HTC S710 (Vox) smartphone review
Digital camera
The phone shoots pictures with a resolution of up to 2 megapixels. Don't expect miracles from the camera, the pictures won't be as pretty as the ones from your digital camera but it's sufficient to make some fairly nice photos.
The menu of the digital camera is pretty advanced. There's a digital zoom (but this only works when you're shooting pictures at resolutions below 2MP), you can adjust the Metering mode from Center Area to Average, you can adjust the exposure value from -2 EV to +2 EV, you can change the white balance settings, there's a self-timer, various quality settings, timestamps, some effects (black/white, sepia, cool, negative) and there are also different camera modes like a sports mode.
Here are a few sample shots. Please take in mind that these photos have been resized from 1600 x 1200 to 600 x 450 pixels.
As you can see my dog's coat looks kinda washed out. The S710 can't capture it perfectly.
Note: for the other samples I didn't feel it was necessary to provide a bigger version but I made an exception for this photograph. The cropped version looks alright but when you take a look at the bigger version you can see that the camera didn't manage to capture enough details, most of the vegetation looks pretty washed out.
The quality of the photos shot by the S710 is nowhere near the quality of a real digital camera but when there's enough light the device manages to take some pretty shots.
Besides pictures it's also possible to record video. These videos can be recorded in .avi, .mp4 or .3gp. MMS videos are recorded in .mp4 or .3gp and photos are saved in the JPEG format.
Multimedia
The S710 can play both music and videos.
The quality of the MP3 playback through the included wired headset is pretty good. Not the best I've heard but it will be sufficient for most people. The phone also has a speaker on the rear which can be used to listen to music. The speakerphone can go pretty loud but doing this will slightly distort the audio. The speakerphone is also great to wake you up, I've configured the phone to play one of my favorite MP3s every morning. Another nice feature of Windows Mobile is that it's not necessary to leave the screen at WMP, you can move to other programs or browse the Internet while the music is playing in the background.
The phone also plays videos but this part is a bit more limited. The included Windows Media Player software doesn't support all movie formats. While I was testing this feature I found out that the phone isn't capable of playing DivX and MPEG movies, at least not with the default software. Perhaps it's possible to download another mediaplayer on the Internet which does play these video formats.
When you're watching movies it sometimes becomes clear that this phone doesn't pack a lot of horsepower. Movies with average resolutions and high bitrates don't always play perfectly, sometimes the phone drops a few frames.
Conclusion
The HTC S710 is an impressive phone. This Windows Mobile 6 based smartphone packs a lot of features in a relatively small candybar-shaped design. The S710 has a very large and good LCD display, WiFi support, a spring-loaded QWERTY keyboard, a 2 megapixel digital camera, lots of multimedia capabilities, microSD memory support and lots of other features.
This is my first experience with a Windows Mobile phone and overall I'm very pleased. The phone has lots of capabilities but it still feels pretty "phone-ish". Before I got this phone I feared a bit that Windows Mobile would put the phone features (calling, texting, ...) a bit on the background but this wasn't the case. In my opinion, the biggest downsides of the HTC S710 "Vox" are the sometimes slow performance and the low battery life.
Without a contract the HTC S710 can be bought for about 400EUR. This isn't really cheap for a phone but it's still pretty affordable for a feature-packed Windows Mobile 6 smartphone.
The Good Stuff
- Big, bright and easy to read LCD display
- Lots of features
- WiFi support
- Looks good
- Compact size for a Windows Mobile phone
- Slide-out QWERTY keyboard as well as a normal keypad
- microSD card can be swapped without removing the battery first.
The Bad Stuff
- Short battery life
- Sometimes a bit slow
- Digital camera quality isn't great, but good enough to take some photos on-the-go.
- Camera lens isn't protected
- No 3G support
- The phone is quite heavy (140g), but to be honest this wasn't really a problem for me.
I give the HTC S710 phone a 8.5/10 and our Editor's Choice award.
Previous Page (3/4)Added: June 19th 2007
Product reviewed: HTC S710 (Vox) smartphone
Reviewer: Thomas De Maesschalck
Score: 8.5/10
Page: 4/4
