Windows Phone 7 has been with us since last October, where the first flurry of handsets came quickly with a trio from HTC, the HD7, HTC 7 Mozart and HTC 7 Trophy being joined by the Samsung Omnia 7 and LG Optimus 7.
Since then, things have been a little quiet on the hardware front, with the Dell Venue Pro only just surfacing.
However, we anticipate the arrival of an update to the Windows Phone software very soon, and of course Nokia's recent announcement that it is joining forces with Microsoft on the smartphone front has turned heads.
Now we've a new piece of hardware to gawk at too, the HTC 7 Pro. This is the first Windows Phone 7 smartphone to have a slide-out QWERTY keyboard and, as such, it is an obvious candidate for the businessperson. But if it's well designed and sleek enough, it might be a surprise consumer success too, just like the old HTC TyTN II was.
On the old TyTN II you had to tilt the screen manually, so the automatic tilt here is nice to see. The mechanism on the review unit was initially a little sticky, but quickly became smooth and snappy, albeit slightly wobbly at times.
Size-wise, the HTC 7 Pro isn't too much of a beast considering it packs a full keyboard. The overall weight of 185g is a bit hefty, but the dimensions of 117.5 x 59 x 15.1mm aren't too bad.
And the general build quality, aside from that sticky hinge, is good. There's a metal backplate and solid plastic elsewhere with a nice chrome edging to the screen.
And under the screen there are three buttons you'll find on all Windows Phone 7 handsets. There's a Start button, Back button and Search button. These are all touch sensitive rather than being physical buttons. It's nothing fancy, all very utilitarian.
The screen is not huge, but adequate, being a 3.6 inch, 480 x 800-pixel capacitive offering. The HTC 7 Pro is very similar in spec to the rest of its Windows Phone 7 brethren, but lifted by the presence of that keyboard.
Interface
Windows Phone 7 is very heavily controlled by Microsoft, so that no third parties are allowed to skin it. That means every Windows Phone 7 handset looks and feels substantially similar to every other.
Network operators and manufacturers can add their own influence, but the scope is minimal and comes in the shape of apps and services rather than massive user interface changes.
So it will come as no surprise if you've seen any of our other Windows Phone 7 reviews to know that the Home screen here is based on 'tiles'.
These are vast square and sometimes rectangular icons that link you to apps, show you data and can take you to web links or other discrete bits of information.
You can move these tiles around with a long press and drag so that your most used shortcuts are at the top of the list when you flip into this Home screen. Any tiles you don't need are removed by hitting the small pin icon that appears when you long press.
The Home screen can get very long if you like lots of shortcuts, and this single vertical list arrangement is nowhere near as hospitable to those who like a lot of shortcuts as Android's multiple Home screened arrangement.
Windows Phone 7 arranges its data around 'hubs'. There's a Music and Videos hub, an Office hub, a People hub and so on. The idea is that stuff is grouped together logically so that you don't have to do much hunting around for it.
The system is unlike anything on any other smartphone, and it is something of an acquired taste. We aren't entirely sure we like the long horizontally scrolling screens that bleed into each other, but if you aren't too bothered about a preconfigured order being placed on your stuff, then it is easy to get around.
Overall though, the touchscreen experience is very slick, and rarely falls apart under the finger. For instance, the slide under the finger is nearly always exact and predicatable. We don't like to say it too much, but it feels a lot like experience on the iPhone, for example.
One annoying factor with a phone that has a slide out landscape keyboard - the home screen OS doesn't rotate, so you have to use it long-ways even though you've just flicked back to the main display in the middle of typing.
Like other Windows Phone 7 handsets, you aren't going to get the best out of the HTC 7 Pro unless you are a Microsoft fan through and through.
Contacts, for example, can be entered onto the handset directly, or acquired from your SIM card, but there is no way to synchronise with Outlook via the desktop. You first need to get Outlook data off your computer and into Windows Live. For reasons we can't fathom, Microsoft just doesn't want you to do desktop synchronising of contacts any more. Odd, since the other major smartphone platforms are happy with that.
Still, Facebook is supported as well as Exchange, and Google too. 
Posted in: HTC
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