Name: 7 Pro
Brand: HTC

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HTC 7 Pro: Battery, maps and apps

HTC Pro review: Battery life

The 1500mAh battery performed surprisingly well. We got ourselves beyond the crucial 24 hour point without too much trouble, but that was with a fairly frugal usage including manually fetching email and a preference for Wi-Fi over 3G data.

We temper that with the fact that if you are a heavy music listener, HSDPA, Wi-Fi or GPS basher you should realistically still be thinking in terms of daily charges.

There were times when the phone would get a little hot and begin to drain quickly - with no task manager, the only way to manage this is to turn the phone off.

Maps

The HTC 7 Pro comes with Bing Maps. This doesn't feel quite as nice as Google Maps, but it does do a job of getting you from A to B and we absolutely love the way it automatically switches from map to satellite view as you zoom in closer and closer. That's really useful when you are somewhere new and looking for a particular spot.

It is in the add-on apps department that makers of Windows Phone 7 smartphones have to find their point of difference, and for HTC that means the HTC Hub. This launches rather slowly, and delivers through its own custom interface.

When you get to the HTC Hub you see the Sound Enhancer app that we've already mentioned and a few more extras such as YouTube and Need for Speed. None is installed, so you have to go through the installation process, and while YouTube is free, Need for Speed costs £3.99.

You can browse for more apps, and some are free, some charged, but it is a slow and painful process, much more so than using Apple's App Store or the Android Market.

Microsoft has its own app store too, the Marketplace, which you can get to from the main apps list. This also lists the HTC apps, and it's a quicker place to get them. While the Microsoft Marketplace has started to fill out since it launched, we still say that the App Store and the Android Market are the place to go for sheer volume and variety.

One note - if you're downloading free trials of applications, when asked to update them, the phone will just 'install' nothing and constantly say there's an update waiting. It's irritating, but certainly does make you upgrade or delete.