HTC Rhyme Review, Specs, Price, cell phone reviews, HTC has officially unveiled the HTC Rhyme in a press event in New York City. It is previously known as the HTC Bliss as we reported earlier. The mid-range Android phone is specifically designed to target the ladies market.
The sleek and slender phone has a 3.7-inch display with 480 x 800 resolution pixels. It is powered by a 1GHz solo-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S2 processor coupled with 768MB of RAM. The device has a 5-megapixel imager with LED flash and a front facing VGA camera. The primary camera has face detection capability and able to record 720p HD video. Measuring at 116.8 x 61 x 10.1 mm and weighs 130g, the HTC Rhyme does share similar size of the HTC Desire S.
There is a slight update on the software side, the HTC Rhyme is running on Google Android version 2.3 (Gingerbread) with HTC Sense UI 3.5. The minor 0.5 update provides a minor design refresh, bringing a cleaner homescreen, improved camera controls and a few tweaks on the user interface. Other common connectivity options are supported, including HSDPA up to 14.4Mbps, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS.
Hardware
The featherweight candybar-style phone looks almost as delicious as it sounds with a pearlized grape-colored border peeking out from behind the WVGA touchscreen. That accent extends around the display, cutting across the back of the phone, much like a piece of ribbon would wrap around a present — almost identical to the Status or Flyer tablet, only with a dose of Dimetapp purple. A more subdued shade of plum makes up the rest of the back, which is constructed out of HTC’s signature soft-touch plastic.
Turn the phone over and you’ll find a single LED flash, 5 MP camera, a speaker and some electrical charging points — not to be confused with the inductive variety on the Droid Incredible 2. By popping off the battery cover, users will see a 1600mAh battery along with an 8GB pre-installed microSD card. Embedded into the back, there’s the phone’s antenna. You’ll get a sneak peek of what’s inside the phone through the translucent casing, but that’s about all you’ll be able to see as the battery is non-removable, much to our disappointment.
Performance and battery life
The Rhyme features Qualcomm’s MSM8655, a 1GHz Snapdragon processor with Adreno 205 GPU – the same processor found in the Incredible 2 and the HTC Thunderbolt. Sure, it’s no dual-core processor but it’s still snappy and powerful with 768MB of RAM to keep it trucking. Switching between screens was responsive, with quick animations keeping up with us. Much to our dismay, we started to see some lag once the apps were opened, taking an extra second to respond. Similar to the Incredible 2 and the Thunderbolt, the Rhyme clocked a Quadrant score of around 1,400 to 1,700. Radios include the standard WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 + EDR, CDMA / EVDO Rev. A and GPS / AGPS. The sound was acceptable during regular calls, but reminiscent of a tin can while on speaker — especially when compared to calls made on the iPhone 4.
One of the biggest advantages of this phone was the battery life. With a promised 440 minutes (around seven hours) in active use, we were able to get through the entire day and into the night without having to recharge. After using the phone throughout the day to snap photos, check emails and send out a few tweets, we left the phone unplugged overnight and still had some juice left over in the morning. Putting the battery to the test, we ran a video on loop until it sucked the battery dry — a task which took around seven and a half hours — quite an impressive feat for an Android phone. When you compare this phone to one like the HTC Thunderbolt, which sucked the battery dry in around five hours and 47 minutes, not having 4G almost seems like an upside.
Camera
One of the things we like most about the Rhyme is the camera function. Although not extremely top-of-the-line, the feature lets us add fun effects like Vignette and Distortion without having to download an additional app and relying on internet access to doctor our photos. Like a point-and-shoot, the phone’s autofocus camera allows users to select options like action, portrait burst, HDR and panorama to optimize mobile picture-taking. For more established photographers, there are also manual settings like white balance, ISO and resolution for even more customized tweaking.
The rear-facing camera snaps 5MP stills, while the front-facing one maxes at at VGA resolution. The backside shooter also captures sharp 720p video and has options for lower resolution capture and slow-motion speeds. The front-facing camera can capture video as high as 640 x 480, and has options for low resolution video as well. When it comes to recording camera flicks, sound quality was decent, especially when capturing the general sounds of New York City – clearly the star in all our videos. In both video and picture-taking mode, the camera can be adjusted by tapping the screen along with zoom using the volume rocker or slider option.
HTC Rhyme specifications :
* Android OS 2.3.4 (Gingerbread)
* Qualcomm MSM8255 single core processor at 1GHz
* 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, geo-tagging and LED flash
* S-capacitive touchscreen 3.7-inch LCD (~ 252 ppi pixel density)
* Secondary VGA camera for video calling
* candybar style design
* Messaging SMS, MMS, Email, Push Email, IM
* 2G Network: GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
* 3G Network: HSDPA 850 / 900 / 2100
* Video 720p
* HTML browser
* Stereo FM radio with RDS
* Games
* GPS with A-GPS support
* Java MIDP emulator
* GPRS * EDGE * HSDPA at 14.4 Mbps to 5.76 Mbps HSUPA *
* Wi-Fi 802.11 b / g / n, Wi-Fi hotspot
* Bluetooth 3.0 with A2DP, EDR
* microUSB v2.0
* Internal storage 4 GB RAM
* 768 MB microSD card slot up to 32GB, 8GB included
* Accelerometer
* HTC Sense UI 3.5
* Touch controls
* Integration SNS
* Digital compass
* Organiser
* Voice recorder
* Audio Player: MP3/AAC + / WAV
* Video Player: MP4/H.263/H.264
* Standard battery Li -Ion 1600 mAh
* Google Search, Maps, Gmail
* YouTube, Google Talk, Picasa
* Dimensions: 116.8 x 61 x 10.1 mm
HTC Rhyme Price :
US $ 550.00 (Update December 2011)
