It may not be a flagship top-of-the-range handset, but that doesn’t mean the HTC Gratia is in any way boring. While HTC may make a big deal about its flagship models, it’s mid-range handsets like the Gratia that show why the phone maker has been so successful. This ‘affordable’ smartphone comes in at around £300, which is about £100 less than the Desire HD, and yet you still get the benefits of a five-megapixel snapper and Android 2.2 Froyo as well as a full set of sat nav and internet features.

Looking good

If you’re a fan of HTC handsets (and there’s a lot of you around nowadays), you probably realise that the Gratia is the next generation of the Wildfire. It’s thinner and sleeker – actually it’s targeted at women who apparently prefer smaller handsets – and has an unusual design with a wraparound back cover that encases the device like a jacket.

Our model came in pure white – but you can also choose a green or black chassis – and has an industrial look with its four silver screws situated at each corner. Under the speaker vent lurks the five-megapixel cameras lens – to open the back cover you press down on the speaker. Even inside, HTC’s unusual style is apparent – it features a coloured battery slot like that of the HTC Smart.

In terms of specs, the Gratia is on equal par with the Wildfire. It has the same 600MHz processor (which is par for the course in mid-range handsets like this), as well as a five-megapixel camera and 512MB of memory. Luckily, it comes with a 2GB memory card, as otherwise you wouldn’t be able to use the camera. However, while the Wildfire’s display only managed a 240x320 screen, which suffered from pixelation, the Gratia has the benefit of a far smoother 320x480 display that has truer colours.

Touch-screen

Most smartphones now manage a capacitive screen and the Gratia is no exception. Although it is mostly responsive and accurate, we encountered a slight lag when tapping on the virtual keyboard.

At 3.2 inches, the screen is a tad small, and this resulted in a rather cramped keyboard, which took some getting used to. The backspace key was especially hard to find, and we found landscape mode was the best orientation for typing.

It was easy to swipe through the seven home screens, an experience that also benefits from the pinch-to-zoom facility, which works in browser and gallery mode as well. You can also pinch to display all seven screens in ‘helicopter mode’, which makes for a speedy method to hop between them.

You’ll find the traditional Android buttons (Back, Menu, Home and universal Search) under the screen – they’re presented as touch-sensitive areas. The OK button is served with a silver optical touch-pad, which also acts as a tiny mousepad.

Android 2.2 benefits

Like the top-end HTC phones, the Gratia sports Android 2.2 Froyo, already superceded by 2.3 Gingerbread, which appears on the Google Nexus S and is due to make an appearance on the next batch of HTC handsets. This is not unusual with Android, which is upgraded at the drop of a hat, but unless you’re obsessed with having the very latest technologies, it shouldn’t be too much of a worry.

The Gratia is easy to set up, thanks to HTC’s Sense interface. Making the phone’s personalisation simple are a number of preloaded combinations of shortcuts and widgets entitled ‘Scenes’ – good news for smartphone newbies. A setup screen when you start up will advise you to sync Facebook, Twitter, email and Flickr accounts.

HTC’s Friend Stream widget has always been a big selling point on Android handsets, and the Gratia is no exception. The widget brings together news feed from your social networks. HTC’s extra touches give its smartphones the added edge, and we’re big fans of its bespoke widgets – the weather clock that shows a variety of animations according to the actual weather, for instance.

Some new features include the Voice Search vocal commands app and a facility to tether the device to a PC and utilise it as a modem, as well as voice navigation in Google Maps.

Voice Search should allow the user to send emails and texts by speaking into the phone, but we were unable to get it to work. It managed to recognise what we said, but sent this into a Google search.

It was easy to call our contacts from our phone book, although non-standard English did prove a bit troublesome. Say ‘Navigate to’ and you’re taken straight to Google Maps.

Snapper

Most Android handsets sport pretty average cameras, so we were surprised at the pretty decent five-megapixel snapper on the Gratia, which also boasts LED flash and auto focus. We took some images in daylight and found they were better than those we’d seen on HTC’s former devices. The images lacked the blue tinge seen on snaps from the Desire, and the colours are pretty true, even though they’re not up there with the likes of the iPhone’s snapper. Image resolution was decent too, and zooming in resulted in little in the way of noise.

While there is no dedicated camera button, you can fire up the snapper by pressing the silver touch-pad. The camera’s shutter is speedy, reducing the chance of image blur, although the auto focus takes a while.

The verdict

HTC has produced plenty of Android devices recently, and the Gratia comes up to its usual high standards. It’s hardly a budget phone, at £299 SIM free, but it’s a decent mid-range device with a number of advanced features you’d expect on a high-end smartphone. If you’re looking for a new Android handset but don’t want to hang around waiting for the next generation of HTC phones, the Gratia is a good choice.