Hands on: HTC 7 Trophy review

We recently bagged some face time with (what felt like) 40,000 Windows Phone 7 devices, but the cheapest of the lot looks set to be the HTC 7 Trophy.

Windows Phone 7 phones: all the handsets

It's not the dinkiest of the three Windows Phone 7 handsets HTC is bringing to the UK market, but it 'only' has a 5MP camera and single LED flash.

It's got a smooth front with touch sensitive buttons, and a 3.8-inch LCD screen to show off Windows Phone 7 in all its glory.

However, unlike the LG Optimus 7, it somehow lacks the premium feel of the brushed aluminium and the smaller camera on the back doesn't look anywhere near as fancy.

The 3.5mm headphone socket is now at the top of the HTC 7 Trophy, and the edges are curved – meaning you get a little bit of your headphone jack sticking out the top, which can be a little disconcerting.

It's a thin device, like most of the Windows Phone 7 handsets, and fits in the pocket really easily (which, FYI, is a really good test to do if you want to scare the people watching to make sure the phones aren't being pinched).

Despite the plastic-like exterior, the buttons on the sides feel of good quality and add to the overall sheen of this nascent device.

As the Windows Phone 7 experience is designed to be almost identical on most handsets, we've done an in-depth hands on review of it separately so you can see how the HTC 7 Trophy's new fancy interface works:

Hands on: Windows Phone 7 review

Like its HTC brethren it has the HTC Hub included as part of the Taiwanese firms' attempts to add some level of customisation to the WP7 party, bringing an HTC Sense-like experience to the HTC 7 Trophy.

The HTC Hub is hopelessly/delightfully over-engineered – each time you want to see the weather you have to fly through clouds for a second or two.

Notes is a cool application that allows you to post reminders to yourself, and as the post it notes age on the virtual pin board, they get steadily more crumpled.

The other cool application is Sound Enhancer – it genuinely makes a difference to songs, although we found Dolby Mobile, rather than SRS Surround Sound, to be more effective for watching movies.

There are also other assorted applications pre-loaded on the HTC 7 Trophy, such as Photo Enhancer and Stocks – HTC also gives a link to download cool things like the Flashlight application for free as well.

The HTC Trophy's main USP is going to be its price: £25 a month is ridiculously cheap for a phone packing a 5MP camera, HD video recording, a dedicated GPU and the new WP7 OS.