T-Mobile’s re-purposed HTC Touch Diamond 2 packs a punch on paper, but can the Compact V deliver for both work and play on the Windows Mobile OS?
What we like
The hi-res display is definitely not disappointing to look at, with 3.2-inches to play with and crisp graphics it’s really rather lovely.
The Compact V runs Windows Mobile 6.1, but with HTC’s TouchFLO 3D so it’s more intuitive and generally nicer to use. You can set up widgets in a tool bar along the bottom of the home screen then scroll through them quickly and easily. The menu is very much Windows based, however – those little icons are pretty jam-packed with sub-menus, and you’ll certainly need a stylus to access them.
With just 288MB of onboard memory, you’ll definitely need to make use of the microSD card slot to make the most of the camera and media player. The camera itself is 5-megapixels strong, and although it doesn’t offer much in the way of shooting options, it has an effective auto-focus and the shots are nice and crisp when viewed on a computer screen.
The phone looks like a serious piece of kit with a piano-black front and matt-black back plate. It’s not quite as beautiful as its metal fore-father, the HTC Touch Diamond2, but it’s still an attractive looking handset.
Setting up email is very straightforward, and as you’d expect from a Win Mo phone, you’ve got a lot of options and control over your inbox. You also have lovely big icons showing you when you have new mail. Zooming in and out on the screen is nice and easy thanks to the permanent guage on the front panel, just above the control buttons. Just as well, as the text tends to be quite small, particularly in emails and text messages.
What we don’t like
Although the resistive screen is responsive enough for big movements, like swiping through menus, the Compact V falters on commands that require more accuracy, like typing. You really do need to use the stylus, especially if you have large hands. Luckily, the stylus is housed on the handset itself, rather than needing to be carried separately.
There’s no 3.5mm headphone jack so you’re constricted to the headphones that the phone comes with and they’re not amazing – otherwise, you could invest in an adaptor, but you’ll have to buy this separately. The media player is not bad, if a little basic – and it particularly annoyed us that there was no quick shortcut back to the controls if we left music playing in the background as we used other apps.
With no dedicated camera button on the side of the handset, some of our shots came out a little blurry as the shoot button is an onscreen command.
Conclusion
The range of features available is impressive and although it’s no comprehensive app store, you can download some rather handy widgets. The user experience on the homescreens is much better than certain other Windows Mobile efforts. However, it suffers by comparison to its HTC brand predecessor and we’d like to have to rely less on the stylus. But, as an all-rounder, it’s one the business user, in particular, ought to consider
Specification
| OS | Windows Phone |
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