Horsepower and Performance

The SDA is a phone first and a PDA second, which means we're somewhat (but only somewhat) less concerned with processing speed. It may lack a PDA's touch screen, more powerful data entry methods and overall skillset but it does support many of the same applications including Smartphone versions of the TCPMP media player, action games, news readers, eWallet, Office document viewers and more. The Smartphone runs on a Texas Instruments OMAP850 processor with a dual core: one core handles the PDA-like features and the other is basically a DSP which handles voice and phone chores. The device is peppy and responsive in most all tasks including viewing MS Office documents, browsing the web, moving from screen to screen and launching applications.

The phone has 64 megs of RAM and 64 megs of flash ROM. Approximately 30 megs of RAM are free to run programs (RAM functions the same way in WM5 as it does on your computer). Of the 64 megs of flash ROM (which functions similarly to the hard drive on your computer), just under 20 are available for you to store programs and data. After installing the included Westtek ClearVue suite from CDROM, the device had 11 megs free. If you're a power user intending to install several 3rd party programs, invest in a Mini SD memory card. Certainly if you want to use the MP3 player to its fullest or store videos on the SDA, you'll need a card.

Display, Sound and Multimedia

The display is a thing of beauty to behold. If you've owned prior generation MS Smartphones, the new Windows Mobile 5 QVGA resolution will blow you away. That's the same resolution as the Smartphone's bigger brother, the Pocket PC and is up from the 176 x 220 resolution of older generation models. Big is great but the display itself must be up to snuff and the SDA's screen is sharp, bright and color saturated. The same can be said of all the HTC Tornado variants, and though they're not quite as vibrant as the HTC Wizard Pocket PC phones (T-Mobile MDA, Cingular 8125, i-mate K-JAM), they're some of the nicest you'll find on a device with a phone rather than PDA design. The screen measures 2.2" diagonally and though that's small given the resolution, Microsoft has done a great job sizing the fonts to maintain readability. You won't need a magnifying glass by any means and you will see almost as much on screen using Internet Explorer on the SDA as you would on the MDA Pocket PC phone.

System sounds, MP3 and video playback are very, very loud though the ringer and speakerphone volume are of average volume by comparison. The startup sound (the T-Mobile tune) is raucous, so mute the phone or place it under your jacket when booting it up during a business meeting. Should you play MP3s through the phone's speaker rather than the included stereo earbuds, the music will be plenty loud and about as good as you'd expect from a mono speaker. Plug in the headset to get very good music playback quality, and confirm that the phone lives up to its "music phone" moniker. The dedicated forward, rewind and play/pause buttons work with the included Windows Media Player 10 Mobile which can sync to Media Player on the desktop and supports Microsoft's DRM for purchased tunes (and videos). Though there's no dedicated Media Player launcher button, hitting any of the playback control buttons will launch the application. You can creates playlists, loop or shuffle and play music in the background with the screen turned off. Media Player can automatically pause music playback when a call comes in and resume when the call ends. These features aren't unique to the SDA; you'll find them in all Windows Mobile devices, but the dedicated music buttons are unique to the HTC Tornado models.

Video playback was a disappointment on first and second generation MS Smartphones but the third generation Windows Mobile 5 models offer improvements including a much better screen, fast CPUs and an improved OS and media player. The phone can handle videos encoded at QVGA resolution at 300 kbps fairly well and supports Windows Media formats (ASF and WMV) out of the box. If you wish to watch DIVX, AVI, MPEG and other popular formats, get the free TCPMP video player.