HTC has been one of the leading brands in the smartphone market especially when it comes to making high quality Android handset. Its latest offering in the buzzing Android market is HTC Explorer, which has been targeted towards mid range customers who are just about getting started into smartphones. Check out our exclusive HTC Explorer review to know what this phone has in store for you.

HTC Explorer Looks And Design

The outer shell of Explorer is made up of pattered plastic which gives it a rubbery feel. There is a plate of brushed metal at the center of the rear back and it gives the phone a durable feel. The phone is quite compact measuring just 102.8 x 57.2 x 12.9 mm. It is quite light too weighing just 108 grams. It is made entirely out of plastic and its rounded edges provide a good grip. The rubberized back of the phone makes it pleasant to hold. Most of HTC’s phones are nice to grip and have a good feel and Explorer is no different.

HTC Explorer Screen

The phone is equipped with a 3.2 inches LCD display with HVGA resolution. The screen is capable of displaying colors of resolution measuring 320×480 pixels. The display is not the sharpest one you will find in the market. The display is fairly bright though colors appeared to be a little dull. The capacitive touchscreen is quite responsive and it responded to our gentlest of touches. Contrast is quite good and the viewing angles are also quite impressive. On the left side of the display you get three microUSB ports, while on the right side you get a volume rocker button. On the top of the display you get the standard 3.5mm audio jack.

HTC Explorer Features

The phone runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread and an upped version of HTC Sense 3.5. The new sense UI has the option to quickly access four functions which you want from the lock screen. The phonebook of the device is rich in features which is quite good for social networking features. It has a couple of email clients – a traditional Gmail application and a generic HTC mail app. Both these apps merge all the email accounts into a single inbox. The phone offers an internal memory storage space of 90MB which can be increased to 32GB.

HTC Explorer Apps

There are few inbuilt-apps in the phone such as

• Angry Birds
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Youtube
• Google Search
• Maps
• Gmail
• Picasa Integration

Users can download their favorite applications from the Android market.

HTC Explorer Keyboard

The phone is equipped with a virtual QWERTY keypad. We found the keys to be bit small and pretty much cramped. In both landscape and portrait mode, we found the keys to be small. The small keys meant that typing messages and emails was a bit difficult. After you get used to the keyboard, we feel that you will not have much trouble in typing messages and mails.

HTC Explorer Camera Quality

The phone is equipped with a 3.15MP fixed focus camera which clicks pictures of resolution measuring 2048×1536 pixels. Here is where HTC Wildfire S scores over Explorer which has a 5MP camera. We were quite disappointed to find that the camera lacks flash. This means that clicking pictures in the dark is a huge problem. The camera interface is very efficient. The camera is equipped with geo-tagging and face detection. The images captured with Explorer are quite decent and offered nice details. The contrast is fine and the colors are good for a 3 MP snapper. We were also disappointed to note that the camera makes a lot of noise. There is no front facing camera in HTC Explorer mobile phone.

HTC Explorer Video Quality

Explorer records VGA video which are pretty disappointing. The interface of the camcoder is very much the same as that of the camera. The videos are shot in .MP4 format at 19 frames per second and hence they appear quite choppy. Even for a VGA shooter, the quality of videos is very much disappointing. We feel that the videos are good for posting on Facebook.

HTC Explorer Connectivity

Explorer has great connectivity options in a tiny package. You get quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE along with fast 3G. Local connectivity is enhanced by the presence of Wi-Fi b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0. There are various options of connecting the phone to your PC. The HTC Portable Hotspot can support up to 8 devices. Connectivity is also consolidated by a 3.5 mm audio jack and microUSB 2.0. Explorer is equipped with the latest Android 2.3 Gingerbread browser. Web pages loaded were fairly quick. However, one problem which you might face while browsing is that because of the small size of the screen, you may face reading the texts.

HTC Explorer Multimedia

The phone is equipped with an FM radio with RDS. The audio and video players of the phone support a large array of audio and video formats. The phone is also capable of playing majority of movie file formats such as XviD, MP4, H.264, WMV and H.263.

HTC Explorer Call Quality

Call quality is very good with Explorer. In our test, our listeners said that they were able to hear us very clearly and we too did not face much problem while listening. However, there were few occasions when we experienced a drop in call, but those were areas where network signals were pretty weak.

HTC Explorer Accessories

During HTC Explorer unboxing, we found the phone to be equipped with the following accessories

• HTC Explorer
• MicroUSB Cable
• Charger
• User Manual

We were quite disappointed to find that the phone lacks a dedicated pair of headsets. Today, even the most basic of phones do have headsets.

Download HTC Explorer user manual.

HTC Explorer Colors

The phone is available in various colors such as

• Active Black
• Mettalic Black
• Mettalic Navy
• Active Navy

HTC Explorer Battery Life

Explorer is equipped with a standard Li-Ion battery which offers a talk time of approximately 7 hours.

HTC Explorer Launch Date

The phone has been released sometimes in September 2011.

HTC Explorer Price

HTC Explorer price in USA is approximately $ 230 while price of the phone in India is approximately Rs 12,000.

HTC Explorer is a pretty nice choice for first time Android users. The phone is quite good for watching SD videos and playing some Android 3D games. The phone faces some tough competition from Wildfire S and LG Optimus One P 500. However, if you are looking for a smartphone with decent features, then you can bet upon HTC Explorer.