Reboot and Rally: AT&T's HTC Status

Over the past six years, Face­book has slowly turned into one of the most con­sis­tent pres­ences in West­ern cul­ture. The web­site, or should I sayphe­nom­e­non, has in­te­grated it­self into our daily lives, and it re­cently sur­passed Google as the most vis­ited web­page in the world. Hop­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on the site’s pop­u­lar­ity, the ge­niuses be­hind the so­cial net­work part­nered with HTC to de­velop the world’s first “Face­book phone.”

TheHTC Sta­tusis AT&T’s lat­est at­tempt to cap­i­tal­ize on the grow­ing num­ber of teens and young adults who are cur­rentlyad­dictedto on­line so­cial net­works. This An­droid-pow­ered smart phone is the first de­vice to have a ded­i­cated Face­book but­ton. That’s right, there’s a but­ton with the blue and white “Face­book F” on the front of the phone.

One press of the Face­book but­ton al­lows you to quickly up­date your sta­tus or post a com­ment to your friend’s wall. An ex­tended press of the but­ton al­lows you to “check-in” and use the phone’s GPS to broad­cast your cur­rent lo­ca­tion to the world. If you press the Face­book but­ton when you’re brows­ing your phone’s pho­tos, you can post that pic­ture to your wall. Ba­si­cally, this but­ton makes shar­ing every­thing about your life on Face­book con­ve­nient and easy.

Be­fore I dive into the phone’s soft­ware, I’ll give you a quick tour of the de­vice’s ex­te­rior. AT&T’s HTC Sta­tus stands out in a good way. This phone is ba­si­cally a sexy Black­berry. Like the RIM de­vice, the Sta­tus is a slate phone that has a small QW­ERTY key­board lo­cated below a 2.6-in. dis­play. Un­like the Black­berry, the dis­play is a touch­screen and the key­board is fan­tas­tic. The keys are prop­erly spaced and raised above the sur­face of the phone.

Tex­ting and email­ing is a breeze — I rarely mistype words. The key­board also has a few sub­tle ad­di­tions such as a ded­i­cated ques­tion mark but­ton that fur­ther in­crease your tex­ting speed. Al­though it might not seem like a big deal, a few sec­onds could be the dif­fer­ence be­tween re­serv­ing a spot on a pong table or spend­ing the night in your room with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Mon­key.

The major com­plaint I have with this phone is its small screen. The Sta­tus’s small 2.6-in. touch­screen is al­most a two square inches smaller than crit­i­cally ac­claimed An­droid phones such as the Mo­torola Droid Bionic and the Sam­sung Galaxy S II.

Al­though HTC did a phe­nom­e­nal job cre­at­ing an in­ter­face that ef­fi­ciently uses the small screen, I often felt that third-party apps did not dis­play well.

Apps such as Angry Birds are meant for larger screens. The in­ter­net browser is fast but the small screen ham­pers the ex­pe­ri­ence. The touch­screen is easy to nav­i­gate but the small real es­tate often leads to er­rant presses. The screen’s lo­ca­tion has also caused a few prob­lems dur­ing calls. More than once, I’ve found my­self ac­ci­dently press­ing the speak­er­phone or mute but­tons on the touch­screen dur­ing the mid­dle of a call.

De­sign quirks aside, this phone is an ex­cel­lent choice for en­try-level smart phone users be­cause of its low price. With a two-year con­tract, the Sta­tus will set you back a measly $50. This phone is great at what it was de­signed to do: com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The phone makes great phone calls and tex­ting/so­cial net­work­ing is fast, con­ve­nient, com­fort­able and fun. If you are look­ing for more bells and whis­tles, you might want to con­sider a more ex­pen­sive op­tion with a big­ger screen; how­ever, if you are look­ing for a very fun and func­tional ver­sion of a Black­berry, then AT&T’s HTC Sta­tus will be one of your best op­tions.