When it comes to build quality HTC is second to none and the HTC Snap is no exception, I found that their was no gaps, loose components or anything else that proved to be lacking in terms of the strength of the devices build quality. Just hold the Snap in your hands for a moment and you'll quickly realize that it feels strong. While that may not be the most scientific way of determining the device build factor I have found over the years that a device that feel strong typically is.
Aside from feeling strong the ergonomics are exceelnt. The unit is very thin at 12mm and offers a reasonable size of 116.5mm x 61.5mm a setup that fit into my pocket better than the Blackberry Curve series while still offering ample space for the devices full size qwerty keyboard which takes up most of the devices frontside realty.
Aside from the keyboard the front side of the unit features a 2.4" display along with a trackball that is used to navigate the device and which can be tweaked for sensitivity purposes(sorry no touchscreen), and a round green circle at the bottom right hand side that brings up the users "inner circle" which we'll examine later in our article. The front side also features a few soft keys which is pretty standard on HTC Smartphones.
There is also a mini-usb connection for charging and data syncing at the bottom of the device. Other than that the unit is pretty plain outside of the 2MP camera featured on the backside of the unit. Although it does feature a MicroSDHC card slot that can offer up to 16GB of additional memory at the current time along with a volume option for quickly changing your ringtone volume.
Here's a quick look at the HTC Snap Smartphone:
The most talked about feature found on the Snap is the companies new "Inner Circle" button. No this option doesn't let you phone your 10 favorite friends for free. Instead it involves pushing the little green button at the bottom of the devices keyboard, which in turns brings up only the emails from your most important contacts, contacts you choose and manage directly from your device. Is this option simplistics? Absolutely! and it should be anything other than simplistic, with thousands of emails in my folder I was greatful that I now had the ability to sort my emails in order of importance. As I actioned my important emails my next emails were moved up the list as they arrived, making it easier to find what I needed when I needed it.
The backbone of the HTC Snap isn't too shabby either, featuring Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard (Non-touchscreen OS) the Snap is optimized for one handed non-touchscreen functionality, I found the trackpad sensitivity to be perfect for my own browsing habits, however other users may not and for that reason HTC has included a sensitivity application that can be used to adjusted the way the trackball is used, an option that should help new and experienced users optimize their trackballs to fit their own habits. Have you ever owned a Blackberry? Just tinkle with the sensitivity and you can have your trackball feeling just like your Blackberry devices in no time at all.
The browsing software comes as no surprise, its the mobile internet explorer version 6. While this browser isn't the most ideal for internet browsing it is far superior when compared to past IE Models. The browser does offer zooming, tabbed browsing and even "full webpage layouts. Thankfully the device offers a good amount of connectivity options including WiFi which helped speed up page load times.
The device also offers an MP3 Player and video viewer. The audio player actually supports MP3 and AAC files but it doesn't offer anything revolutionary, rather its a typical HTC player with rather average audio output. I tested my Motorola S9 headset against the applications A2DP bluetooth connection and again I would rate the audio output as "average" at the best.