HTC Smart video

Just a few days ago HTC and O2 held a joint press conference at MWC in Barcelona. The main announcement was the O2 have partnered with HTC and that the HTC Smart will be available on the O2 network throughout Europe, and yes here in the UK, within just a few months. It does look like it will be an O2 exclusive though and we don’t think there will be a SIM-free version either.

The HTC Smart has been designed as a mass-market handset and brings features that you would typically associate with a smartphone to a more ‘mainstream’ feature phone.

James managed to get his hands on the HTC Smart while in Barcelona this week and recorded a brief video ok the user interface. HTC seem to have done a good job with the Brew platform, and you’ll probably notice that the UI looks a lot like the Sense UI that we see on many other HTC devices, nice to see some consistency.

James says:

I think HTC have done a great job to target a section of the market HTC currently do not have. Compared to othe feature phones that claim as to be ‘smart’ the HTC Smart is a major contender. It’s perhaps not the best hardware but the OS seems very fluid and it will certainly bring more features to the average mobile phone user. The carriers will also benefit from this as it means every customer will need some kind of data plan.

On the downside, if the carriers sell tens of thousands of Smart’s in the UK it will put more demand on the Networks to improve data coverage. I know O2 have already mentioned this at the press conference, stating another 1500 masts but the proof of the pudding… It’s no good using Facebook or the web if it takes ages to load a page, users just wont put up with that.

Let’s just hope that the other networks also follow suit and upgrade their infrastructure.

Posted by: Matt