HTC Aria Review
The HTC Aria is similar to the HTC Legend in many respects. Both screens have the same 3.2 inch 320x480 HVGA display, are powered by Android 2.1, operate using HTC’s Sense user interface (UI) and sport 5MP cameras. In fact, if you look purely at the stats you’d be hard pressed to find many variations.
Aesthetically the two phones are immediately distinguishable. The HTC Aria looks nothing like the Legend, offering a more mainstream, but still attractive design. The soft-touch material on the back helps with grip while the glossy display certainly adds to the overall appeal.
Released roughly three months after the Legend, the HTC Aria is by no means brought down as a result of its similarities to its brother. Both the Aria and Legend are great phones, we’re just a little perplexed as to why HTC would release two devices that are basically statistical clones of one another.
The 320x480 resolution on the Aria is surprisingly good, offering bright colours and clear definition. The glossy display coating looks great at first, but we did have a bit of trouble with glare on sunnier days.
Like the Legend, the HTC Aria also sports an optical trackpad, which can be great once you get used to it. Trackpads allow users to navigate through menus and browsers with minimal movement. They also remove a lot of the finger smears traditionally associated with touchscreens, as you won’t be constantly wiping your filthy human fingers all over the display. Still, we found we didn’t use the trackpad too often, as our clumsy digits are more accustomed to the greasy finger-smear, touchscreen technique.
The 5MP camera won’t wow you, but won’t let you down either. 5MP is pretty much the standard for smartphones these days and the HTC Aria’s is definitely average. It takes fair to moderate shots in good light, but once the luminescent level drops you’ll have a hard time capturing anything that isn’t standing still. No LED flash to be found here, which is one notable variation from the HTC Legend. A little strange that such a similar model released at a later date would be missing a function found on an earlier device.
Navigation is a breeze, with the 600MHz processor surprising us yet again. HTC’s Sense UI really knows how to use every inch of power made available to it. Unlike with a lot of other mid-range Android devices we didn’t experience too much lag or jerkiness when moving between menus.
The browser is also nice and responsive. We didn’t find ourselves making use of the trackpad here too often,
though we can see how it would be useful. Pinch-to-zoom is obviously present, coupled with auto text resizing after zoom which makes the 3.2 inch screen not seem like such a handicap. All up the Aria handles web browsing well. We didn’t once even think about hurling our phone at the wall, a feeling we’ve definitely experienced with some handsets in the past.
When all's said and done the HTC Aria is a great mid-range phone but we really don’t fathom why it exists if the HTC Legend is so similar. Still, both phones are available from different providers so we guess the good news is if you can’t get one on your current plan then it’s a decent chance you can opt for the other.