HTC S620 review

Windows Mobile Smartphones are considered to be the poorer cousins of Windows Mobile Pocket PC Phones. Without the touch-sensitive screen or versions of Word and Excel that the latter has, Windows Mobile Smartphones aren't as functional for those that want a big barrel of productivity features in their pocket.

Windows Mobile Smartphones seem to be more suited to ordinary candybar phones with a few extras attached, than to handhelds, however the S620 is a Windows Mobile Smartphone that tries very hard to be a fancy mobile email and document manager.

Design
You'll need fairly big pockets to house the HTC S620's 63mm by 112mm frame. It isn't particularly heavy -- 120g may be more than you'd carry if you were toting many a smart phone, but it isn't over the top.

What you get in return for allocating a bit more pocket space than usual is a wide screen and a miniature keyboard. The keyboard is something we are much more used to seeing on handhelds than smart phones, and it makes all the difference as far as data entry is concerned. No more T9 to tap out texts -- you can just type on the Qwerty keys with your fingertips -- and the potential is there for you to do more than write SMS messages.

We found the keyboard pretty comfortable to use. The keys aren't huge, but they depress a fair way when tapped, and click a little too. Both factors make using them a fairly positive experience. They are usable with the S620 held in both hands, in which case your thumbs both tap away, or with the S620 in one hand where a single thumb is needed. Only if you have particularly small hands is the latter method not going to work for you.

The screen isn't special in terms of specifications. It is a classic Windows Mobile Smartphone 320x240-pixel screen, measuring 61mm (2.4 inches) across opposing corners, but it has been tilted on to its side so the 320 pixels are wide rather than tall.

That means you can read documents and Web pages more easily -- generally less scrolling is needed when reading wide-format Web pages.

The buttons that sit between the screen and keyboard could be larger -- there's a lot of empty space around them, particularly above them. Still, we found them easy enough to use, and the navigation button in particular is a comfortable shape and size. This matters because, like all Windows Mobile Smartphones, the HTC S620 doesn't have a touchscreen.

While it is pretty large, the HTC S620 feels comfortable in the hand, thanks to the rubbery finish used on the black parts of the casing that fills the sides and back. There is a silver surround to much of the front, which looks good and breaks up the black. It is wider at the top than the bottom, and gives a 'pinched' look to the handset, which is a complete optical illusion -- the sides are straight.

The sides taper in towards the back of the casing, so it isn't easy to put buttons and connectors on them. That said, a mains power button has been squeezed on to the upper-left edge, and the bottom edge has a mini USB connector for charging, connecting to a PC and connecting the provided stereo headset.

Features
There is plenty of memory on board with 128MB of storage. Some of this is used by the device itself, but still our review model had 67MB free. You can add to this with microSD cards, and the slot is under the battery cover on the left-hand side. You can hot-swap cards without powering the S620 down.