The HTC Snap is the kind of smartphone we don’t see a lot of these days. It runs Windows Mobile 6.1 Standard. This means it doesn’t have a touchscreen, but it does have a miniature QWERTY keyboard sitting beneath the screen. Think BlackBerry Bold and you’ve got the idea.

HTC is very keen on coming up with new ideas to help make your Windows Mobile smartphone experience that bit more user friendly. We’ve seen this in HTC's TouchFLO interface for a long time, but that is designed for devices with touchscreens. Here we have something called HTC Home. This is designed to let you scroll up and down the home screen to get to different bits of the device, but obviously it isn’t as touchy-feely as TouchFLO.

In addition HTC has come up with a really clever wheeze called Inner Circle. This has its own dedicated button at the bottom right corner of the key pad. Press the button and you jump into email. Messages from those people you’ve identified as your key contacts are shown first.

It is a clever idea, designed to make sure you never miss an important email from a key person. Some of the best ideas are simple ones.

As far as specifications are concerned most of the important bases are covered. The HTC Snap is quad band GSM with GPRS and EDGE, as well as supporting HSDPA to 7.2Mbps. That means Web browsing should be fast.

It has 256MB of ROM and 192MB of RAM and there is a microSD card for adding to this. The slot is on the bottom edge of the casing, and you can’t get to it unless you remove the backplate first. The Qualcomm MSM 7225 528MH processor seemed to zip along well during our testing period.

GPS is built in and Google Maps is pre-installed. Both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are here too. There is no front camera for two-way video calling, and the main camera is just a 2-megapixel one. Its lens is on the back of the casing and lacks a protective cover. It is slightly recessed but will doubtless get scratched over time. There is no flash, no self portrait mirror, and little by way of camera extras. If you want a sharp shooter, look elsewhere.

Music playback is hampered a little by the use of miniUSB to connect the headphones. At least a set is provided, but if you have your own preferred headphones you’ll need a converter. There is no FM radio. And there is no automatic screen rotation.

The HTC Snap has one of the best mini-QWERTY keyboards currently available, its battery life is good, and the Inner Circle idea is superb. If you don’t need a touchscreen but spend a lot of time on text based communications, it's worth a look.