HTC Explorer

Good

• Affordable Android action
• Specially adapted Sense 3.5.a user interface

Bad

• Small screen
• 
  
• Low-powered specs

Irer.

The Explorer is so named not because it's a phone for Bear Grylls-style adventurers, but because it's for people exploring the world of smart phones for the first time. It's the cheapest smart phone in the HTC range, sitting below the Wildfire S, and it's been purposefully designed to be easy to use. We tried the phone out to see how easy it is to go exploring.

Pricing and availability have yet to be announced. 

Design

The phone has a rugged-feeling rubberised texture on the back. It's also very small, slotting neatly into a pocket. That does mean the screen is pretty small though, measuring 3.2-inches across, about the size of a credit card; such a diminutive display isn't great for surfing the Internet.

The phone will be available in black or dark blue, but you can swap covers and make it purple, orange or white. 

Internet

The Explorer is aimed at those who haven't used a smart phone before. A smart phone is a step up from a handset that just does boring things like making calls and sending texts. The Explorer helps you to browse the Web while out and about, letting  you check your emails and Facebook messages, and discover anything from the weather to the latest headlines and fun games.

Android

The Explorer uses Google's Android software, which lets you download apps -- mini bits of software that undertake specific tasks, like accessing Facebook, displaying the weather, and showing maps, to name but a few examples. You simply find apps in the Android Market and download them over a Wi-Fi connection in a matter of moments. You can download as many apps as you like, or just stick with the apps that come pre-installed.

The Explorer uses the latest version of Android, 2.3.5 Gingerbread (each update is named after a tasty snack). HTC adds its own features on top of Android with its proprietary Sense interface.

The Sense interface makes for a straightforward user experience. The latest version is Sense 3.5, but the Explorer uses the specially adapted Sense 3.5.a variant -- it's the same but without the fancy animations, so it works better on phones that don't have such fancy specs.

HTC has put plenty of effort into making the phone as easy to use as possible. For example, potentially confusing icons have often been replaced by words. In the email app, for instance, there are 'compose' and 'forward' options instead of symbols. Once you're familiar with the user interface, you can change it back to showing more aesthetically pleasing icons.

You can customise your home screens to your heart's content, filling them with your most used apps, shortcuts and widgets. The main home screen has been simplified, so, instead of loads of icons cluttering up the screen, you get a single vertical row of four app shortcuts on the left, leaving the rest of the screen uncluttered so you can see your wallpaper.

Tapping one of the icons in the vertical bar on the main home screen opens the corresponding app, but, if you just want to glance at the latest update, you can tap the side of the bar and the latest piece of information pops out like a drawer. This is a charming idea, but the part of the bar that you have to tap to open the drawer is really thin and fiddly. We found ourselves constantly opening the whole app instead of just the drawer. For anyone new to touchscreens, this feature will take plenty of getting used to. 

Specs

The Explorer packs a modest 600MHz processor and a 3-megapixel camera. The processor will get you through your day, but the Explorer won't be as fast at Web browsing or running several apps simultaneously as a more powerful, pricier smart phone.

Connectivity

As a phone aimed at people on a budget, the Explorer is designed to give you control over how much data you use. It's set up to run mainly on Wi-Fi, so you can access the Web without paying a fortune due to using 3G all the time on your mobile network.

If you have Wi-Fi at home, you can simply connect the Explorer to your network and surf the Web, send emails and watch online video. If you're out and about, you might have to pay to connect to a Wi-Fi hotspot, but there's free Wi-Fi to be found in many pubs, cafes and other places.

If you're not in range of a Wi-Fi hotspot, you'll have to connect to the Web using your mobile phone network. You'll probably have a certain amount of data included in your contract and, unless you watch loads of data-heavy videos, your data allowance will probably be more than enough.

But going over your allowance can be expensive, so the Explorer has a dashboard to show what you've used. The data-management dashboard shows how many minutes you've spent chatting, how many messages you've sent and received, and how much data you've used.

The dashboard is helpful, but could be better -- it doesn't really explain what the totals mean, and there's no way of telling the phone what your allowances are so that you can get a more realistic picture of what you've used and what you've got left. The dashboard is also buried in the menu system and hard to find.

Outlook

As a handset for people looking to dip their toes into the world of smart phones, the HTC Explorer has obviously had some thought put into how people will actually use it -- without sacrificing too many grown-up features.

Edited by Charles Kloe