Customer Reviews

HTC S710 Vox Unlocked Smartphone with Windows Mobile 6.0, 2 MP Camera, Wi-Fi, MP3/Video Player, MicroSD Slot--U.S. Version with Warranty (Black/Silver)

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I purchased the S710 a few weeks ago and I have been very happy with it so far. I had previously been using a Sony Ericsson W810i which was a great phone for personal use and as an MP3 player, but I needed a smartphone for work. I didn't want something as large as a Blackberry and wanted to avoid a touchscreen and stylus. The S710 was the perfect compromise.
I've never used a smartphone or Windows Mobile before so I can't say if WM6 is any improvement. I was surprised to find while editing my contacts that there is no copy and paste function. I was able to find an add on application but it seems a rather strange thing not to include in a smartphone. The S710 comes with HTC's homescreen and green color scheme which is a color that most closely resembles vomit. This can be removed using a debranding app. On such a beautiful looking device it's a shame that HTC chose such a nauseating interface.
And this is a beautiful phone. The all chrome face is a bit much for my taste, but isn't as prone to fingerprints as I expected and it contrasts nicely with the matte keys and the flat black. The sides and back are rubberized plastic which feels soft but durable in your hand. The QVGA screen is clear and bright even in sunlight.
The phone feels solid and rugged and is surprisingly heavy for it's size. But considering all that's packed into so small a space and the long battery life it's an extra weight I can handle. The slide out keyboard doesn't lock when closed and has a slight wiggle. It hasn't opened accidentally but it's a strange contrast to an otherwise sturdy phone. The keys on the keyboard are small but nicely spaced and give good tactile response. But if you have large primate hands, this is not the phone for you.
The earpiece is loud, which is great for talking on NYC streets, but has noticeable distortion. It bothered me at first since my old Sony Ericsson was so clear but I have gotten used to it now. The vibrate mode is rather weak, and I don't always feel it vibrate especially when I am walking.
The lack of 3G doesn't bother me since I mainly use the data connection for email which EDGE is fine for. The smaller sized screen isn't that great for viewing web pages anyway. WiFi works well and connects to my home access point faster than my laptop. AT&T made a surprising effort at helping me get it set up for data but ultimately I had to find the configuration posted in a forum and enter it manually.

PROS:
Keypad, QWERTY keyboard, smartphone in a small package; I haven't found any other phone like it.

CONS:
Keyboard wiggle
Sound distortion

I have had this phone for about 1-1/2 months thus far, and I am extremely pleased with everything it has to offer. I purchased this phone because I do a lot of travelling in my life, and have no office. Even though I have a laptop with me at all times, it is much more convenient to be able to deal with small matters via the phone. I wanted a device that makes clear calls, can roam anywhere in the world if necessary, allows me to Skype (so I don't have to pay any ginormas roaming charges), gives me ultimate connectivity for e-mails and internet, is easy and comfortable enough to use to send e-mails (QWERTY keyboard was a must), and could manage Office documents. I achieved what I wanted.

I'll gloss over the obvious specs, and speak more about the details only discoverable while using.

Calls: Call quality is one of the best features of this phone. All calls, regardless of where I am in the world, are received clear and crisp. The Quad-band ensures you can get onto any network as well.

The contacts ability on the phone is phenomenal. The amount of personal information you can store for each contact is rediculous. However, it works out very handy if you do take the time to enter in most of it - you just need to click on the contact name, and all your options come up - for instance, if I call John on his cell and he doesn't answer, I just click on his name again, and scroll to his work number and send. No answer again, then do the same except scroll to the home number. Still no success? Try sending IM - messenger will sign in and check if John is online. STILL can't find him? Click and scroll to "Text" him, or even "send e-mail". It saves a lot of hassle of having to go into each task individually, like going into text message to text, then opening up e-mail to send e-mail, opening and signing in messenger to send an IM, etc.

There are a variety of home screens you can choose from, the one I have as my default gives me everything I need to know at a glance - tells me if I have e-mail, SMS, MSN messenger messages, WiFi, time, date, profile, appointments. You can get all the information you need to see if you need to check anything on the phone without having to unlock it. It also has a convenient "most recently used applications" row.

Connectivity: WiFi and GPRS/EDGE works extremely well, no issues at all. Using the phone as a modem is also extremely useful in non-WiFi areas, and is very simple to pair with the computer, via mini USB or Bluetooth.

I installed Skype Mobile on it, works without issue. There is some delay in the voice transfer, and there is an echo (even with the echo cancellation on), but it serves it's purpose. I don't know if the 201MHz processor is the cause of it, as I was worried about the performance of Skype without a 400MHz processor.

The version to install off the website is the smartphone version (obviously), but is labelled for the HTC S620 - this is the one to download for the HTC S710.

Bluetooth works well, and ensures security with security PIN's for each connection.

