The HTC Snap comes to Verizon Wireless as the Ozone, and if it loses some signature features, it also sheds the high price tag. Find out more in our HTC Ozone review.
Review summary of the HTC Ozone:
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 The HTC Ozone on Verizon Wireless is a solid little messaging phone, especially considering the solid, low price. For a launch price of $50, buyers get a small, fast Windows Mobile smartphone, and if you've been turned off by WinMo in the past, the improved Web browsing and Interface design on this new Windows Mobile 6.1 device might win you back. BlackBerry fans will have to spend a lot more money to compete with this phone, which can keep up with the best of RIM's offerings in terms of battery life, Web browsing and productivity options. We weren't impressed by the selection of software onboard, and call quality lagged behind a bit, but for the price, the HTC Ozone is a great choice for buyers looking for a compact, capable device. Release: July 2009. Price: $50.
Pros: Great value. Very long battery life. Solid productivity features for business users. Improved Web browser, now with Flash Lite support.
Cons: Keyboard layout could be better. More shortcut keys would be nice. Lacks wide range of pre-loaded software.
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Full HTC Ozone Review:
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Design – Good
The HTC Ozone on Verizon Wireless is straightforward QWERTY slab device. It looks almost identical to the HTC Snap on Sprint, with a few minor, but effective design tweaks to the keyboard, and a slightly different complement of shortcuts buttons. The Ozone has a two-tone design, with a light grey, soft touch back and a glossy black front, and while we like the soft touch finish on the battery cover, the glossy façade makes the phone look a bit cheap. With its squat form, full QWERTY keyboard and non-touchscreen, the phone is an obvious competitor to the RIM BlackBerry Curve. While BlackBerry users might miss the trackball, we don't think the HTC Ozone needs one, as the interface is kept slim and convenient for the simpler 4-way button.
The 2.4-inch screen on the HTC Ozone was nice and clear. The display was bright and colorful, and it did a nice job handling the Windows Mobile 6.1 interface. Windows Mobile 6.1 is actually easier to use on non-touchscreen phones, with its sliding panels on the homescreen that present useful information right up front. Verizon Wireless hasn't put any effort into modifying or improving the Today screen and the Standard WinMo interface, but Windows Mobile 6.1 is well-designed, and doesn't need too much help. From that Today screen, we could browse recent e-mail, check upcoming appointments and even control music playback. Once you dig deeper, things start to look more like a desktop Windows OS, but you don't have to dig too deep to find the features you want.
Calling – Very Good
The HTC Ozone suffered a bit in terms of call quality, especially compared to similar devices on T-Mobile and Sprint. We heard a constant background hum during many of our test calls, and callers reported varying levels of static. Reception was usually a solid 4 bars, though we sometimes lost 3G EV-DO reception as we tested the phone throughout the Dallas metro area. Battery life was remarkable, on par with the HTC Snap on Sprint, and also comparable to competing BlackBerry devices. With Wi-Fi turned on, we lost a bit of that battery life, but we'd rather have the option to drain the battery quicker with Wi-Fi enabled than lose the feature altogether.
For contacts, we synchronized the phone with our Microsoft Exchange account, though Windows users can also synchronize with Outlook via their desktop. Like all Windows Mobile phones, the HTC Ozone does a great job handling contacts. You can simply start typing a name from the Today screen, and the HTC Ozone will initiate a search to find the person you need to call. The phone will also keep track of recent calls within a contact's address book listing, so you can look up your client to see how often you've really been in touch.
The best calling feature on the HTC Ozone is Verizon Wireless' visual voicemail app. Visual Voicemail saves messages on your phone so you can listen to them as individual sound files, and You can make conference calls on the HTC Ozone, but this phone, like many Verizon Wireless devices, offers little visual feedback to help manage multiple-party calls. Still, conferencing two calls was as easy as pressing the Send button. The HTC Ozone gets voice dialing with Microsoft's Voice Commands, and Verizon has even placed a little microphone icon on the Send key to remind you of the shortcut for voice dialing. Microsoft's Voice Commands isn't our favorite voice dialing app, but it works okay once you've figured out the proper voice prompts. In our tests, the phone guessed our spoken requests about 7 out of 10 tries. Otherwise, the speakerphone was adequately loud, and we had no trouble connecting our Bluetooth headset to the HTC Ozone.
Messaging and Keyboard– Very Good
Messaging options on the HTC Ozone are fairly basic for a Windows Mobile device, and Verizon Wireless has strangely confused the issue with some extra software. Text messaging on the HTC Ozone was straightforward, and we like that the phone will search our contact list from the "To:" field in the messaging app. Messages are arranged in a threaded style, so you can follow an entire text messaging conversation as if it were an IM chat. Instant messaging is available with an aging, decrepit-looking app from OZ. If you use AOL, MSN or Yahoo for IM, the OZ app will support those services, but we found the app slow to respond and very ugly looking, lacking in any convenient extra features or service support.
For e-mail, Verizon also bundles a Mobile E-mail app from OZ, but in fact this app was much less powerful and convenient than the built-in mobile Outlook client, so we say skip it and just use the standard e-mail option. In fact, Verizon charges an additional fee to use the Mobile E-mail app, while the standard e-mail is free, and the standard e-mail client works much better to integrate with the Today screen and the rest of the phone functions.
