HTC 7 Mozart review: Eine kleine Nachtmusik

The HTC 7 Mozart is not the kind we are used to meeting - and no, before you ask, it’s not a music-centric gadget as the name suggests. Something quite different in fact, it’s all about the camera that goes beyond Microsoft’s demanding specs.

Once again, HTC are trying to escape from Microsoft’s cookie-cutter approach and the Mozart promises to let Windows Phone 7 show it can do more. There’s much to be excited about here and there’s bad news for some of the top cameraphones around.

HTC 7 Mozart official photos

The HTC 7 Mozart is the first WP7 phone to go 8MP and the first one to pack a Xenon flash. Seems like plenty of cameraphone buffs are hearing Christmas bells already. We’ll pretend we don’t for a while and put on our shooting socks instead. It’s time to see what the HTC Mozart is really made of.

Key features:

• 3.7" 16M-color capacitive LCD touchscreen of WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels)
• Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
• Dual-band 3G with HSDPA (7.2 Mbps) and HSUPA (2Mbps)
• Windows Phone 7 operating system
• 1GHz Snapdragon CPU, 576MB RAM, 512MB ROM
• 8 megapixel autofocus camera with Xenon flash, geotagging
• 720p video recording @ 25fps
• 8GB of built-in storage
• Standard 3.5mm audio jack
• Standard microUSB port (charging)
• Dolby Mobile and SRS sound enhancement
• Pretty good audio quality
• Wi-Fi b/g/n
• Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP
• Accelerometer for screen auto rotation
• Office document editor
• Facebook integration and cloud services
• Built-in A-GPS receiver
• Stereo FM Radio with RDS
• Comes with HTC Hub and exclusive HTC apps
• Voice-to-text functionality

Main disadvantages:

• Disastrous camera performance
• Weak xenon flash
• Non-expandable storage
• No lens protection

WP7-specific limitations

• No system-wide file manager
• No Bluetooth file transfers
• No USB mass storage mode
• Limited third-party apps availability
• No Flash (nor Silverlight) support in the browser
• Too dependent on Zune software for file management and syncing
• No video calls
• New ringtones available only through the Marketplace
• Music player lacks equalizer presets
• No multitasking
• No copy/paste
• No DivX/XviD video support (automatic transcoding provided by Zune software)
• No sign of free Bing maps Navigation so far
• No internet tethering support
• No handwriting recognition support

So here we are again – reviewing another Windows Phone 7 device. Not that we mind though. And for a change, it’s not another case of struggling to put a face to a name.

We’ve been there already: the OS limitations and the ensuing deal-breakers are no news to you. If you have your sights set on Windows Phone 7 you probably know everything there is to know about it. There’s much to love about the Metro interface – and there’s no denying some things about Windows Phone 7 just could’ve been better. But if your glass is half full rather than half empty – there’s good news.

Microsoft are prepping the first Windows Phone 7 update, which will enable copy/paste and is supposed to bring some multitasking magic. It’s going to hit all WP7-based devices at the very beginning of next year.

HTC 7 Mozart live shots

The Mozart itself is keen to offer you incentives such as the aluminum unibody design and some exclusive customizations courtesy of HTC. But first of all, the Mozart is a cameraphone and is venturing where no other WP7 has been. 8-megapixel-and-Xenon is a place where HTC have never been before either. So we’d better cut the introductions short, shall we? Let’s play.