The build quality is the first thing you notice and it is great with a matte aluminium finish and a full glass front. It has a really good feel to it, although on the downside, there is a slight creak on the bottom left corner when the phone is pressed relatively hard. There is also a possibility of the auto focus lens in the camera displacing itself, and while this will not affect how well the camera works, there is a rattle when you shake the phone.

Although the phone runs android version 4.0.4, HTC have skinned android with Sense 3.6 (when upgraded to Ice Cream Sandwich, Sense 3.0 is what you get out of the box), which give you a very different experience to other phones. They have added several features, and one of the first ones you will notice is the 'ring' lock screen. This allows you to dock up to 4 applications on the lock screen and drag them into the ring in order to start them up immediately. This has, in my opinion, lost some functionality in the latest update now that you are forced to have the same apps displayed on the home screen dock bar and the lock screen dock. Another key feature of HTC Sense is the 'widgets' you can place on the home screens. These are large previews of apps, which allow you to use many of their features without opening them, such as the weather widget which constantly displays the weather. These are much improved from the stock android widgets and deliver a much more user friendly experience.

The phone has a 4.3" S-LCD Gorilla Glass screen with a screen resolution of 540x960 (qHD) giving you 256 pixels per inch. This is great on paper, but the qHD screen is not widely supported by apps yet meaning that many apps won't initially be available, however developers are working on making the process quicker. On the upside, the screen does support 720p HD videos making the movie watching experience pleasurable, even on a (in terms of watching movies) smaller screen. However there are times when individual pixels become visible and if you press hard enough the screen area around your finger will discolour. These flaws are irritating but do not occur often when in general use.

The phones Qualcomm Scorpion 1.2GHz processor is more than able to handle web browsing, HD videos... or both! It keeps up with all the day to day tasks and more and when paired with the 768mb of RAM available it means you can open several applications at once and still continue to comfortably use the phone. The built in storage is less than exciting coming in at a low 1GB which, although seems a lot at first, is already half filled up with the pre-loaded HTC Sense as well as a boat load of other bundled applications you can't uninstall. You can expand the memory with a micro SD card, and they help you on the way by bundling in an 8GB micro SD at most retailers.

The camera is 8MP and has dual flash LEDs making it excellent for taking photos at all light levels, and the built in photo effect editor means you can have a bit of fun with the pictures as well. Photography is not my area of expertise, but from an amateur point of view the pictures seem to have life like colours and both light and shadow appear correctly. There are a myriad of options to change and look through ranging from white balance to ISO.

Now onto what a phone is actually meant to be used for, calls and texts. The call quality is good, but could be improved. At most times the line is very clear, but occasionally you get a warbling tone instead of a clear line, although this is uncommon. Another one of those special features available is predictive calling. There are two ways to use this, as an example say John's phone number is 07912345678; you can either start typing the numbers ie 07912... and it will predict the number, or you can type the numbers corresponding to the letters of the contacts name ie 5 (JKL) 6 (MNO) 4 (GHI) ... and it will predict the contacts name and bring up their phone number. This makes it easy to make a call even if you don't remember the phone number. Texting is great as the keyboard again is very user friendly and the screen is big enough to display all characters easily, but small enough that you don't have to struggle to reach the characters in the middle of the keyboard. The messaging application also contains the predictive functionality to bring up a contacts phone number.

I bought this phone for £450 a year ago, but the price has now dropped quite a bit and can be bought for under £300. Even at £450 this phone was well worth it but at £300 it is a steal and this makes it a great buy considering it has all the features to match current phones and a price nearing half of many top end phones. Overall it is a great phone and although it is old, it is by no means outdated, even for a tech savvy user like me.