HTC Rhyme

Now here’s a smartphone that’s totally different from the rest, it is plum in color! HTC Rhyme is definitely not trying to win over the male population, but it’s certainly got what’s needed to win over the women folk. Let’s see if the HTC Rhyme has got the specs that the ladies are looking for.

Design
HTC didn’t stop at just painting the phone plum, the whole package is plum in color like the ear phones, the package in which it comes and the lighted indicator charm. The HTC Rhyme measures in at 4.69 x 2.39 x 0.43 inches and with these numbers it is pretty small and fits perfectly even in smaller hands. The ladies will be glad to find that this phone comes with a front facing VGA camera as they can now check their make up whenever they want especially before that special date. This camera is located right above the 3.7 inch WVGA TFT screen that is also touch-sensitive. Right below the screen sit the four capacitive buttons that are customary on HTC phones. On the left side of the phone is the volume rocker that seems to be flush with the chassis making it a little hard to press without looking at it first. Meanwhile on the top is the power/lock button but there are no issues with this button as it is large and you won’t miss it. HTC Rhyme comes together with a set of ear phones right out of the box and what’s even more impressive is that HTC throws in a desktop charging dock with the phone too. When you plug in the lighted charm into the headset jack, it lights up whenever you get a new message or a call which is cool as you won’t be disturbing anyone around you. It is just there for eye candy since there are other ways of being discrete like the silent mode for instance.

Features
A Qualcomm MSM8655 1GHz CPU is what powers the HTC Rhyme. Thanks to this CPU, the HTC Sense UI on the phone feels very responsive as it provides enough speed to keep the phone running without any problems. There is also a 768MB of RAM to add on to the speed of this phone. The HTC Rhyme also did quite good on our benchmark app as it produced a score of about 1500, just a little shy off the HTC ThunderBolt’s score of 1700.

The HTC Rhyme runs the HTC Sense 3.5 UI on the Android v2.3.4 Gingerbread and it’s as awesome as ever and we think the ladies are going to love it. It even has new stuff too which means more in the way of customization. Apart from the 6 different lock-screen styles you can choose from – each displaying updates on something like your Friend Stream or Weather – it gives you the option of having four icons on the lock screen that allows you to access the app that you want quickly. There are a whole load of widgets for you to play around with and we like the Endomondo which is new. What it does is it lets you choose different work-out modes and then lets you compete with your friends on Facebook too. Friend Stream is still around which means you get all your social networking updates in one place. Not only that, you can update your status or Tweet about your new shoes from the app itself. Even then, we still used the Facebook app as it has more features like allowing you to chat with your friends. HTC Sense has made looking for your contacts on the phone much better too with the HTC Rhyme. Click the People icon in the app drawer and you will see all your contacts listed out in alphabetical order with their photos on the left side too. What’s more it brings up four icons when you click on a contact which gives you the options of checking their details, threads, updates and gallery. The virtual keyboard on the HTC Rhyme is great and everything but of course the 3.7 inch display makes it a little cramped and you might not enjoy messaging as much.

There’s not much to talk about the screen on the HTC Rhyme. It’s a basic 3.7 inch TFT with WVGA resolution. It is rather small given the phones we see these days plus it’s difficult to see things on the screen under sunlight. However it still does give sharp text and images as well.

The 5MP camera has got an update on its app and there are new features that are to be loved. For instance, we get to choose from nine different scene modes plus there are 14 different visual effects, even face detection as well as a lot of freedom to meddle with things like exposure and contrast. Thanks to its responsiveness, you can actually count on the on screen shutter button to snap your pictures instantly. Moving on to picture quality, pictures taken in brighter settings looked good as they had some good details and the color reproduction was great. Pictures taken indoors still were a little grainy even with the LED flash present. Although videos can be taken at 1280 x 720p resolution, at a rate of 15fps, there’s not much to like with the results.

Sticking to the trusted WebKit browser that has produced excellent results in the past, the HTC Rhyme excels in the web browsing department as it not only supports Flash, it loads complex pages with ease. Navigational and browsing tools like pinch to zoom and scrolling can be done with minimum hassle. It uses Verizon’s 3G EVDO Rev A data network and that definitely provides some pretty awesome speeds.

Moving on to the most important thing on a phone for any woman, the call quality, as this has to be good so they can talk to their friends all day. We are glad that it isn’t bad as we are told that our voice is clear on the other end while we experienced the same good quality. However there is some background ‘hiss’ but that can be minimized if you keep the volume at medium level. The 1600mAh battery was able to last us almost the whole day with average use like making a few phone calls, checking our Facebook notifications and checking our email now and then.

Pros and Cons
Latest HTC Sense UI on the HTC Rhyme means extra goodness. It also has a compact design, perfect for the ladies. Camera performed well and the phone comes with a lot of goodies like ear phones for instance.

Color might not be to everyone’s liking and we can’t get over the weird part where the battery can’t be removed on our own.

Conclusion
HTC Rhyme’s plum color might not be everyone’s first choice, but get over that and you have in your hands a really good phone.