HTC Radar review

Windows Phone 7.5 Mango brings a new browser – IE 9 Mobile. This uses the same JavaScript engine as Microsoft’s desktop variant, which means speedy browsing and one of the most accomplished browsing experiences you’re likely to find on a mobile. Our tests showed that, over a Wi-Fi connection, IE 9 Mobile was quicker to load web pages then an iPhone 4 running iOS4, but our test HTC Radar phone went back to HTC before our Apple iPhone 4S arrived, so we weren’t able to compare it to Apple’s latest. There’s still no Flash support, unfortunately.

Voice Search has also been vastly improved with Mango, meaning you can use voice commands for pretty much anything from searching the web in Bing to composing texts and emails. The accuracy isn’t always spot on but we found that the device usually hits the mark as long as you keep it short and specific – i.e. ‘open Marketplace’ or ‘open Bing’. HTC’s Hub is also present, as is the company’s Watch (video-on-demand service) and sound enhancements, which you can tinker with in Settings and apply SRS Surround and Equaliser settings to the Radar’s music player.

Microsoft Office Mobile is another key aspect of WP7. This lets you save documents to SkyDrive, Office 365, SharePoint and the phone’s memory, so you’re well served for local and cloud storage. Office Mobile also lets you compose, edit and create new documents, which you can sync with SkyDrive or Office 365. It’s a great application and the addition of 25GB of free storage on Microsoft’s cloud-based SkyDrive is a massive bonus. Other notable Mango improvements include a unified inbox, Bing Scout (local search based on your position), Bing Vision (Microsoft’s version of Google Goggles), smarter Tiles (they now display more information, such as when you have new tweets) and the ability to put groups of people (work contacts, for instance) into a ‘Group’ where you can keep tabs on them.

The Radar has a good camera and, in the shape of Windows Phone 7.5 Mango, an excellent operating system. The phone’s main drawbacks are the lack of Flash and the minimal storage space, but this is still a seriously accomplished mid-range smartphone.