HTC S740 Review

Introduction:

Recently, the market has been flooded with devices running on the Windows Mobile Professional operating system. Of course there’s nothing wrong with that, but let’s not forget the Windows Mobile Standard smartphones, such as the HTC S740.

As a successor to the S730, the S740 sports a full QWERTY keyboard and a classic numeric keypad. This way, your ordinary-looking phone can easily turn into a handy messaging device with a single motion of your finger. When it comes to specifications the S740 is better than its predecessor in every respect; it is equipped with a faster processor, more RAM, better camera and so on. But as you know, it’s not only the specifications that determine whether a phone is worth it. So let’s take a look at how well it performs.

In the box you’ll find:

• HTC S740
• Data cable
• Charger
• Headphones
• Pouch

Design:

The appearance of the S740 is in unison with HTC’s new design language , with a flat front and a diamond-like back. Unfortunately, the smooth and shiny surfaces are a real fingerprint magnet and we have the feeling that even thinking about the S740 is going to cause more fingerprints on it. When closed, it looks very much like an ordinary phone; however, its dimensions are rather interesting. First, we have to note that it’s longer than the Touch HD- no kidding- but on the other hand its width is completely normal, which makes it look even longer.  This obviously isn’t the smallest HTC QWERTY smartphone, but at least it isn’t too thick at 16.3 mm, making it easy to fit in a pocket. Keep in mind that it weighs 4.94 oz (140 grams), so it’s definitely going to keep you aware of its presence with every step.



You can compare the HTC S740 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

Similarly to the S710 and the S730, it has a 2.4-inch display with QVGA resolution. The colors are bright and saturated, and another good thing is that they stay the same even when exposed to the sun. Below it, you’ll find the round D-pad, which blinks in white when you have a missed call or a new message. The send and end keys are situated around it. They are small, but are protruding enough so you won’t have any trouble pressing them. The functional keys, home and back are also there.

As we’ve mentioned, the phone is rather long, but the screen isn’t large. The numeric keypad has benefited the most from this, and as a result its keys are big and handy. This is all okay, but the main feature of the S740 isn’t the numeric keyboard, it’s the QWERTY one. As you slide it open, the screen turns to landscape view. Unlike the S730, this one has four rows of keys so that every key is exactly where you’d expect it to be. This shortens the time that you’d need to get used to it considerably. It didn’t take long before we started to rapidly type messages one after another.


Let’s see what other buttons are waiting to be pressed. Well, to be honest, there aren’t many. On the left is the volume rocker, on the right is the camera shutter and on the top is the power button. The last one is almost unnoticeable by touch, but we didn’t experience any problems when pressing it.




The location of the SIM and microSD cards has stayed the same as in its predecessors. It isn’t behind the back panel as in most of the phones, but under the numeric keypad. In order to get to it you’ll have to open the slider and then the small cover in the bottom part. As you’re doing it the phone automatically turns off, which means that you won’t be able to hot-swap memory cards.

Software:

The S740 of course runs Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard. It doesn’t have any customization beyond the home screen, so we won’t get into detail. By default, the home screen is HTC Home, but you can change it to the WM standard one if you wish. HTC Home features a vertical list of icons, beginning with a large clock and the name of the carrier that you’re using. Below, you’ll find the calendar, the music player, the weathercast and others.


When you decide to open the slider, the screen changes its orientation from portrait to landscape view, as in the S710 and the S730, but the difference is that here you’ll have a menu, which gives you quick access to the messages, e-mails and Windows Live Messenger. There’s a similar menu in the HTC Touch Pro, but its options are twice as many.

The HTC S740 is a 3G phone with Wi-Fi, so you’ll be able to enjoy some high-speed internet. Unfortunately, the default internet browser is Internet Explorer. It is light years away from being a decent browser and experiences difficulties when loading complex pages like phoneArena.com, so we recommend that you choose some of the alternatives, for example Opera Mobile or Skyfire. We took screenshots of both Internet Explorer and Skyfire, because we wanted to show you the great differences.



Even though the S740 has been designed mainly as a texting device, this doesn’t mean that its multimedia capabilities should be rushed through. For entertainment purposes you have Windows Media Player at your service. The video clips play well, as long as they are coded in H.264 or H.263. During our tests the device managed to play videos with resolution of up to 640x272 pixels, which surprised us and gave us the chance to enjoy some high-quality ones. By default, your music is played through Windows Media Player, but you can also choose HTC’s Audio Manager, which performs considerably better. The player has many presets for the equalizer which can be manually tweaked according to your likings, but you’ll have to plug in the headphones in order to use it.  The music quality through the headphones is average and when you turn the volume to the max, the sound gets too sharp. The loudspeaker also isn’t the greatest.



The camera is 3.2-megapixels, which is a step forward compared to the previous models. It has all the necessary functions like white balance, brightness and metering gathered in a single menu. The quality of the outdoor pictures isn’t really satisfying. As if there has been a red filter in front of the lens, which makes the colors look unnatural. The phone lacks a flash, so we didn’t have great expectations of the indoor ones. Again, they looked a bit reddish, with their quality getting worse by lowering the lighting. The S740 is also capable of recording videos with CIF resolution (352x288 pixels). They are up to grade, but their low resolution makes them suitable only for viewing on the phone, or uploading to YouTube.


The HTC S740 features a GPS receiver that should aid the ones that have lost their way home. Unfortunately, there isn’t a preinstalled application to run it, so we’ll give you some raw data about the time that it needs to locate your position. In our case, with information about the location of the satellites downloaded in advance, thanks to Quick GPS, we managed to find ourselves within 20 seconds after a cold start.

Performance:

We were pleased with the S740’s performance and didn’t notice any lag when navigating through the menus or when running various applications. In addition, as you open the slider the display changes its orientation faster than the S710 and the S730. This is a really nice improvement, because this sometimes took about 3-4 seconds with the previous models.

As a phone, the HTC S740 did a decent job. The sound was loud in both directions, but it was also sharp and with lots of noise. The loudspeaker is remarkable for its crackling and unclear voice representation.

Conclusion:

As a whole, the HTC S740 is a nice smartphone with many features and a handy QWERTY keyboard, but it’s also a bit bulky, and its weight of 4.94 oz (140 grams) isn’t easy to ignore. If you’re looking for an alternative of the HTC Touch Pro and you don’t mind the lack of a touch screen, you won’t be disappointed by HTC’s offer, but we’d advise you also to take a look at the Symbian alternatives like the Nokia E71 and the E63.