HTC Aria Review (Android 2.2)

The smartphone comes with Android 2.1 but I upgraded it to Android 2.2 when HTC released the update. The over-the-air update is brilliant!
TC Aria is only 4.09 inch tall and 2.27 inch wide. Ladies with small palms would not have problem to hold it securely.The 3.2 inch (320×480 pixels) touch screen display is bright and clear. Touch screen is sensitive to recognize my finger swipes. Keyboard input is great and no problem with fat fingers.

The first thing came in my eyes on the home screen is the big and fancy HTC Weather widget with flip clock and full screen animation. My friend got poisoned and bought HTC Aria just because of the widget!
The HTC Aria might has a slower CPU speed of 600MHz but I do not feel any speed different compare to 1GHz smartphone. Applications launch almost instantly and no sluggish. 3D car racing game plays flawlessly.
HTC Aria build-in 384MB RAM and 512MB ROM. You may add more space with a microSD memory card, support up to 32GB. There is only 1 micro-USB port on the HTC Aria body, which serve as charging & data sync port.

The speaker is loud but so-so quality. The battery is 1200 mAh. You might not want to have many applications run in the background in order to have it last for a whole day.

The optical trackball is redundant, in my opinion. Because the phone already has a good touch screen, trackball is not needed.
HTC Aria build-in camera is 5 megapixel with auto focus. Need to press the optical trackball to take photos, which is quite hard to press and cause vibration.
Here are two sample images taken using HTC Aria in my workspace and uploaded without editing:


In a nutshell, I would recommend HTC Aria to anyone who has smaller budget but want to own a smartphone.
Why not HTC Wildfire which is cheaper but similar specs, you may ask? WildFire is using QVGA, a lower screen resolution (240×320). The screen size may not supported by some applications. Take note.
The retail price of HTC Aria now is around RM1500 (USD490). Malaysians could get HTC Aria with DiGi Smart Plan as low as RM799 (2 year contract).