HTC HD7

HTC HD7 Price: $ 669.98

Microsoft has a lot invested in its new Windows Phone 7 operating system. In the past, its menu systems have been fiddly - often requiring the use of a stylus - but now there is a home screen, featuring big ‘live' squares, with each one representing one of the phone's capabilities. These cover everything from Windows Marketplace, to accessing your photo collection or your contacts lists. While we're on the subject of contacts, sign in to your Windows Live or Facebook account and the HTC HD7 will aggregate all your contacts into one list, bringing up any details available, such as birthdays, place of work and email address. It is even possible to assign one of the live tiles to your favorite contacts, so you can instant message, text or call them in no time at all. Another nice touch is that the HD7 pulls any of your photo albums from Facebook and places them, in the phone's photo folder, along with the latest images posted by your Facebook friends, as well as any snaps you've taken with your phone.

The HTC Mobile Hub also sits on one of the ‘live' tiles. Now, while this may look pretty good - and it's where you'll find the HTC's 3D weather feature - we're somewhat puzzled by it. From the Hub it is possible to download a few select apps that have been optimized for the HTC HD7. Once you have bought and downloaded them, they stay in the Hub. But you can also add them to the home screen. So unless you want to check the weather or download new apps, we can't see you wanting to spend a lot of time in the Hub.

In case you're wondering, the latest HTC phone has been named after Windows new operating system Windows Phone 7. Like its predecessor, the HD7 has a massive 4.3in display, which reaches right to the edge of the handset. This time around, the screen has been upgraded to an S-LCD. At the moment, the jury is out on whether these displays measure up to the AMOLED. But to our untrained eye, while the HD7's screen is as vibrant as the Super AMOLED display on the Samsung Galaxy, for instance, it doesn't offer quite the same level of crispness and boldness when it comes to text. Having said that, unless you put the phones next to each other, you wouldn't really be able to notice the difference.