Since 2006, I have wanted this phone.

I saw this in the Orange Shop on Contract, or priced at £250 for the handset alone. Too much for any phone, in my eyes.

After using a Nokia 6230i for the past 2 Years, things have just been basic for a Mobile, but when this little guy was sat in a Cash Converters Window for £40, I had to have him.

I got him home, and had it charge up for a couple of hours, to have a proper play around with it. My HTC is, or at least was, BT Branded, which was bad news.

Given BT had put their own software in there, it removed and altered certain features and necessary settings for the HTC to function properly. So, firstly, if its a HTC BT Branded, dont worry. The phones BT software is crap, but despair not ladies and gents. With a nice, easy USB cable (USB Mini-B Male, which is becoming very frequent in Data tranfer between Phones and MP3 players, etc) and some quick Searching, the software is easily upgradeable, and updateable to enable whatever you want - Particular more power options for the Wifi use. (Leave that Wifi on, and your Battery will run low within 12 Hours.)

Speaking of which, this is a Windows Smartphone, which means Wifi, Outlook, Word, MSN/Windows Live Messenger, Java, Application support (.cab), PDF readers.... all sorts.

What doesnt it have, then. Well, actually, it has quite a bit missing. Firstly, Flash sites dont work at all on it, without the necessary applications. It doesnt like Youtube, and this has given people the motivation to create an Application for that, too.

Basically, if something is missing, its probably got an application available on the Internet.

Im still discovering things at the moment. Recently I tried to set a reminder to go off every Friday for the next 9 Months, but it didnt want to play, and it didnt offer any advice on how to fix it.

When answering a call, the person on the other side can sound quite boxed in and slightly echo-y, and not as clear as my last phone. Text messages between you and someone else will be placed in conversations, which means you can scroll up and down to read the whole conversation between the two. And the camera, ever present on phones these days, is very clear on 2 Mega Pixels. The video recording isnt so much, and appears very blocky on both settings of MP4 (which is supposed to be a good format for recording) and 3GP (the default for many phones recording now.)

Its sometimes very slow, there is no way to close applications to free up memory without going to the task manager and ending the process from there, and its prone to crashing, but with the right Software flashed onto it, which sounds a lot harder than it actually is, and the right applications installed, this phone is a very hand piece of equipment, and arguably one of the phones that have built up the excitement for Windows Smartphone releases and got consumers demanding more from their phone.

With a pull-out keyboard on the phone on the right side, it takes some getting used to, typing messages, but does become a lot easier as you get used to it. The keyboard does make it quite weighty and bulky, though. But, all in all, I am happy with this purchase!