MTS HTC Pulse

Celebrating its 10 mn subscribers, MTS launched its first CDMA smartphone-HTC Pulse-for the Indian market. Sistema Shyam Teleservices (SSTL), a joint venture between Russian telecom behemoth Sistema and Indian operator Shyam Teleservices, offers the Taiwanese handset brand HTC Pulse to its Indian customers on a subscription basis. The customers of MTS-the brand name with which SSTL operates in India-can get this handset free with the data subscription from the operator. The offer comes with a monthly subscription of `1,500 for a period of one year. This is the first time that any Indian CDMA operator came out with a bundled offer along with a true smartphone.

HTC pulse is a CDMA Android 2.1 phone. It is EVDO supported and you can use data connection at the speed of 3.1 MBPS. Powered by a Qualcomm 528 MHz processor and 256 MB RAM. HTC has tweaked the user interface for best function. Users get direct access to Android market and download unlimited apps, most of them are free. To make the service more Indianized, MTS has tied up with Apalya for mobile TV. Though it offers a host of television channels, the clarity of visuals is little irksome, however the sound quality is crystal clear. On CDMA network, the handset almost delivers the speed that it claims, however, at certain times during the day, depending the peak hour, it gets little slower.

Design and Build

HTC Pulse comes with 3.x inch LCD Capacitive touch sensitive screen with 320×480 HVGA resolutions. It has got 5 mega pixel camera with autofocus features and it has memory card expandable slot of 32GB memory. The onboard memory of this device is 512 MB flash ROM and 288 MB RAM. It comes with Qualcomm MSM7600 processor with 528 MHz speed.

The construction of the Pulse feels solid enough, although with plastic on all sides, it doesn't have the luscious feeling in the hand that you get from the HTC Hero: the back is noticeably plastic, and the small flap that usually covers the Micro-USB and 2.5mm headphone jack is missing, which is a good corrective measure by HTC with the Pulse. Else, if you contemplate using headphones with the device in your pocket, we wouldn't be surprised if the plastic flap soon broke off.

Being a full touch device, the on-screen keyboard is all-important-a make or break point. Keying in from the landscape QWERTY keyboard seemed easy enough, with predictive suggestions appearing above the keyboard. Pressing a key triggered a pop-up identifying the key you'd pressed, a la iPhone and press and hold brought up a range of alternative characters, which was pretty easy to use.

Battery Life

It comes with 1300 mAh Li-ion battery which offers a maximum of 214 minutes through talktime on air and a amazing standby time of 373 hours. This hand weights 120 grams. With a single full charge the battery stands for an entire day and unlike some other phones where call quality deteriorates or even gets dropped as the battery drains out, the HTC Pulse fights till the last drop of blood. However, the phone gets heated up if applications are running in the back end. That tends to annoy the user.

Gyana Ranjan Swain

gyanas@cybermedia.co.in