Remember the movie Honey, I Shrunk the Kids? Yeah, well, it looks like Rick Moranis also shrunk the HTC HD2 and turned it into a more pocketable alternative. Originally known as the Photon, the HTC HD Mini is equipped with the same processor, screen size and resolution as HTC’s Legend, but running the HD2’s Windows Mobile 6.5.3 under a WinMo-specific Sense skin.
The HD Mini owns a 3.2-inch HVGA 320 x 480 capacitive touchscreen. Though it doesn’t offer an AMOLED display like its Android-wearing sibling, it does its best to emulate one. Lined up on the bottom are five touch-sensitive buttons for Call, Home, Start, Back and End that work surprisingly well.
For a smooth and sophisticated appearance, the plastic back cover—which offers a pleasing, grip-friendly surface—envelops most of the body. It’s a nice aesthetic touch, easily one of the smallest devices of its class. But I did pick a few niggles, such as the lack of a dedicated camera button. Also, the cover is a pain to remove and having to take out the battery to replace SIM cards isn’t ideal, but those shouldn’t be things that will trouble you on a daily basis.
Loaded with a mundane 600MHz processor and a 384MB of RAM under the hood, the HD Mini runs the aging Windows Mobile 6.5, toting the HTC Sense interface on top. This is an OS with a pretty steep learning curve.
Switching between programs and navigating through the sideways menu bar was a real hassle. Scrolling through the Twitter feed resulted in an almost-frozen screen at times. With so much going on, the Mini is unstable—sometimes I found it sluggish and certain screen transitions were choppy.
The soft keyboard doesn’t provide big enough keys in portrait mode, making me peck away at the buttons with the sort of care and attention that we’re supposed to lavish on our loved ones. I found it more difficult typing on the HD mini than I did the Legend, often pressing the wrong letters.
Wi-Fi connectivity was strong and fast throughout, though I didn’t have an opportunity to test out its 3G receptiveness properly. I’ll just assume it’s on par with the competition and move on with my life. It’s preloaded with the Internet Explorer and Opera browsers, but has issues with rendering web content that can get plain ugly on a rich media page.
There’s no hardware shortcut for the 5.0-megapixel camera, but the app relatively loads quickly. Photos are passable, above average for most mobile phones but the lack of LED flash makes low-light photos come out very noisy. Video, on the other hand, was your typical middle of the road affair—nothing to get excited about.
For audio, the HD Mini has a 3.5mm headphone jack for your nasty headphones, and uses the standard microUSB for charging and syncing. The 1200mAh battery squeezed out two days’ use; even with Wi-Fi turned on the whole time and regular Twitter polling.
The HTC HD Mini is a generally well-rounded device, but these days, that’s just not good enough. It’s well-built and charmingly small, but with Microsoft launching its new Windows Phone 7 OS later this year, it’s hard to recommend it. I needed a little extra convincing; it’s not a bad device but rather that it lacks an all-important spark, something to make it unique and interesting. Though there a few merits on the general performance and responsiveness of the Mini, its design succeeds with flying colors.
