The Unsung Aria

Lost in the sea of “high-end” Android phones is the little phone that can: The HTC Aria. AT&T released this phone in June with very little fanfare.  It’s small size and seemingly low specs left it neglected by most of the Android faithful who were busy giving praise to the big phones of the summer.  Against the HTC Evo and Motorola Droid, the Aria was never really positioned as a flagship device.  It also didn’t help that the phone was on AT&T, where attention is hard to grab given the presence of the iPhone.  Still, if any customers found themselves in front of the device in an AT&T store, they were in for a pleasant surprise.

For one thing, the tiny size of the Aria is not really evident just from looking at photos or reading the dimensions.  It is a seriously small phone, probably the smallest phone running Android.  In many ways it is the successor to the HTC Hero.  The phone shares the same 3.2-inch HVGA screen and HTC’s Sense UI.  Under the hood, however, the Aria shares more in common with HTC’s very direct Hero successor, the HTC Legend, a European unibody aluminum phone that would have been welcomed here in the States.  The Aria feels significantly thinner and lighter than these phones.  For many people, this is the size a phone should be, even though it runs counter to the trend that has seen phones grow increasingly bigger over the last year.  It can only be described as “cute,” and sometimes that’s not a bad thing.

The shared screens of the HTC Aria (left) and HTC Hero (right)

For all the appeal that a tiny phone might have, though, none of that would matter if it didn’t run well.  When the Aria’s spec sheet came out, it was dismissed for “only” having a 600 Mhz processor. With the G2 just released this month with “only” an 800 Mhz processor, this worship of clock speed should go away, but all one needs is to play with an Aria to see that clock speed is not everything in smartphone.  The Aria is shockingly quick.  Not needing to drive a large screen has something to do with that, as does HTC’s optimization for the phone.  HTC seems to get deep into the system to optimize its Sense UI for phones.  One notable example is how the Droid Incredible is noticeably snappier than the Evo, despite having essentially the same internals.  Clearly, more goes into a phone’s performance than a hardware readout alone.  The Aria can back up this assessment with a respectable 382 score on the Quadrant benchmark, beating out the original Droid among others.  Benchmarks aside, it’s clear that HTC got things just right with this phone, including impressive battery performance.

A small phone isn’t without drawbacks, of course.  Reading webpages would be a lot easier with more room on the screen and less scrolling.  A virtual keyboard on a screen this size is really pushing the limits and wouldn’t be a possibility for everyone.  This was never meant to be a phone for everyone, though.  It’s a phone on AT&T that performs great and has a form factor appeal over the iPhone, which is no small task (every pun intended).  Months after its release, its not surprising that the Aria is hardly discussed, but it remains a great product that at least some consumers are undoubtedly happy with.