We have no complaints here, and in fact increasingly the bottleneck with browsing speeds is no longer the hardware, but simply the browser – rest assured HTC’s is blazing fast however.

The HTC Gratia also has one other trick up its sleeve: it can act as a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot. Turn this on, Dell wr050 battery Dell d630 battery and your 3G connection is beamed to other devices over Wi-Fi in close range – very handy for getting online with a laptop or iPad out of the home.

Video and camera

The HTC Gratia comes equipped with a five megapixel sensor on the back: it process snaps quickly and autofocuses well, and while there’s no physical camera button on the top, you can pop the trackpad button itself to snatch shots.

Sadly though, these are not the same five megapixel results as you’ll get from a Samsung Galaxy S or iPhone 4. Our shots were flat and full of muddy colour and noise: there’s also no flash, so you’ll need daylight and plenty of it for usable results – the VGA 640×480 video was no better.

Media playback

Sadly the low power 600MHz processor inside the HTC Gratia means it’s incapable of running Flash videos, which other Android 2.2 phones can. HTC’s local media support is a bit barebones as well, amounting to MP3, AAC, OGG and WAV files alongside MP4 Dell vostro 1520 battery Dell vostro 1700 battery and WMV video clips.

Android Market to the rescue though: with a quick download of RockPlayer or Meridian, you can play plenty more file types.

Apps

HTC Sense on the HTC Gratia is all about the contact syncing rather than the extra apps: all you get on top of Android itself is the ability to recommend apps to other HTC users, and HTC’s FriendStream and Peep apps for Facebook and Twitter – however these are nowhere near as powerful as the official TweetDeck and Twitter Android apps.

We must stress that this doesn’t mean the HTC Gratia is devoid of apps – far from it. With more than 230,000 apps available on the Android Market alone, you’re frankly spoiled for choice, and Google’s own core Android apps are fantastic. Gmail is great if you’re already a user of the webmail service, while Google Maps is fast, and doubles up as a turn by turn satnav.

Call quality/battery life

The HTC Gratia was no worse for handling calls and delivering crisp audio than any other smartphone of its sizes: luckily however the battery life improves substantially on the HTC Wildfire and HTC Legend. We got a good two days of use out of it, making calls and surfing the web, and didn’t have to top up overnight for fear of running dry.