Taking a break from its Touch range of Windows Mobile fuelled smartphones, HTC brings us the straight-faced S740, a handset aimed square at the business bod who fancies a more conventional messaging device. Sporting a standard phone design and sliding QWERTY, there’s not a touchscreen insight – good news for those yet to embrace the touchy-feely revolution.
Following on from the S730, the S740 has undergone a radical redesign to fit with HTC’s current portfolio, ditching its predecessor’s more rounded and squat body for an abnormally elongated narrow torso. Its finger smear attracting mirrored façade and angled prism rear panel is reminiscent of the more consumer focused Touch Diamond and Pro handset.
At 140 grams heavy, the S740 weighs in just below the more kingsize smartphones like the T-Mobile G1, BlackBerry Storm and HTC Touch HD but its bean pole design makes it deceptively pocket-friendly. It also means the sliding QWERTY is spacious and a delight to thumb while sizeable front keypad, navigation pad and surrounding soft keys are equally great to use.
The more conventional phone icon driven menu system means the notoriously thorny Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional OS is actually fine to work through. There’s also a choice of homescreen skins and HTC’s own design is the best, offering top line status on new SMS and emails, appointments, weather and access to web bookmarks, music player and profiles.
Along with all the standard Windows PIM functionality, Office Mobile programs and easy email set-up, the S740 is well connected with 7.2Mbps-flavoured HSDPA and built-in Wi-Fi for snappy web surfing. The embedded Pocket Internet Explorer browser lets you view web pages in full fat desktop glory or nicely fitted on the bright 2.4-inch display but we still suggest you download the much faster and user-friendlier Opera Mini.
As a business focused device, the S740 doesn’t possess the slickest multimedia feature set, epitomized by the average fixed focused 3.2-megapixel snapper and jerky CIF quality (352×288 pixel resolution) video capture. However, even without an integrated 3.5mm headphone jack or adapter, the music player, complete with an exhaustive list of audio booster, sounds lively enough.
Verdict
Suits looking for a user-friendly smartphone with an aptitude for mobile messaging and solid PIM functionality could do a lot worse than this Windows Mobile device.
Best features
Easy to use for a Windows Mobile OS powered phone
Thumb-friendly and spacious QWERTY
High speed connectivity
Not so good
Finger print attracting mirrored design
No integrated 3.5mm headphone jack or adapter
Average quality camera and video capture
Closest rivals
Nokia E71
This QWERTY-packing Symbian smartie bridges the gap between business and pleasure, thanks to its ultra slimline design, messaging prowess and multimedia friendly features.
BlackBerry Storm
The first ever BlackBerry touch phone features unique clickable touchscreen technology, HSDPA connectivity and, of course, its peerless easy to set up and use push email service.
T-Mobile G1
Yes, its design is prosaic but the first Android OS powered device is effortless to use with an ultra-responsive touchscreen, fab-to-thumb QWERTY and HSDPA and Wi-Fi connectivity.
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