We definitely enjoyed the keyboard on the HTC Ozone for the feel of the individual keys. The layout took some getting used to. The second row of keys is poorly aligned, flush with top row, and Verizon has brought the comma key up to where the "L" should be, moving the "L" over a bit. This doesn't sound like much of a change, but we were constantly making typos as a result. Still, keys had a nice, grippy surface and were all well rounded on top, so you should find typing a breeze, even if you've been using other solid full-QWERTY phones, like the BlackBerry Curve.
Scheduling and Productivity – Very Good
Business users will be quite pleased with the HTC Ozone. Windows Mobile phones do a great job with scheduling, and the HTC Ozone was no slouch, either. The phone pulled all of our appointments from our Exchange account and presented them up front so we could run through the days events. We also like the robust features, including the ability to invite attendees to an event. The calendar and scheduling app isn't very pretty, it's mostly a wireframe with text strewn throughout, but it certainly gets the job done.
For productivity apps, the HTC Ozone comes with a basic selection of Microsoft goods, including the Office Mobile suite. Unfortunately, on non-touchscreen phones, you still can't create a new Office document, but you can read and even edit Word and Excel files saved to the phone or sent as attachments. For features, these editing programs are surprisingly rich, but don't expect full desktop functionality.
Beyond the basics, the HTC Ozone doesn't ship with any additional productivity software worth mentioning. The phone can act as a tethered modem to let your laptop surf the Internet over the Ozone's fast, 3G EV-DO Rev. A connection. Unfortunately, instead of the excellent Internet Sharing app we found on Sprint's version of this device, the HTC Ozone will have to connect through Verizon Wireless' buggy, unreliable VZ Access Manager software. In our review period with the HTC Ozone, we had frequent problems and found ourselves either restarting the phone multiple times or reinstalling the VZ Access Manager software nearly every time we used it. If you're going to be relying on the device as a tethered connection on the road, you might want to look for a different option, like the Verizon Mifi 2200 device that we've come to prefer.
Multimedia - Good
Music and video on the HTC Ozone are handled by the Windows Media Player. Windows Media Player is an ugly app that can hardly handle today's media libraries. It does a poor job finding and organizing music, and offers few playback options or sound quality controls. In fact, it wasn't even good at displaying our album artwork. Though the HTC Ozone can play music directly from the homescreen, this was hardly an improvement, as serious music browsing requiring delving into WMP, and this was never a pleasant or intuitive experience. In addition, HTC's aversion to standard 3.5mm headphone jacks continues with the HTC Ozone. The phone ships with a generous adapter that offers expansion for 3.5mm, 2.5mm and even USB headphones, and HTC also includes a set of the latter style of earbuds. Still, most users would prefer a simple standard headphone port so you don't have to remember an adapter every time you leave the house.
Web browsing - Good
The HTC Ozone ships with Microsoft's newest mobile Web browser, Internet Explorer 6. Sure, that may be 2 versions behind the desktop, but IE6 on Windows Mobile 6.1 (so-called 6 on 6) worked fairly well, and was a significant upgrade over the older version that used to ship on Windows Mobile phones. If you've been burned by Web browsing on Windows Mobile in the past, rest assured that Internet Explorer 6 is now capable of rendering Web pages that look accurate compared to their desktop companions. It wasn't perfect, and some advanced layouts and functions didn't show up properly on the HTC Ozone. The browser uses Flash Lite for video and multimedia. While Flash Lite was able to load up simple, shorter videos on the desktop version of YouTube's Web site, videos still ran so slowly as to be almost unwatchable. Audio came through much better, so this phone might be useful for streaming music from YouTube, but don't plan on catching up with your favorite streaming channels. Even so, we were still generally pleased with the improvements in IE6. It might still lag behind the best mobile browsers but, finally, Windows Mobile has pulled ahead of RIM's BlackBerry platform when it comes to mobile Web browsing.
Camera - Mediocre
The camera on the HTC Snap was a little disappointing. It wasn't just the small sensor, though 2-megapixels is now at the low end for modern smartphones. Images also looked fuzzy, with some washed out colors and a general lack of detail. Outdoor shots were much better than indoor pictures, but at full crop, we still noticed a lack of detail and poor light handling in our pics. Photo management was also very basic, with no uploading options built into the camera or photo album. Sending MMS messages was easy, and pictures were certainly good enough for simple messaging or social networking apps like Facebook or Twitter. But these won't be good enough to use as a desktop wallpaper, let alone print on real paper. Check out our image samples below.
Rock Wall
No Glassware
Cactus and Spa
Self Portrait
The Best Toy Ever
GPS – Very Good
The HTC Ozone uses VZ Navigator for turn-by-turn directions. Usually we're more enthusiastic about VZ Navigator, as it's the most capable of the carrier-offered turn-by-turn navigation apps, but the version we found on the HTC Ozone was not the most advanced version we've seen. We like VZ Navigator much better with speech recognition, but this version lacked that advanced feature. Still, the HTC Ozone did a fine job finding our position in a hurry. With help from QuickGPS, an app that pre-loads satellite data for a fast fix, the HTC Ozone managed to locate us quickly even when our view of the sky was minimal. VZ Navigator did a fine job tracking us on our trip through the Dallas metro area, and offered a new route when we found ourselves off track.
Price and availability
The HTC Ozone is available now from Verizon Wireless for $50 with a contract agreement.
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