The HTC HD Mini is a jaunty wee smart phone that manages to pull off the seemingly impossible — it runs the Windows Mobile operating system and still manages to be excellent. HTC has injected some life into the old dog that is Windows Mobile 6.5 with a snazzy user interface and sexy hardware. As far as pocket-friendly smart phones go, the Mini is a surprise success.

It sounds like a recipe for success: take the surprisingly popular HTC HD2, shrink it down some, and offer it as a more pocketable alternative. Yet out of the three devices HTC announced at Mobile World Congress in February, the HTC HD mini has prompted the least interest. The HD mini  has to convince prospective buyers not only of its own merits but that it’s worth buying into an ageing OS that’s just months away from replacement. Can it deliver? Check out the full SlashGear review after the cut.

The hardware is great. It’s what we’ve come to know and love from HTC, scaling the HD2  down to a more accessible size. It’s an industrial one, the HD Mini. Certainly not sleek and sexy like the Legend, nor curved like the Desire. Exposed screws on each corner of the rubberized back plate give it a very masculine appearance—which I loved.

Underneath the cover lies a bright yellow inside, a hidden secret which I showed off to countless friends while testing it. The size of the phone is perfect, proving easier to handle than the 4.3-inch HD2, with the 3.2-inch capacitive HVGA screen more than big enough to browse and type on. It’s bright until you hold the phone in the sun.

The first thing to be said here is that HTC did itself a disservice by calling this the HD Mini. Sure, the company’s trying to capitalize on the parallels with its brawny WinMo flagship, but the fact is that this handset has the looks and construction to easily withstand one of HTC’s more flamboyant names — we’d have few qualms about calling it the HTC Spectacular.

The plastic back cover — which offers a pleasing, grip-friendly surface — envelops most of the body, with the only seam being where it meets the front end’s glass screen. This leads to a smooth and sophisticated appearance, garnished by the exposure of the internal screws. It’s a nice aesthetic touch, which doesn’t actually affect the cover itself — it slips off around them. Aside from such minimalist design flourishes, the phone’s body looks about as tapered as can be. Its back is as flat as the front, thanks to the camera and speaker module being perfectly filed down, and aside from the fact we’d prefer more screen and less bezel (a longstanding bugbear of ours), there’s really very little cause for complaint. If we have to pick some niggles, the cover is a pain to remove and having to take out the battery to replace SIM cards isn’t ideal, but those shouldn’t be things that will trouble you on a daily basis.