10 Minutes With the HTC HD2: It’s Big!

But not big enough that you’ll have a hard time carrying it around. The HTC HD2 is easily the best example of the slate smartphone form factor, which is all screen and pretty much nothing else. It’s also the smartphone with the biggest display I’ve ever seen. Nothing I’ve ever used comes close to the HD2′s 4.3 inches of portable visual eye-candy. Few things amaze me nowadays, but seeing HTC pull his off—on a unit that’s barely a centimeter thick—did.

Unfortunately, I have at least one bias against this phone. As someone who never really adapted touch screen keyboards, typing on the HD2′s virtual QWERTY was a bit cumbersome. Tapping keys does provide some haptic feedback, but users who’ve gotten used to physical keys (like me) will take their time typing.

It also takes a while to familiarize yourself with the interface. HTC’s Sense UI is pretty intuitive when you’re browsing the home screens. Just swipe to the left, or to the right, or drag your finger across the icons on the bottom of the screen to access what you need. Navigating menus or looking for applications is another story however, until I realized that, as a Windows Mobile 6.5 phone, pushing the Start button was the first thing to do.

The HD2 clearly enjoys the power of its 1 GHz CPU, blazing through every screen I opened, never slowing down. This isn’t a phone I’d buy, but only because I like tapping out text on an actual QWERTY. Still, based on my 10 minutes with the HTC HD2, few phones are as fast and responsive, and no other has a huge 4.3-inch 480 x 800 display. That means a bigger space for fingerprints to land on, so be sure to have a screen protector ready if you buy an HD2!

View the HTC HD2 specs at Spectograph