HTC 7 Pro

“The HTC 7 Pro is a fairly standard Windows Phone 7 smartphone albeit one with a slide out keyboard. The keyboard adds a little bulk, but with a very good tappable keyboard in widescreen mode, we wonder whether it really enhances usability enough to warrant the increased size and weight of the hardware.In the end, though, our key gripes aren't really about the keyboard, they are about Windows Phone 7. The interface is slick, and there are aspects of it we really like. But we don't like being pushed into the cloud for all our data storage, forced to forego microSD cards or pushed into using Zune for all desktop file transfer.”

“Overall the HTC 7 Pro doesn’t impress us as much as we’d like it to. Windows Phone 7 in general is aesthetically pleasing and offers most of the features and connectivity you’d demand from a modern smartphone, but there is obviously still a fair way to go to capture the speed and excitement of Android or iOS. It did seem stable on the whole, with no crashes encountered during our time with the phone. The only thing that did fall over was email syncing with one of our Google accounts (only one mind you) that was solved by removing and then adding that account again.The HTC 7 Pro offers up respectable hardware but is let down because the operating system isn’t fully conversant with landscape use. That means you’ll spend a lot of time switching back and forth between the two aspects, until, like us, you’ll probably decide that the touchscreen input is good enough and the keyboard gets used less and less.QWERTY Windows Phone 7 devices are something of a rarity and we can see why Dell opted for a vertical slider with their Dell Venue Pro given the limitations of Windows Phone 7. The HTC 7 Pro doesn’t critically fail and is pleasant enough in day-to-day use, but it doesn’t feel like a complete experience yet.”

“The HTC 7 Pro is one of only two Windows Phone 7 handsets with physical keyboards, and it packs a great QWERTY that has a carved space for the screen half bottom when tilted up, very good key travel, and five chiclet-style key rows with a dedicated number row. This makes it one of the best messaging phones not only in WP7 land.The build quality is very solid, but the device's heft is considerable, even for a QWERTY slider. The camera stills and videos are average, but it does shoot HD video, so it is more than fine for casual snapping.The Windows Phone 7 platform is still in its nascence and it shows every now and then. It is not optimized for landscape physical keyboards, as it doesn't rotate the menus, nor the apps in landscape when you open the keyboard, except where it does with a virtual keyboard anyway. The YouTube app is very weak, but luckily HTC offers its own version, which is much better. The generally fine browser doesn't support Adobe Flash, and you can't attach both Word and Excel file in one and the same email with the default email client. These hinder the experience somewhat, but functionalities will be expanded with the upcoming Spring update, and there is a big update slated for the fall. In the meantime, the HTC 7 Pro will stay the best WP7 handset with a physical slide-out QWERTY, and you should keep an eye on the Nokia-Microsoft wild card - good things might come from there for current WP7 owners too.”

“The HTC 7 Pro offers a great keyboard, and may appeal to those who haven't used a smart phone before. But we can't see Android or iPhone users jumping ship to Windows Phone 7 on the strength of this handset.”