HTC Aria (AT&T)

Call quality: We found call quality on the HTC Aria clear: we could hear callers loud and without distortion, while callers said they had no problem hearing us, as well. Another plus is that regardless of how close you hold the smartphone to your face, the “End Call” button never seems to get “accidentally” hit. Additionally, there was no degradation in call quality when we used the speakerphone or when we used a Bluetooth headset, and we could still hear callers in a noisy environment, such as a crowded store.

Audio quality: Playback of music over the HTC Aria’s speaker is decent; songs sounded loud, but a bit tinny.The Aria sports a 3.5mm headset jack so you can use your own high-end headphones to listen to music stored on the Aria. That said, the Aria comes with headphones that are also cell phone compatible so you can take calls over them, as well. Additionally, the smartphone supports stereo Bluetooth so if you prefer to go wireless, you can always listen to tunes via an optional Bluetooth-enabled stereo headset.

Menu/phone book: The HTC Aria runs Google Android Operating System (OS) 2.1 the same as the OS currently found on some of the more recent Android phones to hit the market. Although, the HTC Aria doesn’t have the speedy 1GHz processor found in cell phones like the DROID X or HTC EVO 4G, it does have an optimized 600Mhz processor that is plenty fast. So it will still load web pages quickly (it also has pinch and zoom for web pages), play streaming videos without any lag time, and switch between apps on the cell phone with ease. The other main feature the Aria sports is HTC Sense, an overlay that sits on top of the OS that adds more functionality and features to the cell phone. Additionally, the cell phone has some AT&T features such as AT&T radio, Mobile Video, AT&T Navigator and Maps, and AT&T Family Map that lets you locate family member’s phones are located on a map.

HTC Sense offers seven customizable screens and Android and HTC widgets to help personalize the cell phone. It also has Footprints an application that allows you to take a picture of a place, get all the information available about it from the web including a map, and even add a note. The idea is that whenever you go back to that place you can revisit or just share it with friends. Additionally, the Aria has the new Friend Stream feature that lets you view all the updates (including pictures, Facebook updates, and more) for your contacts in one place. That means you don’t need to go to the Facebook app to look for just a few updates from a list of people who might not all be in your contacts. Once you add a contact to People, you can opt to link their Facebook information. More importantly all the latest interaction with people listed in contacts will appear underneath the name. For example, that person’s latest Facebook status update will appear, or a number that signals new messages from the person whether its e-mail, text message, or voicemail.

Overall, the user interface is fairly straightforward and icon friendly. To access the cell phone’s applications simply select the up arrow key and main menu screen appears. Here are a few things to note about navigation. If you’re in a screen and want to go back to the previous screen simply press the back arrow. If you want to exit a program simply press the button with a picture of a house. Whenever you’re in an application and want to do more press the Menu key and a set of options will appear.

Google’s Android OS is really all about having all your contact information in one spot and constantly synched. When we say all your contact information we mean all – including social networking sites, multiple e-mail accounts (corporate e-mail or web-based e-mail), messaging (messaging is threaded – so you can see a complete text message conversation in one view), and even photo services where you may have accounts created. You can add all pertinent account information easily when you set up the device. If you want to sync with your computer simply connect it via the included microUSB-to-USB synching cable and it will appear as an additional drive on your desktop, making it easy to drag and drop files from a computer to the cell phone’s MicroSD card.

Camera/video: The HTC Aria has 5-megapixel camera with autofocus, but lacks a flash and a tiny mirror for snapping self portraits. Overall, picture quality is solid (colors are true and details are sharp) and we’re happy to report it has a fairly fast shutter. Once you snap a picture, you can save it, trash it, or share it to a multitude of options including Flickr, Facebook, Twitter (the app is called Peep), Bluetooth, and various messaging options. There are a quite a few camera settings: you can adjust White Balance, ISO Settings, Metering, Set a self timer, Exposure, Contrast Saturation, GeoTagging, and Color Effects (Normal, Grayscale, Negative, Sepia, Solarize, Posterize, and Aqua).

Additionally, you can view and shoot videos on the cell phone. Shooting videos is pretty easy and the quality is acceptable.

Music: As noted, the HTC Android smartphone has a music player. You can listen to songs stored in MP3, AAC (Apple’s audio format), and WMA (Microsoft’s audio format) formats. There aren’t many music-centric features included in the player, but it has the ones we’ve come to expect: Repeat, Shuffle, and Playlists (you can even create them on the fly – nice!). Plus, you can save tunes stored in your cell phone as a ringtone Another plus is that you can share songs via Bluetooth.

The HTC Aria comes with a 2GB microSD card and can accept up to a 32GB microSD card. Out-of-the box you will have plenty of room to store music on this cell phone. Besides adding your own music to the cell phone, there are quite a few free music applications that you can download from the Marketplace such as Pandora. Plus, the HTC Aria also has AT&T Radio and a FM radio, however, you’ll need to plug-in headphones with a 3.5mm headset jack in order to use it.

Connectivity/Bluetooth/WiFi:You can do a lot with Bluetooth on this cell phone. Besides easily being able to connect to a Bluetooth headset (we found call quality was decent when we used the Motorola T505), you can also transfer contacts and music. The HTC Aria also has built-in WiFi, so you can use this smartphone to log onto available WiFi networks to surf the Web or send/receive e-mail. It’s a nice feature and it just takes moments to set up. The only thing you need to know is the WiFi network you want to use and password if needed. Additionally, the cell phone comes with AT&T HotSpots so you can log onto any local WiFi HotSpot provided by AT&T. We should note that surfing the Web on the Aria was fast either via the 3G connectivity or WiFi. There’s not much you can’t do with this HTC smartphone when connected to a WiFi network.

Look and feel: The HTC Aria’s petite stature really sets this Android phone apart from the others currently available. It’s small, but not too small. It’s about a half an inch shorter than the DROID Incredible by HTC. The display is bright, crisp and offers plenty of screen real estate to use applications with ease. The back of the cell phone has a black rubberized casing with four screws. You can still remove the back of the cell phone with out having to unscrew the screws. Once you remove the back cover, the inside of the cell phone is a bright yellow. Since the HTC Aria has a streamlined design, you’ll need to remove the back cover in order to swap out the microSD card. The good news is that you will not need to remove the battery to make the swap. At the top of the cell phone sits a 3.5mm headset jack and a power button , the side has volume control, and the bottom of the cell phone has a microUSB port.

On the base of the display are four touch-sensitive icons and an optical navigation key, which are all you’ll need to navigation. The icons are Home, Menu, Back, and Search. The icons are self-explanatory; although we should add that you can press the search to search on anything in any application or screen.

Keypad:The HTC Aria is a touchscreen cell phone and as such it only has a touchscreen QWERTY keyboard, which is actually HTC’s own touch keyboard, not the one found within the Google Android operating system. We were quite impressed with the amount of times we tapped the correct letter on the first try and how well it learned the words we used on a regular basis. Since the HTC Aria is smaller than other Android cell phones currently available those with smaller fingers will probably have an easier time with the touchscreen keyboard.

We found battery life on the HTC Aria impressive. If you use the cell phone frequently to make calls, listen to music, as well as send/receive text messages and e-mail, this smartphone will last about three days before needing to recharge. However, if you consider the HTC Aria primarily a cell phone and less of a messaging device, you’ll get about a 5 days of battery life from it. We should note that depending on what applications you download to the smartphone battery life can drain faster.

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