Hardware & Design
The HTC Trophy comes with standard specs for a Windows Phone 7 handset. It comes with a 3.8 inch capacitive touch screen that produces pretty good colors and view. Below the screen is your touch sensitive menu controls for back, home and search. On the sides you have buttons for volume, power, camera and a 3.5 mm headphone jack.
In the back there is a 5.0 megapixel camera with flash and 720p HD video recording. The quality is pretty standard for both video and images. It’s good enough for most but it’s not going to blow you away.
The overall phone has as soft touch finish and while not very thin is still light and doesn’t feel like a paperweight in the pocket. Inside you have a 1 Ghz processor, 16 GB of storage and 3G global roaming with pre-installed SIM card. An overall good build here from HTC.
Software & Usability
The phone is running the latest version of Windows Phone 7 available with the NoDo update. The OS takes a different approach from iOS and Android. There isn’t any icon shortcuts, widgets or multiple desktops. The main screen it made up of “live tiles” These tiles give you access to different applications and features and can tell you information about an application before you open it such as e-mail and messaging which will tell you how many messages are available. You can customize where tiles are located and can add new tiles from the app menu on the 2nd screen. You can pin any applications from there to main menu and remove ones that you no longer want or need.
One of the more unique features of the OS is the People tile. Within there you can see your contacts and their social network connections with Facebook and Windows Live built-in integration. You can update your own status, comment on your friends links, status updates and view uploaded photos from them as well.
It wouldn’t be a Windows Phone without e-mail and office. The OS supports all major e-mail providers and has solid Microsoft Exchange support. The is also an office suite to create new Excel, Word and OneNote documents giving you the ability to work on the go. Gaming is also a big part of Windows Phone 7 with Xbox live. There are tons of games to download and trials are available. You can connect your Xbox live account to the phone and it will keep track of your Gamerscore and even import your avatar.
As far as HTC software there is just the HTC hub which will bring up their apps and weather information. For UI customizations you can change the color and either have a dark or light background. Battery life is ok if you’re a heavy user you can get through a workday without looking for a charger. Call quality is also good. I didn’t experience any dropped calls and people could hear me clearly and I could hear them just as clear.
Overall
For the first Windows Phone 7 handset on Verizon the Trophy is a solid offering. it’s a well built phone with a good screen, fast speeds and global roaming capabilities. The phone is missing some key features that current smartphones have like mult-tasking support, the camera is average and battery life could be better. If you are on Verizon and you want a Windows Phone this is on your only option and it’s a good one.
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