HTC Snap with Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard

As with other Windows Mobile non-touchscreen devices, we have the great sliding-panel home screen interface. HTC has made some additions. Here we have the time panel.

And here is the calendar panel which shows you your next appointments.

The next panel will show you if you have any new SMS, voicemail, missed calls, or email.

This is new. It is an extended email screen that lets you get a quick preview of all of the emails in your inbox. Tapping on any message will link you to that particular email.

This is also new. We now have the weather right from the home screen.

And if you click on the weather, you get a nice five-day view.

Also new is the panel for internet favorites.

Another new panel is that for audio. The Snap will automatically search for music on your device.

If you enter the audio manager, you get iPod-like controls to drill down by Artist, Album, Genre, etc.

Here we see the list of songs on the album that I'm listening to.

And here is the Now Playing screen, which will display album art if you have any. This is a great way to manage music right from the home screen.

SOFTWARE

The system volume is straight out of HTC's higher end devices. A small, but nice addition.

Here we are in the Start Menu. Standard stuff.

The Snap actually comes with a newer version of Pocket Internet Explorer, now called IE6 mobile. It is a bit better than PIE, but not by much. It's a bit better at rendering full websites, but it doesn't handle Flash video well, or at all.

Using Skyfire is much better, but there is a bug. Scrolling down the page in Skyfire on the Snap is VERY slow using the trackball for some reason, regardless of the sensitivity setting.

But of course, Skyfire does do Flash so you can watch YouTube and Hulu videos.

If we go into multimedia, we find the Album, camera/video applications, a streaming player for streaming internet video, and the audio manager.

The album again comes right out of HTC's higher end devices. It's a very nice way to view photos.

Once you choose a picture, you can set it as your wallpaper, assign it to a contact for picture caller ID, start a slideshow, etc.

And zooming in will reveal the above selection box.

In accessories we have standard stuff.

The Connection Setup will automatically configure the Snap to your carrier. It even has settings for carriers in the USA.

And the Snap has aGPS, which allows it to get a GPS fix within 15 seconds on a cold start, and 2-3 seconds on a warm or hot start.

INNER CIRCLE

The premise behind Inner Circle is simple. Say you get emails from 30 people per day. Of the 30, only 10 people have critical things to say. Well, you can add them to your inner circle list. Then, when you get a little circle notification in the system tray (see below), you hit the green button on the keyboard, and are taken to a filtered inbox with emails only from these people.

The big red arrow is pointing to the Inner Circle notification that I mentioned.

Too add people to your Inner Circle, you are taken to your contacts.

And this is what the email filter looks like. Quite simply, you select a message to read it, or you can go into your Outlook email via the All Email left soft key.

There is a short tutorial associated with the Inner Circle. Really, it's very easy.

Click onto the next page where we'll cover settings and go over photo quality on the HTC Snap. Does it take good photos?