HTC Snap’s Inner Circle
The current generation of mid-ranged messaging phones seem to be using the social networking buzzword rather too often in order to advertise their capabilities. Whilst there is doubtless a large market, particularly among teenagers and young adults, for handsets which embrace the interconnected nature of all modern communications, few phones ever get the functions quite right. However, with the HTC Snap inner circle function aiming to draw together all aspects of your life and organise them in one homogenised yet comprehensible interface, has the balance finally been achieved?
The HTC Snap inner circle is essentially an automatic personal organiser that can be used to sort out various contacts, messages and emails at the press of a single button. The HTC Snap inner circle is quite literally a button, mounted on the bottom right of the full QWERTY keypad. Since this is an email and messaging phone the inner circle button is best used in these areas.
When you are viewing your email inbox you will at first see a somewhat busy screen. Obviously everyone receives junk mail, or offers and other messages that are rarely important and can simply prove to be a distraction. Finding the emails and messages that you actually want to view usually requires trawling backwards through all of these pieces of electronic detritus. However, with a single press of the inner circle button, the phone will automatically hide any unimportant or unwanted emails and messages that you have received. In their place, all of the emails from the most significant and important parties will appear. Whether you are reviewing an important conversation that you had in order to arm yourself for a meeting, or simply keeping an eye on the goings-on within your family over the course of a few months, the inner circle function is potentially invaluable..
The inner circle button can be used at any time, regardless as to the application or menu you are viewing at the time: it is as simple as pressing the button whereafter you will automatically be whisked to the email and message filtering screen.
Clearly you need to identify those people who form part of your ‘inner circle’, the HTC Snap is not prescient enough to automatically guess which emails are spam and which are vital. You can add people to the list of members of your inner circle at any time and you can even assign them pictures based on your contact list stored on the Snap.
Another interesting feature of the inner circle is that whenever you receive a message, email or call from one of the members of your personal inner circle, a specific symbol will appear on the bar at the top of the screen. This is useful if you are waiting for an important message from one of your inner circle and you want to quickly determine whether the new message you have just received is from them or not without opening up the message itself.
The HTC Snap inner circle function will certainly have other manufacturers kicking themselves for not including such a simple, easy to use function. It really sets the Snap apart from the other email and messaging phones in its price bracket. If you are regularly receiving 20 or 30 emails a day or more from various sources but the main emails and messages that you really need are only sent by a small group then the inner circle function will be a life saver. People with fewer regular email contacts or previously set-up external filters may not find the function quite as useful. However, it is an undeniable benefit in a well specified messaging and email mobile phone.
Tags: htc, htc snap, inner circle