E-mail and internet: Multiple accounts can be set up, I'm not even sure how many. You can choose the frequency to download e-mails, or just select to do it manually. Occassionally the sync may fail, even after repeating the attempt - what has always worked for me is just powering down and back up again.

Internet works fine, no need to mention anymore on that.

Typing is great, as the phone remembers what you've previously typed better than any other I have ever come across. Texting or typing e-mails is a cinch, even wiith the number pad. Every letter you type in a word narrows down what the word can be - the options are all shown at the bottom of the screen. This works out great for me when sending formal e-mails - any long words can be inserted after just typing 2-3 letters - very convenient.

Phone build: Very sturdy design, nothing feels flimsy or weak. The size of the phone is fantastic, it is actually smaller than the Blackberry Pearl on the height and width, but slightly thicker. The slide out keyboard feels solid and sturdy, and the keys are designed well, concaving up to make it easy to press without much mistakes. The screen takes a couple of seconds to flip from potrait to landscape, which I have seen a lot of people swear against the phone as a result. But to be honest with yourself, how much is that really hurting you?

The screen is bright and very clear. In very bright sunlight, it isn't perfect, but it still shows up well enough to make out everything you need without problem.

Office Mobile 6.0: Works good, no problems so far. The really great part about this is that the files all keep their original formatting. A point to note though is that you cannot create new files. Simple enough solution - just transfer a blank document to the phone for each application, and use as the template. If you wish to create a file, just open and use the "Save As" function.

The is no ZIP function, so any zipped files won't be able to be unzipped.

Camera: I won't say much on this, since I personally have never really cared for a camera on a phone.

All the details on the file explorer, media player, camera, etc are as per spec, so I won't waste time commenting on that.

Basically, this is a truely great phone and I am extremely happy with it thus far. My advice to anyone looking to purchase this - you may want to compare with the HTC TyTN II (Kaiser) which I believe has just been released. Not for te tilt screen - that is non-functional in my opinion (just try seeing if you would ever need to tilt the screen when typing on a little phone, as opposed to a large laptop - rediculous!). However, the notable advantages of the Kaiser are 3G, HSPDA, HSUDA, GPS, 128M RAM, 256M ROM. It may be better suited for your daily activity.

Call me old fashioned, but I prefer to stay away from touch screen devices - it just seems to me that they beg to be dropped, and get dirty and damaged. I would still pick this model over the Kaiser, because it suits my needs perfectly, and while I wish it had the expanded connectivity, it is still more than sufficient.

Buy this phone, you will not regret it.

excelent phone, i've had ppc-6700 and a treo 650.

what i like more about the htc is the size, is quite small almost to the size of a motorola a-1200, very practical and fast.

the downside is the lack of touchscreen

Really superb operation - especially under Wi-Fi environment: instant logging-on, fast "g" navigation. The best I've ever seen so far!

I've had this phone for over a year and I love it! It's not without its faults, but overall you can't beat it. Here are some of the things I'm not crazy about:

> No 2.5mm headphone jack, just the USB
> Sometimes a little slow/glitchy, but not bad.
> Only one, not very smart, alarm clock. This one is probably a small issue for most people, but I use my phone as an alarm clock a lot and it basically treats it like an appointment, so snooze options are really funky and I can't choose the tone. There's probably a program or something I could install, but it would have been nice to not have to mess with.
> The keyboard buttons are small, but I can navigate and type still with only a few errors. (I'm a guy with slender fingers, so someone with thicker fingers would probably have more of an issue.)

Otherwise, this is a great phone, but only for the casual user. I don't think business users would have tolerance for some of the features it lacks and for the money, you could get something more suited to your needs. But someone wanting a phone that's nicer than just a run-of-mill freebie from your provider, but not a full on, business intensive PDA/phone, then this is for you.

Call quality in any mode (handset, speaker, headset) is perfect, features are really good (Word, Excel, Adobe reader, etc.), Windows Media Player, etc.

Basically, I'm only shopping again because the kids got mine wet and it shorted out. It still works, but the battery life, which was amazing before (2-3 days of moderate use without charging), isn't what it used to be. I'll be trying to either fix my phone or replace it, but not changing models unless I really have too.

I have had at least 10 different types of Smartphones. I have been using this phone for about 6 months and it is without question the best. The only negative--if you use the screen a lot, the battery life is not as strong as I would like. Every phone I have tried has this same problem.

I just realized that I have the S710 not the S710 VOX. Everything else remains the same.

I have never written a review but I hate this phone so much I had to write it, I take care of my electronics and I am so angry that I have this phone. I bought this phone about 5 months ago. Let me list the reasons why this phone is the worst tech investment ever:
1. Sometimes my mail downloads, sometimes not.
2. When it does download, sometimes the whole message downloads, sometimes it downloads partially although my settings are for the full message.
3. And now i am getting an error message about low storage space that pops up every few minutes even though i have deleted almost everything on the phone.
4. This phone is a POWER HOG! One minute its fully charged, the next hours, maybe not even a whole day it's dead. And I have power saving settings on.
5. If you enter 3 numbers for the same contact, the name shows up 3 times, not just once w/ 3 numbers connected to it.
6. I e-mailed HTC tech help DAYS ago about the memory alert and I have not gotten any response yet.

