The Hardware

The hardware on this handset is pretty impressive. The slider function of the device is not as polished as the T-Mobile G1, and there is a weird rattling when the device is open and you shake it around a bit due to some switch-like mechanism on the back of the screen of the device but it is still pretty rock solid, if not a tad bit annoying. The keyboard, however, is a thing of beauty. At first I was not very fond of it as it is a little small and cramped, but after an hour of playing around with it I found myself typing out emails that were several paragraphs long without accidentally hitting the wrong key. I was also tickled pink to find the keyboard came equipped with page up and page down keys as well as a variety of shortcuts to quickly access applications like Messaging, the Internet, and so on. The softkeys are my only real complaint about the keyboard as they are placed too close to the top portion of the phone making them awkward to press. As far as the keypad goes I have to say to say I was not a fan at all. The numbers are easy enough to hit but the "answer" and "hang-up" keys were just ridiculously placed on this device. HTC could have easily made the buttons a little easier to hit and why they did not do this I have no idea but it did make for many frustrating attempts to lock the device by holding now the hang-up key only to find out that you're also pressing the back key so nothing is happening.