HTC RHYME - A Phone with a Charm ( Pun intended )

Introduction: When HTC Lunched Rhyme back in the fourth quarter of 2011 , it was marketed as a phone for the fairer sex. While I personally feel a gender bias for a phone is a bit over the top, that's exactly what HTC did.

Now they did not directly aim it the female customers, it was quite evident. The phone came in plum red, with matching charger and headsets. A very innovative accessory called the charm, I will come to it later. The colour of the phone and the accessories suggest that this phone is aimed at the ladies.

Now, from a techie's point of view it's just another medium range android smarthphone.Lets have a look at the specifications.

Hardware:

• 1 GHz Qualcomm Scorpion processor.
• 768Mb of RAM
• Ardeno 205 Gpu.
• 4GB internal memory.
• 8GB SD card included.
• 3.7 inch S-LCD , which sports 480x800 pixels.
• 5 MP Rear camera.
• VGA camera in the front.
• Built in Li-ion 1600mAh Battery.
• Colours-clearwater , hourglass, plum.

Software:

• Android 2.3.5 Gingerbread
• HTC Sense 3.5
• Apps from Play Store

Design: If you look at the hardware ,it's a pretty decent configuration, it's not the high end android phone but it's no entry level phone either.

The build quality as expected from any HTC device, is pretty solid.

On the top is the unlock button and 3.5mm jack.

On the right is the volume rocker. On the left is the micro-USB slot with a dust cap, in the bottom is the pin-hole microphone. All in all a decent design and very good build quality.

The S-LCD screen is brilliant, with very good colour reproduction and good day light visibility.

The camera does a very good job too. High shutter speed means better photos in motion, and you don't miss the moment. The video is 720p and is brilliant; although the microphone picks up a lot of noise. The flash does the job in low light areas.

User interface: The rhyme comes with android 2.3.5 gingerbread pre-loaded and will give be getting ice cream sandwich pretty soon. The sense User Interface is pretty slick. Right from the lock screen to the home screen. The screen animations are brilliant. The carousal animation for the main home screen is beautiful. Full marks to the HTC UI team. The UI screenshots are shown below.

HTC sense makes life easier for the user. It integrated social networking into most of the applications.

For example is someone calls you get to see his/her Facebook status and birthday along with the profile picture. Simply brilliant. The calendar is updated with the birth dates of all your social networking contacts.

Accessories:

• Headset: It's a tangle free headset with decent audio quality. The lows are not very prominent though. The highs are brilliantly reproduced. It has switches to change and to pause the song

• Charger: Trade mark two piece HTC charger . The cable doubles as a USB data cord.

• The Charm: This is the USP of the phone. It's a smart little gadget. Basically the charm is a cube at the end of a cable. You plug it n into the headphone jack. Whenever you get a Message/Call this cube glows. The use is for the ladies with huge bags, they can put the phone in the bag and forget about it, the charm will tell them when they get a call.

• Dock: It's a charging station along with  Bluetooth speaker. Not available in the Indian market.

Verdict: The HTC rhyme is a brilliant little phone. It's a phone NOT just for the ladies. The performance is brilliant; the looks are brilliant, the price tag is brilliant, which makes the phone brilliant. So if you are on a budget and if you want a high end phone Rhyme is your choice, whether you wear a lipstick or not.

About Author: Praveen is Gadget freak and a tech writer.A musician my heart a coder by profession. He also specializes in rooting and installing aftermarket OS's on android devices.