The HTC Radar was officially introduced last week and HTC was nice enough to give us a look at the new Windows Phone Mango device in San Francisco this morning and I’m very glad it did. The HTC Radar is a beautifully-designed smartphone that looks and feels great.
The phone feels like HTC throughout. I think it’s easiest to describe the HTC Radar as a mix of the Trophy, Legend with a hint of the Flyer/View 4G. It’s incredibly light in your hand and the brushed aluminum backing makes it feels like a premium device.
The 3.8-inch Super LCD screen is quite bright, crisp and it’s very responsive. The face has your standard Windows Phone buttons underneath the screen and the right spine has the camera button and a single volume rocker. On top, you’ll find the power/unlock button and a headphone jack and the left spine is where you’ll find the microUSB port. On the back, you have the 5-megapixel camera with a flash and there’s a bit of a hump on the bottom (similar to the View 4G) which comes off for your SIM card.
This is HTC’s first smartphone with Windows Phone Mango, which means you get access to new features including third-party multitasking, full Twitter integration and lots of little things like custom ringtones. I’m also excited to see the new developer tools this will enable for Windows Phone apps.
We would have loved to see a bit more horsepower under the hood, as a 1 GHz Snapdragon processor is fine but it may start to feel outdated in a dual-core world. It also would have been nice to have an 8-megapixel camera.
Still, the look, feel, design and Windows Phone Mango software should make the HTC Radar a compelling device for those who want a premium handset but don’t want Android or iOS. I can’t wait to spend more time with it.
