HTC Explorer Review

The HTC Explorer with its affordable price tag has become a sweet spot for budget friendly Android smartphones that not only offers a comparatively good smartphone experience but also does not compromise on the features. It is the most affordable Android smartphone to date that is more or less similar to the HTC Wildfire S which retails at just a few bucks more but practically both the phones are same with only one or two differences. So, let us see whether this budget friendly hottest foray of HTC will pall in the crowd or will it grow back like a phoenix from the ashes?

The HTC Explorer is so named not for the reason that it is a mobile phone for Bear Grylls-style explorers, but for the reason that it is designed for people exploring the world of smart phones for the first time. The HTC Explorer is the cheapest smart phone currently available in the HTC range that has been especially designed to be easy to use.

With its exciting features and a reasonably priced rate, this courageous little smartphone appeals to those people most who are looking for a compact set and even to those users who are very nearly getting started in smartphones.

While unboxing the HTC Explorer, you will find a very modest package.

• A Compact Charger
• A MicroUSB Cable

The phone does not come with a headset. Although, it is an entry level model yet majority of us were hoping for it. Apart from that, you will also need to buy a microSD card if you want some additional storage out of the box as the HTC Explorer offers very limited storage.

Apparently, the HTC Explorer resembles with any other HTC smartphone counting the matte-finished rear with the thick metallic strip inscribed HTC running below the camera lens. On the whole, the phone bears a rugged-feeling rubberized texture on the back. The HTC Explorer is very small in size that makes it easy to fit into a pocket.

The outer shell of the HTC Explorer is made of patterned plastic that has a rubber like feeling that creates an impression of toughness thus matching with its name. Although, the phone itself is not essentially shock proof however we still are pleased about the tough feel of the handset.

Thanks to its compact size, handling of the HTC Explorer is outstanding. The very small body and rounded corners make it feel like a pebble in the hand.

Advantages

• The HTC Explorer measures 101.3 x 59.4 x 12.4 mm and is smaller in real life than it appears in pictures.
• The phone will be available in black or dark blue, but you can swap covers and make it purple, orange or white.
• The phone is completely made of plastic and weighs only 105 grams.
• Although, the resolution is not so impressive but viewing angles are reasonably good for the class - contrast gets worse when the screen is looked at an angle, however it's not too bad.
• Overall, it is an extremely good display taking the price tag into consideration as well as the capacitive screen's response is excellent.

Disadvantages

• The screen measures 3.2-inches across which is pretty much small and such a diminutive display isn't great for surfing the Internet.
• If you take a close look at the rubbery plastic battery cover, you will notice some mold seams that destroy the impression to some extent.
• Rugged cover of the HTC Explorer is another faux of the phone, with the rubbery feel and patterned texture, it look like that the handset can take some rough treatment.
• The HTC Explorer bears a 3.2" LCD display with HVGA resolution (320x480 pixels) which is not the sharpest display around.

The HTC Explorer brings into play the most recent version of Android, 2.3.5 Gingerbread (each update is named after a delicious snack). HTC contributes its peculiar features on top of Android with its proprietary Sense interface.

The Sense interface brings an uncomplicated and clear-cut user experience. The most recent version is Sense 3.5, although the Explorer utilizes the particularly adapted Sense 3.5.a which is an alternate that is same but without the fancy animations thus it works better on phones that do not have such fancy specifications. HTC has put sufficient effort into making the phone as easy to use as possible.

Advantages

• The HTC explorer runs on Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread OS skinned with the famous HTC Sense 3.5 UI. Power up the device and you are greeted with the 3.2-inch screen that boasts of a resolution of 320x480 pixels.
• The new and improved Sense user interface offers the opportunity to swiftly access any 4 functions that you wish from the lock screen. The user interface is relatively handy if you want to rapidly access your contacts, messages or even the camera.
• Furthermore, the user interface of the HTC Explorer is simple enough. You can simply drag the shortcut icons from the lock screen into the circle at the bottom of the display to immediately get redirected to that particular app.
• True to the Sense UI custom, you have the choice of 7 customizable home screens that you can load with shortcuts and widgets. In addition, the drop down notifications bar provides you immediate access to lately used apps as well as a rapid select option for network, Bluetooth, memory and more.
• The quick boot feature is also enabled on the HTC Explorer. The apps maintain their position even after the restart thus if you were browsing a website prior to turning the handset off, the browser of the HTC Explorer will restore your session.

Disadvantages

• There are typically seven home screen panes and scrolling between them is intertwined. One more difference from the Rhyme is that you cannot add and delete panes. There are 7 of them and that are non-negotiable.

Multimedia on the HTC Explorer is comparatively decent if you stick with the fundamentals. Browsing the Internet on the HTC Explorer, watching videos and so on work well on the device. Furthermore, you can even run flash heavy websites after downloading the flash from the Android market place. The HTC Explorer also supports a large range of audio as well as video formats. You can also download a few games with the variety of free apps available in the marketplace.

