HTC has launched a mid-range smartphone, and is very colourful is called the Rhyme. The classic HTC look with an oblong but curvy shape, wide front speaker and a set of four buttons below the screen. Most of HTC's phones come in black, grey or white, but the Rhyme comes in purple, grey or a silvery blue, with three different shades on each.
The Design
The Rhyme is 61x119mm, is a medium sized and weighted handset, and it can easly fits very nicely in the palm of the hand - a tiny bit larger than the iPhone 4S for reference. You can easily reach every corner of the screen with your thumb without stretching. The phone isn't one of the lightest, weigh 130g but isnt bad at all and is a reasonable 10.9mm thick.
The Rhyme has combines a metal unibody chassis with rubberised plastic sections, creating a feeling of quality while maintaining that all-important grip. The rear has two rubbery plastic sections, of which the lower one is removable and hides the SIM card and microSD card slots and the battery is under here too but sadly can't be removed.
The keyboard makes the phone easy to use across the board with a simple and well thought out design. The keys are nicely spaced and it's very handy to have a second function, or modifier, on every key. Predictive text, auto correction and auto punctuation mean that the Rhyme offers efficient typing performance.
The Display
The Rhyme has a 3.7in touch screen which is on a par with the Nokia Lumia 800 for size and 480x800 resolution. This screen size is a happy medium. Believe it the screen is large enough to you can do things with it, which has a pixel density of 252ppi. Text and images look crisp and clear while offering good contrast and brightness.
the Rhyme uses Super LCD screen technology. This grants a decent image quality with good viewing angles, but the colours are noticeably weaker than those seen on Super AMOLED-packing devices, such as the Samsung Galaxy S and Nexus S.
Engine Room
The device is lacking dual-core processor, is powered with a 1GHz single-core processor which isnt that good but remember is a mid-range smartphone, is backed up with 768MB of RAM which offers a smoother experience than you might expect. However, there are times when the phone is reduced to a crawl -- usually when processes such as downloads and syncing are occurring simultaneously, and you have multiple applications running.
Regardless of the numbers, the performance of the Rhyme very impressive. Swiping between home screens was slick and lightning fast, while opening apps didn't prove to be a problem. With this spec you would expected a bit of a slowdown with tasks like graphically rich web browsing and gaming, but the Rhyme remained solidly responsive throughout.
Storage
Comes with 4 GB of available internal storage. HTC makes up for the relatively small storage by providing an 8GB microSD card
Connectivity
The Rhyme has decent connectivity behind the scenes, including Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, GPS and Digital Living Network Alliance technology.
Camera
Rhyme have a front- and rear-facing cameras which, like the previous specifications, don't spark much excitement. The rear camera is 5-megapixel with an LED flash and the ability to record video at HD 720p, while the front camera is VGA quality. However, we were pleasantly surprised with the rear-facing camera, which took excellent photos outdoors and inside. The shots came out very sharp and colourful, and the camera app is a joy to use. There are plenty of settings to fiddle with if you know a thing or two, and there is a range of effects you can use.
There is nothing special in a video but the picture quality is good like the still shots, although the footage a little jerky at times. The front camera is fair amount of graininess to the picture. But it's alright for the odd video call.
Software
The Rhyme ships with Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread. Although Google has launched Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, HTC makes up for this a bit with version 3.5 of its Sense user interface.There is no apps tray at the bottom of the home screen. Instead you have a button for the apps menu and a button for the dialler. The main home screen has a clock with weather and a set of icons down the side for mail, messages, music and the like. These can be expanded to view more detailed information, but there's no room for anything else. Also included in this version of Gingerbread is the ability to conduct video calls in Google's pre-installed Talk application, thanks to the inclusion of a 640x480-pixel front-facing camera.
The seven home screens can be customised to your liking and HTC provides a great set of widgets to do this. The lock screen has shortcuts for four of your apps and the drop down notification bar has recent apps and quick settings in addition to the regular notifications.
There are plenty of preinstalled apps, including Adobe Reader, Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter, HTC Watch and Polaris Office, meaning there's something for everyone. We particularly like the Usage Monitor, which is a feature of Android ICS that we didn't expect to get. It details your minutes, text messages and mobile data use, but regrettably you can't set any limits to make sure you stick within your tariff.
Sadly HTC will upgrade its handsets to Android 4.0 ICS starting next week, but the Rhyme isn't on its list of eligible smartphone models at the moment.
Others
The Rhyme comes with accessories, you get a pair of reasonable quality in-ear headphones that have in-line controls and match the colour of the phone. Secondly you get what HTC calls a 'charm', which is a small cube on the end of a corded lead - again in a matching colour. This notifies you of an incoming text or phone call by flashing if, for example, your phone is buried in a bag. Depending on the individual this could be handy, but you have to remember to attach it every time you use it.
The last bit of additional kit is a docking station, which is our favourite and easily the most useful of the lot. It comes in black and is magnetic so the phone is held well. Docking the phone charges it and puts it into a special dock mode that displays things like the clock, weather and music. We found this a great place to keep the phone on a desk, but the headphone socket is obstructed by the dock, which is slightly annoying.
Battery
HTC provides a 1,600mAh battery with the device, which is about average. We got a couple of days out of the Rhyme with a reasonable amount of use, but heavier users will probably need to charge it every night. Very impressed with how the battery coped with our various multimedia pursuits. Even after a solid day of music playing, HD video recording and gaming, the Rhyme had more juice in the tank than we were expecting. Used sparingly, you could well get away with charging the phone once every two days -- and in Android terms, that's quite an achievement.
Also included in the box is a charging dock, which is covered in soft fabric. This connects with the Rhyme via the charging points on the back of the phone, which means you don't need to mess about with cables or wires to top up your battery.
The dock also doubles as a handy nightstand, or a viewing platform for watching movies and looking at treasured photos. The dock also contains a pair of speakers that turn it into a portable music player. The quality of the audio produced by these speakers isn't stunning, but it's good enough to serve as an impromptu music centre when you're away from home.
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