The HTC Inspire 4G is a phone that is easy to love at first, but will eventually develop a love-hate relationship with its owner. It is a phone with great potential, at the very least, and the fact that it can be bought for only $99 would be a huge encouragement in itself to buy the phone already.

HTC Inspire 4G Review

Design and build quality

This new phone from HTC is yet another testament to the company’s capacity to produce an affordable, yet premium phone. The build quality of the phone is comparably better than the previous ones – once again a demonstration of the improvements being done by HTC.

 

 

 

The good points:

• It has a metal case that makes the device look premium
• The HTC Inspire 4G has a very solid build that feels great every time you hold it
• The power and volume buttons are easily accessible and nice to press
• The capacitative touch buttons of the HTC Inspire 4G are highly preferable to hardware buttons… mostly because the touch buttons work well

The points to improve:

• A minor annoyance is that the slot covers for the battery, SD card, and SIM card are rubberized plastic that does not fit perfectly.
• The metal frame of the phone is a bit sharp on the edges and rests above the bezel. This may be a problem for the OC people.

 

Display

 

 

The good points:

• The HTC Inspire 4G has a 4.3-inch screen with WVGA SLCD
• Pixels: 800×480

• The display has vivid colors
• Brightness is also remarkable

 

 

The points to improve:

• The grid markers on the phone are super visible that you’ll notice it even when you’re not actively looking for it.
• Viewing angles are more limited or narrower than that of Super AMOLED devices.

 

Battery Life

The good points:

• The HTC Inspire 4G has an excellent battery life that can easily last for two days even for heavy power users. This is even despite only a 1,230mAh battery.
• The device has a battery saver tool that lets you suck out all of the battery before it drains completely.
• The processor of the device (MSM 8255) is identified as the main reason for the excellent battery life of the Inspire 4G.

 

Phone Connectivity

The good points:

• Calling through the HTC Inspire 4G is a good experience – you will not have to worry about dropped calls
• People on the other end of the line can clearly hear what you are saying, and vice versa
• The device has a large speaker bar that contributes to the good audio

The points to improve:

• It is hard to see the blinking notifications for emails and missed calls. You have to be actively looking at the phone just to notice it. On that note, it is more recommendable to keep the device on vibrate.
• Majority of the apps in the HTC Inspire 4G does not immediately recognize it when you switch your connection from mobile data to WiFi
• AT&T – if that’s the network you’re using – does not have 4G connectivity.
• The Inspire 4G has low upload speeds, particularly when you are using a 3G connection. It gets only 0.25mbps even though the signal is good. This is much weaker when compared to the 1mbps upload speed that Nexus 1 is capable of in the same network connection.

 

Camera

The good points:

• The 8mp rear camera of the Inspire 4G produces good images
• It has a dual-LED flash
• User interface of the camera is exemplary and even better than what you would normally find on stock Android

 

 

 

Software

The HTC Inspire 4G is a phone loaded with 1GHz of a processor, 768gb RAM, and works on the Android 2.2 Froyo platform.

 

The good points:

• The HTC Inspire 4G provides a smooth user experience. You will not be annoyed when switching between your home screens because they don’t lag.
• The widgets are pleasing to look at – something that HTC has mastered over time
• The browser of the HTC Inspire 4G seems to perform faster than the stock Android browser. It is safe to say that web browsing is a smooth experience.

The points to improve:

• HTC Likes, an application, considerably decreased the performance of the phone and even caused slowness. You have to force the app to close for the Inspire 4G to regain its usual performance again.
• The widgets, no matter how good they look, have a slow performance.
• Some apps have issues in terms of responsiveness. These include Reader, Hub, Likes, FriendStream, People, and Stocks. These apps are slow, and therefore barely usable.
• It is not possible to side-load applications, so you cannot have free tethering. If you really need it, you can purchase the DataPro plan of AT&T for a monthly price of $45. This amount will give you 4gb.
• Like Samsung, the HTC Inspire 4G is full of bloatware. The worst issue is that you cannot uninstall any of these unwanted apps. The device has 4gb of internal storage, but because of too much bloatware, users only have 1.55gb of space left to use for their own liking
• The device would benefit greatly from an upgrade to Gingerbread.

 

The verdict

The HTC Inspire 4G is a remarkable phone that has a lot of potentials. Moreover, the only upgrades needed to make it an outstanding phone is an upgrade to Gingerbread and a functional 4G connection.

 

Here is a quick summary of the pros and cons of buying the HTC Inspire 4G:

 

The good points:

• HTC Inspire 4G has a remarkable build quality
• It is made of premium materials including a metal frame that contributes to the overall solid feel of the device
• The device has a bright display
• Performance is fast and snappy
• It has an exemplary battery life that can last two days of moderate to heavy usage
• The browsing experience is smooth and fast. It is even better than the browser on stock Android.
• It has an 8gb SDHC card to allow users to have more space for their own apps and files

 

The points to improve:

• The name of the device is Inspire 4G, but it is not really a 4G phone.
• Viewing angles are not as great as a SuperAMOLED panel, but it is still good, nonetheless
• There are some problems with the WiFi and data connection
• Upload speed is very slow
• The software is too bloated for its own good
• Still, runs on Froyo. When will the Gingerbread update come?
• The device does not let your side-load apps, so you need to spend extra bucks if you really need tethering

 

Overall, the HTC Inspire 4G is a highly recommendable phone. For only $100 (even only $60 on Amazon), you’d get a lot out of it.

Finally, have you tried using the HTC Inspire 4G?

 

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