Advantages

• Sharing a photo on the HTC Explorer as well as uploading videos straight to YouTube is extremely easy.
• HTC Explorer supports multi-touch and you can get the most out of it while browsing your images.
• The video files are displayed as a grid and can be shared over Bluetooth, MMS, and email, YouTube or Facebook. Furthermore, good enough codec support is also available for the video player.
• A full screen toggle is offered on the HTC Explorer video playing interface i.e. you can stretch the video to the screen's aspect. In addition, you can also scrub through videos along with sound enhancement options.
• On the other hand, the Explorer also offers the SRS sound enhancement in addition to a regular set of equalizer presets when you connect a headset.
• The HTC Explorer does comparatively well in the audio quality test. When connected to an active external amplifier, the Explorer generates satisfactorily clear output with above average loudness.
• The HTC Explorer is also armed with an FM radio, which possesses a comparatively straightforward interface. It repeatedly scans the area for the available stations as well as lets you mark some of them as favorite. It also supports RDS and permits loudspeaker playback.

Disadvantages

• The web pages on the HTC Explorer render quite slower than you would expect, furthermore the apps crash on more than one occasion as a result of heavy multitasking.
• Owing to the small screen, you would not find it amazing to watch too many videos on the device.
• There's no sharing on Twitter by default and there's no DLNA connectivity either.
• The HTC Explorer possesses an internal memory of 90MB, which is not sufficient and thus you need to transfer content to the memory card over and over again.

The HTC Explorer comes with a 3MP fixed-focus camera with which you can take up to 2048x1536 pixels photographs. However, there is no LED flash to go with it. The camera interface is very space efficient. Furthermore, the handset is also supportive of Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0. The 3G-enabled handset is capable of running 7.2Mbps of HSDPA speeds, along with more or less 384kbps of HSUPA speeds. YouTube, Places, Navigation and Google Maps are among the other things that should suffice the internet connectivity needs of peculiar mobile users.

Advantages

• The camera interface is extraordinarily space competent. The majority of the controls are present on the right side of the viewfinder, along with the virtual shutter in the center. Furthermore, the still or video toggle is present above the virtual shutter key moreover the Effects button together with the Gallery shortcut is present below it. There's a virtual zoom lever on the left side of the screen.
• Geotagging is also available as an option with the HTC Explorer.
• The phone comes with a basic face detection which can be used for taking self portraits. This means you simply have to turn on the option and then point the camera at yourself. Once the HTC Explorer sees your face, it snaps a photograph.
• The image quality is good if you want to share them on Facebook where people will view them downscaled to fit their 15-22 inch monitors.
• The interface of the camcorder resembles the still camera's and there are large numbers of customizable options with this one.
• The HTC Explorer offers great connectivity in a tiny package. The handset comes with a complete connectivity set. There's quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and blazing fast tri-band 3G: 14.4Mbps downlink and 5.76Mbps uplink thanks to HSPA. The local wireless connectivity has Wi-Fi b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0. Thus, you have a long list of options for connecting to a PC.
• Furthermore, the apps can be set to turn off automatically after a set period of time of inactivity to save the battery.

Disadvantages

• With HTC Explorer, the photos taken possess loads of noise which has been over sharpened making things worse.
• The video result of the HTC Explorer is quite disappointing. Videos are shot in .MP4 format in VGA resolution (that's 640x480 pixels) at 19 frames per second (well below the 24fps limit), consequently the majority of the videos are jerky. The video quality is below average, even for a VGA shooter.
• There is no secondary video call camera apart from the fixed focus camera.

As a handset for those people who are looking to dip their toes into the world of smartphones, the HTC Explorer has apparently had some thought invest in how people will essentially utilize it without letting go too many full-fledged features. We enjoy that the HTC Explorer incorporates the majority of the intuitive HTC Sense features that we appreciate so much in highly developed and feature-rich HTC phones, for instance the deep social networking incorporation and completely customizable home screens.

In addition, we also like the Wi-Fi capabilities of the handset along with that the capacitive touch screen is not over-sensitive as well as the display is brilliant. Despite the fact that, none of the specs are high-end, everything does its job pretty well. Apparently, there is no 'wow' element but the point is that it does work and work well - that's important.

To put it briefly, the HTC Explorer is a mid-budget Android phone designed for smartphone newbies. It runs a particularly customized version of the HTC Sense user interface, planned to run efficiently on the Explorer's scaled-down processor, as well as make easier to use in favor of Android beginners along with non-techies. However it holds the supremacy of a smartphone, together with mobile email, web browsing, Facebook & Twitter, GPS with Google Maps, a music player, media player as well as downloadable games along with apps from the Android Market. With its intuitive operating system skin, the HTC Explorer would make an outstanding first smartphone.