HTC HD7

WinPho 7 gets the big-screen treatment

Big screen treatment

The 4.3in, 480 x 800 capacitive LCD touchscreen offers multi-touch capability, so it can pinch to zoom. It's not the very last word in sharpness perhaps, but neither is it significantly behind the AMOLED screens from Samsung and others.

The camera surround folds out to form a stand for video viewing

Pre-recorded videos look great on the big screen, which didn't show any sign of sticking or judder, helped no doubt by the 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, which also did a good job of maintaining smooth transition between apps and keeping the UI nicely fluid. The video player seemed to be very forgiving of formats and played videos I've been able to play on few other phones.

The Windows Phone 7 interface may not be leaps and bounds ahead of the competition but it's eye-catching, practical and many strides ahead of its predecessor. The main functions are laid out in neat little tiles, many of which change their appearance depending on what content they lead to and which can be arranged to your taste.

There are lots of nice little design touches too, such as the selection of your photos that appear behind the gallery of thumbnails in your photo library. Not that there's anything wrong with the icon-based likes of the iPhone and Android, but it's nice to see something that looks genuinely different for a change.

Record video at 720p HD

WinPho 7 will pull your Facebook contacts into your address book, and social network functions are generally built around Facebook and Windows Live, though you can add apps from Twitter and others by downloading them from the Windows Marketplace.