AND I know someone else who got a touchscreen HTC at the same time that I got this phone. His touch screen already has stopped working. And he also takes care of his phone.

I just want to trash this phone with a bat but it costs $400.00! Although this phone has nice features, it is not easy to use and for the hassle that it is, it's not worth the money. HTC is not ready for prime time! Instead, get a blackberry, an i-phone, get a wire and two cups... anything else but an HTC. Or you'll be very sorry.

This phone seemed soooooo awesome out of the box! It looks bodacious! It feels like high quality. You turn it on and its easy to use, sounds good, and has a great speakerphone.

But here are a couple problems I had with the phone...

Poor reception! About 3 or 4 times in the first 2 weeks of owning this phone, my reception would cut out for hours at a time no matter where I was in town.

ALARM PROBLEMS!!! I set an alarm for everyday when I wake up. Well I switched shifts so I disable the alarm on the phone... but it still wouldn't shut off!!! Every day it went off at the same time no matter how many times I deleted the alarm! and if the phone is locked it's very hard to shut the alarm off before you want to throw the phone against the wall.... Also it would activate the alarm about 50 times in the same moment, causing the device to freeze and no way to reset it, unless you take the battery out. WHICH CAN BE VERY FRUSTRATING when you're trying to sleep in.

I have read in online posts that this has happens to lots of S710 owners.

Everything else is great! good wi-fi, calls, etc.

I get this phone few days a ago. excellent phone, excellent performance, and the mobile 6 its rock.. match better then the mobile 5 (Microsoft learn something about OS for a Phone, its time that they make a real OS for a phone and not try to emitted the windows CE)

I was HTC user before with Imate K-Jam and I was havening problem with the phone when I was trying to get a call or answer call as the OS was busy and slowing the phone, most of the time I was losing the call before I get to answer.

In this version S710 it look like HTC separate the resource and like that if the OS is Busy you still get excellent performance by the phone.

The keyboard is cool and open very nice, the screen change immediately to wide screen (match faster then the Imate K-jam).

Till now that is the best phone I was ever use... I recommended if you need a small and powerful tools on the road.

THE S710 IS A FAIRLY GOOD PHONE.MY MAIN PROBLEM WITH THE PHONE IS THAT THE PROCESSOR IS SO DAM SLOW.WHEN U OPEN THE PHONE IT TAKES 3 SECONDS FOR THE SCREEN TO GO FROM VERTICAL TO HORIZONTAL. THE PHONE HAS SOME MINOR GLITCHES EVERY NOW(I DONT KNOW A SMART PHONE THAT DOSENT) AND THEN BUT NOTHING BIG.I DONT LIKE THE WAY THE PAGES ARE DISPLAYED WHEN USING WIFI BUT IT DOES WORK.THE BATTERY LAST LONG AND CHARGES QUICKLY.THE SIGNAL IS ALLWAYS GREAT THE HOME SCREEN IS ADJUSTABLE BUT TO A POINT.I DONT KNOW IF HTC HAS DOWNLOADABLE THEMES AT THEIR WEBSITE.THE WORD PROGRAMS WORK WELL BUT THERE WAS ONE INSTANCE WHERE I TRANSFERED A DOCUMENT (PAY SPREAD SHEET) FROM A JAZJAM TO MY PHONE.IT WORKED BUT PART OF IT WAS MISING. AS FOR THE PLAYERS I DONT KNOW IF IT PLAYES MP4'S BUT EVERY FILE I PUT ON THERE PLAYS FINE THE EAR BUDS SUCK BUT YOU CAN BUY AN ADAPTER THAT HAS AN STANDARD PORT.THE MEDIA PLAYER WORKS GREAT AND IN FULL SCREEN.THE COOLEST FEATURE IT HAS IS THE ABLITY TO MAKE YOUR OWN RING TONES.YOU CAN TAKE A MUSIC FILE AND TRIM IT FOR WICH PORTION OF THE SONG YOU WANT.THE CAMERA HAS A LOT OF FEATURES BUT IT'S STILL A 2 MP CAMERA.THE SOUND IS GREAT THE EAR SPEAKER AND REAR SPEAKER ARE LOUD AND CLEAR.I DONT HAVE A BLUE TOOTH SO I CANT COMMENT ON THAT.ITS ALSO GREAT THAT YOU CAN BE ON A CALL AND NAVIGATE THE OTHER FEATURES OF THE PHONE LIKE CHECK YOUR TEXT MESSAGES WRITE A DOCUMENT ECT. IF YOU DONT LIKE STABING YOUR PHONE WITH A STICK LIKE I DO THIS IS A GOOD BUY