Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)Having used several smart phones, and used this phone for about 4 months, I believe I can give a fairly educated review. And hopefully save you some money in the process. I was going to do a pros and cons list, but I can't think of many pros other than the fact that it charges off a USB charger.
The supplied software is useless (like most of these things). You can drag and drop from your computer to the phone, but you need to find the drop folders yourself. This takes time (and effort), as the folder set up is overly complex.
Once you have some music on your phone, you'll discover it doesn't have a 3.5mm headphone jack, so you'll need an HTC headset, which is an extra (was included on the previous model) and too bulky to carry around. You also can't plug it into speakers or your car stereo for the same reason, thus you can't play your music. Other HTC models have headphone jacks, why not this one?
I haven't found a video format the phone will play. If it made the video, it'll play it. Otherwise it won't.
It runs windows mobile. So it does all the things devices running windows do - it freezes, it crashes, and it requires re-booting - FAR too often.
The HTC TouchFLO will cause you most of the frustration found with this phone. It is unable to distinguish between long or short touches, strokes and taps.... Or in fact anything that you'd expect from a touch device. If, for example you scroll through your contacts, the phone will continue to scroll until you stab the screen several times to stop it. By then it's gone past the contact you wanted, and you have to do it again, and again, and again. Eventually you'll give up and use the navigation key - which defeats the point of having a touch screen phone.
The screen is too small for the size of the phone. Navigating the internet is very difficult, so you'll need to enlarge the screen to read anything. Then you're at the mercy of TouchFLO again, as you attempt to move the page to the section you want to read. TouchFLO will activate links you didn't want (as it can't distinguish between taps, and scrolls), and it will zoom and un-zoom constantly (as it can't distinguish taps, double taps, and scrolls). Simply looking at a page is hard enough, doing anything like booking flights or a rental car is impossible.
The default web browser (Opera) doesn't open all web pages correctly, and links often remain inactive (see booking flights above). It also has Explorer, but with the small screen, it's too hard to use, and TouchFLO works differently in explorer. Opera is the lesser of the two evils.
There are no settings to change the screen from landscape to portrait. Landscape would make everything easier (slightly). Once mine opened a web page in landscape (which was great), the next time it was back to portrait. There is no setting to change it manually. I think my experience was just a Microsoft glitch.
It has limited internal memory, with an expansion slot for another micro SD card. However, the default setting is to save to the phone, which fills the memory so quickly it's no longer able to launch some programmes. Once data is saved to the phone there is no way to move it to the SD card, the only option is to delete (or connect to a computer and start the slow painful process of doing it your self). To avoid this you have to manually tell it to save to the card.
If you store data on the card, you have to manually search the card to find it. Essentially you have two storage devices, a phone, and a card. This is a very annoying problem.
Due to the phone's limited internal memory, it can only run one programme at a time and due to the slow processor speed, some programmes takes an eternity to load (Opera, for example can take up to 10 seconds and sometimes more)
The camera is about typical quality for a phone like this. The best thing I can say, is it takes photos. Not good photos, just photos. The metering and white balance are very poor, but so are most phone cameras.
To answer a call, the phone uses a `button' on the screen that you tap (rather than slide like an iphone), meaning you'll answer calls while fishing it out of your pocket. Even when it's your mother inlaw. Or accidently answer calls, even when you haven't heard the phone ring.
When it detects wireless networks, it beeps, and brings up a box asking if you want to join it. If you're in an area with lots of networks, or in a moving vehicle, the shear number of these boxes makes doing anything on the phone impossible, as you have to constantly dismiss them.
Texting is difficult due to the screen size. With the keyboard open you loose most of the screen, and still need to use the stylus to type as the `keys' are still tiny.
There is no Alarm tone. The alarms will only make one solitary beep. Adding an alarm sound, or song to the folder containing the `beep' was fruitless. Mine is totally unreliable and the alarm seems to go off around 80% of the time - you simply can't rely on it.
The recessed screen is an improvement over the previous model, as it makes it more difficult to scratch, however it doesn't come with a pouch (which the previous model did) so it'll get scratched anyway. It does however, come with a screen protector.
As a business tool, this phone misses the mark:
You can't read spread sheets on the screen, so you have to enlarge it. Then if you try to scroll, our friend TouchFLO is unable to distinguish between touching and scrolling, thus it will only highlight cells, it WONT scroll. The only way to do it is to use the stylus to move the tabs at the sides of the page (as any human finger is about 20 times too big to touch the little tabs). You can never see enough of the sheet at once to actually do anything
Word documents are usable, but due to the size of the screen, once you open the keyboard you can't read much. And again due to the limitations of TouchFLO you can move the curser, but you can't scroll through the document with out using the stylus on the tabs.
Email works well, but attachments are downloaded to the phone memory, so it quickly fills up, which then affects other programmes. Deleting emails is the only solution, and as this phone does a full sync with your email server, they're deleted off the server too.
Summary: it's a cheap, very poor imitation of an iphone. So poor that it fails at even the most simple tasks. If you've never used a smart phone before, you may be wowed by the internet and email on the phone and may not notice all of these failings. If you have used one before, this phone will drive you insane. The user interface is VERY poor. HTC has a long way to go to make this phone usable.
Verdict: Save your money. The only reason it gets two stars is that it does usually make and receive phone calls.
Click Here to see more reviews about: HTC Touch Viva T2223 Unlocked Phone with Wi-Fi, 2 MP Digital Camera, MicroSD Memory Expansion, and Bluetooth Stereo Music--International Version with Warranty (Storm Gray)
