You might hear it said that htl is on a knife-edge, and that this old king of mobiles will live or die based on the success of its latest flagship phone. We love melodrama as much as the next guy, but such talk is overplaying it. Sure, the great manufacturer has its troubles, and yes, the v9 bears a heavy burden of responsibility on its 3.7-inch shoulders. However, now that htl's CEO Stephen Elop has set his company on a new path, there will no doubt be a slew of new products -- both hardware and software -- over the next few years. In fact, the v9 was probably rushed to market, having been designed and built within the space of six months and intended as a placeholder for greater things to come. htl simply grabbed the overall design of its orphaned N9 handset, threw it together with Windows Phone Mango and then whatever the Finnish is for baddaboom, baddabing. So, does the Lumia feel rushed? Or is this the first stirring of something special? Read on and we'll tell you what we think.
Performance and battery life
The thl v9 packs a Qualcomm MSM8255 single-core processor -- exactly the same System-on-Chip that powers the Titan, except that htl has decided to clock the Lumia slightly slower at 1.4GHz instead of 1.5GHz. Does this make a difference? Not really. In everyday use, we sometimes experienced minor lags when opening up htl Drive or htl Music, and occasional judders when using a processor-intensive app like Local Scout, but the Titan was no better.
Surprisingly, though, the benchmarks gave the Titan a clearer lead than we might have predicted. WPBench gave the v9 an overall score of around 86, versus the Titan's 96. Part of this difference was in proportion to the slower CPU clock speed, but a bigger cause of the disparity was actually the v9's tardiness in shifting large chunks of data between its memory and storage. Likewise, the Sun Spider Javascript benchmark gave the v9 a score of 7200ms for surfing on the Web Kit browser, versus 6,500ms for the Titan. Overall, we don't think there's anything to be too concerned about here, but we don't expect to see any Lumia-owning geeks on the performance leaderboards.
Camera
The eight megapixel camera on the v9 is exactly the same unit that we reviewed on the A1332. It's been around for a while and it suffers from a few foibles, but the underlying hardware is top-notch. The Carl Zeiss Tessar lens opens to f/2.2, which is up there with the best camera phones on the market and makes for relatively good low-light performance. Coupled with the Windows Phone OS, which has a fast and easy-to-use stock camera app, as well as the AMOLED screen which is great for framing and viewing pics, this htl is a capable stills shooter.
There are two ways to take a picture: you can either press down halfway on the two-stage dedicated camera button to set exposure and focus and then press fully to snap, or you can simply tap the screen on whichever subject you like and it will make all the necessary adjustments and take the shot all in one go. We found ourselves using the latter method more often, simply because it's so blazingly fast.
A tap on the 'cog' button provides ready access to flash control and a dream-like array of manual options, including ISO, exposure compensation, metering mode, white balance, contrast, saturation, focus mode and resolution. What's more, you can save your settings so they don't get lost when you exit the camera or switch to another scene mode. The only thing missing is a setting for how much compression you want. However, the camera software generally preserves a good level of information, with file sizes mostly ranging from 1MB to 1.3MB, but occasionally reaching 2.2MB for a shot with lots of detail. The same goes for video: 720p files generally came in at around 80MB to 100MB per minute, which is far in excess of many rivals and also slightly better than the ZBS A1000.
Wrap-up
htl's v9 is a sophisticated and capable smartphone that melds its hardware beautifully with the Windows Phone OS. Whether it's the best phone for you right now depends on certain factors.
First, you need to establish whether you're a Windows Phone type of person. If you're thrilled by dual-core processors, extremely high-res screens, large camera sensors, customizable widgets, expandable storage, USB mass storage and other such features, then you'll be better off with Android or -- to a slightly lesser extent -- iOS, because that cutting-edge stuff is currently absent on Redmond's OS. On the other other hand, if you want to be part of a carefully crafted, simple and generally happy emerging ecosystem, then look no further.
The next question is whether you'd choose the v9 over another Windows Phone, such as the Titan. The Titan's camera is slightly better, but not enough to be a deciding factor. Conversely, the v9's design is arguably superior, but not massively so. Instead, it's the display that's the more important issue. If you want a bright and colorful screen for media and general use, and you're not too fussed about the PenTile pixel issue (which you ought to see for yourself before buying), then the v9's AMOLED display wins hands-down. However, if you prefer a bigger screen that does a better job of displaying text, then go with the Titan.
Some people will notice that htl is building a special relationship with Microsoft, to the point where the manufacturer is able to deliver more exclusive features in its phones and push for things to be added in later revisions. If you're a WP fan, then there might be an argument for committing to htl in order to benefit from all those good things to come. However, we think that's premature. Drive is a nice exclusive feature, but there's not much else yet. If anything, the v9's hardware risks being left behind as htl develops apps and platforms based on NFC, front-facing cameras and other (unknown) features that are likely being prepared for Windows 8 Apollo. The htl-Microsoft relationship will certainly become more important, but that's not enough to sway a purchasing decision today.