HTC S620 review

The device is quad-band, so international travel should not be a problem, and Wi-Fi is built in as well as Bluetooth. We had no trouble connecting to our own network and then surfing the Internet.

Because the HTC S620 supports Microsoft Direct Push technology, anyone with an office network running Exchange Server 2003 Service Pack 2 can get email sent to it over the air. The rest of us can use its built-in software to pick up POP3 email.

The mobile email and document management scenario falls down somewhat when it comes to documents, though. There are readers for Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents, and for PDFs, too. But you can only read them -- for serious working on the move you really need to be able to edit existing and create new documents (and at least Word or Excel documents), and that is not possible here.

As mentioned earlier, there is no room on the edges for buttons. You would usually expect to find a volume rocker on the edges of any handset, but HTC has replaced this with a bizarre and idiosyncratic feature called the 'JOGGR'. This is a touch-sensitive strip that sits down the right edge of the screen. You can set it up in different modes, depending on whether you want it to just be a volume controller or to be a scroller, too. You can also use its upper and lower sections as a back button and to start the email software.

We found the JOGGR a real pain. We've never found a device with touch-sensitive buttons we can use effectively, and the S620 is no different. Not only did it fail to respond to our touches as often as it recognised them, we often hit it accidentally when picking the S620 up off the table. In the end we took the option to turn the JOGGR off.

There is a 1.3-megapixel camera whose lens is on the back of the casing. It has no flash, though there is a self-portrait mirror. With no side button to launch it or take shots, you have to start it running from the applications list, which is not a huge problem. It produces shots of average quality.

Performance
Making calls was never a problem -- volume was loud and call quality clear and sharp. The speakerphone was effective, too. The music player benefits from earphones rather than playback through the speaker -- it's a pity that their connector is mini USB rather than 3.5mm.

We found the Wi-Fi to be superb for Internet browsing from our own network, and we wish more phones had Wi-Fi built in.

Battery life was a little below par. In everyday use, with a few calls, texts and some email collection, we could get away with a couple of days of usage between charges, but serious Wi-Fi use or music playback meant daily charging.

On our music rundown test, which requires continuous MP3 playback with the screen forced to stay on, we got just over 5 hours of music. That is reasonable but not outstanding.

Thanks to Expansys for providing a review sample of this phone

Edited by Mary Lojkine
Additional editing by Kate Macefield