HTC Gratia Review

We know the world is getting smaller and smaller day by day, be it in literal sense or the figurative sense. With enormous amount of information being transmitted and received simultaneously in the present world, Smartphones have played a key role for providing information at your fingertips. True to its nature with the advancement in technology world has really become a flat place to live in. So how about owning a compact, powerful, erstwhile designed gadget?? Well, that’s HTC Gratia for you, Guys.

This sleek and compact android phone is all set to provide a unique mix of experience to its users. Gratia was released on 18th October, 2010 and features a seamless performance to all its users since then. It also bodies forth the acclaimed HTC Sense experience, which makes you stand away from the crowd by providing unexpected features and keep you happy at every moment in your life. Way to go!

With more and more android phones hitting the market with the most common feature being big screen size, HTC Gratia is for those people who want to own a capable android in a small handy design. Wow!!! Now that’s what we mean by addressing to every customer need. Powerful android in a small sturdy phone. Now who would have ever thought of it? Well, HTC did.

Let’s start off with the design review

Gratia Design

HTC Gratia is an exception to all Android phones with bigger displays. The HTC Gratia comes with a pretty good display size of 3.2” with viewing angles being limited. The display supports bright and good colours. The legibility of the screen is very poor as compared to other smartphones.

HTC Gratia is truly an attention seeker when it comes to its design. Measuring about 103.8 x 57.7 x 11.7mm, the design is sleek and elegant and the edges are subdued. This petite droid mainly focuses on the pocket-ability factor and weighs roughly around 115 grams. The keys are placed in standard locations, as in every android. The main keys being – Home, Menu, Back and Search. HTC Gratia also sports a clickable trackpad. The front portion of the phone also includes an ear piece and a LED status on the top left. Blinking red would mean the phone is charging and green indicates the charged battery. Blinking of green light indicates that the there is an unread notifications, be it, miss call or messages. The matte plastic used for the back cover helps in hiding the fingerprints. And talking about the 4 metallic screws, makes HTC Gratia stand out of all smartphones at present.

The volume keys are placed on the left and surprisingly the right side of HTC gratia has no keys nor do they have any Plug-in ports. The 3.5 mm audio jack and the power key is featured on the top and the bottom of the phone embodies a microphone and a microUSB port.

Gratia Hardware

The phone comes with a built in 512 MB ROM and 348 MB RAM and a default external memory of 2 GB. This can be further extended upto 32 GB. HT is powered by a 600 Mhz ARM11 processor with Adreno 200 GPU and Qualcomm MSM7227 chipset for a better performance.

The Box

HTC Gratia uses probably the most effective packaging style. I can say there is optimal utilization of the space and it is evident upright once you open the box. In there you find a one-piece headset, a sleek charger and a microUSB cable. And for those craving for memory space, the box also includes a 2GB microSD card to start off with.

Display

HTC Gratia sports a small screen size as compared to its android competitors of the same range. But this would not mean it’s a disadvantage or less value for the money you have paid. However Gratia’s display boasts of the bright and colourful display it offers to its customers. With legibility being an issue, it’s become a real problem for business people who are always on the move with their smartphones.

Battery

The HTC Gratia is powered by a 1200mAh Li-Ion battery, and supports 7 hours of talk time and 15 days of standby. Now this performance of the battery also depends on the type of network being used. i.e. in 2G the battery consumption will be less as compared to 3G.

Camera

The HTC Gratia is integrated with a 5 Megapixel camera at the back and can take pictures for maximum resolution of 2592 x 1952 pixels. But it is very disappointing that the camera is not supported by a flash and also a dedicated shutter key is missing. But the camera unit does not seem to be up to the mark. The pictures looks as if it has lost detail and the clarity or the fine details in the picture are almost vanished. The camera is been a serious worry for the HTC Gratia’s product head. Hope they work over it as soon as possible.

Connectivity

HTC Gratia is equipped with quad band GSM/GPRS/EDGE to ensure voice and data connectivity. This is to address the connectivity when in abroad and also within the country. The local connectivity is achieved through the standard Wi-Fi b/g and Bluetooth 2.1 with AD2P.

The connectivity with a computer can be achieved through a microUSB cable. Sync software or HTC’s PC Suite is very essential for data transmission.

HTC Gratia Software

The HTC Gratia runs 2.2 version of Android commonly called as the Froyo. The Sense UI adds value addition to the operating system as well as the Gratia. A user can have atmost seven home screens. Each screen offers different wallpaper with a different set of widgets on that particular home screen.

Gratia UI

The user interface in the Gratia is powered by the sense UI and is much known for its ability to offer 7 home screens based on the situation. For e.g. the homescreen can represent work, social networking, travel, play etc.

Now let us just sneak peek into the leap view feature, i.e. with a pinch gesture you can have all your 7 home screens displayed at one go. Wow!!! Now this is very interesting, thumbnails of your homescreens. But the saddest part being, not able to arrange your home screens.

The homescreen is marked by the presence of various widgets and here comes the interesting part. Most of the HTC Gratia widgets come with a minimum of two styles. So get your widget set according to the theme set. Below is a video from gsmarena showing full beauty of Gratia’s UI

Default Apps

The HTC Gratia is bombarded with a variety of office applications, the most prominent one being the Quick Office application which features Word, Excel and PowerPoint. There is also a PDF reader to view and edit the PDF files. All these office tools perform seamlessly on accessing and viewing. But editing requires you to go for an paid upgraded version.

The other common but important applications are the clock app, the calendar app, the alarm app and the notification app. The calendar app basically has 4 types of view: daily, weekly, monthly and agenda.

For those into social media and staying in touch with their pals, HTC Gratia also comes with Facebook and the Peep apps. These applications are integrated with the phonebook contacts. i.e. the user need not open the application to check his friend’s status.

And for those of you who tweet, here is a good new even for you. The Peep application allows the user to send the recently clicked photo with the tweet. And here comes the most surprising part, the application also shortens the links.

So what’s in the box for the professionals in HTC Gratia. Well well, If I am not wrong, Gratia is the only smartphone which comes with a Car Panel App. This app makes the icons bigger for ease of availability of applications while driving, it also helps in marking the location where the car was parked. So it’s time to bid a good bye to your memories on where you have parked your car.

Players

The music player also features a cool 3D effect on the now playing screen. But what was important were some unique features which the users had not expected. Clearly I feel its a complete no no for the music player. It also needs the product head to address on the issues like no equalizer, no option for changing the skins etc.

The Gratia features the most basic model of video player which is capable of playing 3gp and mp4 video formats. Well this is clearly a disadvantage, as the videos need to be converted to any of the above formats before watching it on this sleek machine.

The FM radio player also comes with a basic interface. Supported by loudspeaker playback and the RDS, it’s easier and is definitely a companion for those who are always on the move.

Browser

The web browser used in Gratia, Froyo web browser is probably the best web browser in the world. It has almost removed off the +/-zoom buttons and relies on its new pinch zooming. It also functions the basic operations like bookmarking, refresh, switch tabs, go forward, go back etc.

To unlock your favorite smartphones visit unlockdon.