Price: $250 unlocked, contract price varies depending on customer status.

Battery: Right off the bat we found something that we really love about the HTC Aria -- the battery life. Even though other phones might boast higher talk times, we were pretty satisfied with the six hours. Of course, you can probably tweak this by turning off certain battery hogging features like Wi-Fi and GPS, but that's just us thinking out loud. You might be okay with six hours. We're okay with six hours. However, we do recognize that other people just aren't that excited about six hours. The standby time for this phone is about two weeks, though you probably don't want to let it go that long without a good charge.

Memory: One of the areas we though the HTC Aria could have shined brighter is in the memory department. Now, you do get 512MB and that's real nice, but you have to realize that a lot of other phones come with 1GB or better on board now. Of course, there is support for microSD. The phone comes with a 2GB card but there is support for a 32GB card. It's just a matter of what you want to have on the phone. If you're one of those people that store their entire life on their phone, you might really want to think about getting the maximum card possible. Now if you're not really into storing a lot on your phone you might want to get a 4GB card because it will still take you a long time to actually fill the card.

Screen: If any one thing could suck you into the world of the HTC Aria, it would have to be the screen. It's 3.2 inches of sheer wonder. Previous owners of the HTC Aria report that it's so beautiful that they're sometimes scared to touch it. Of course, we're not that shy -- but if you really want your screen to stay free of all those pesky fingerprints, having a solid case is a good idea. The pixel quality is pretty good at 320x480 -- that's enough quality to get you everywhere you really need to be, really.

If you're a movie fan, the screen has even more value to you -- you can rotate the phone to get a better angle on what you're watching. So if you are watching a video that's in widescreen landscape format, you can tilt the phone accordingly and keep watching.

Form: It's all about the thin candy bar shape. OK, more like a wide candy bar that's been pounded thin. If you're not a fan of bulky phones, we can assure you that you don't have to worry about this with the HTC Aria.

Camera: But let's get to the good part -- like the camera. This is a camera that's capable of shooting video, even though that's really not much to write home about anymore. Android has brought in a lot of interesting changes, and the camera is one of them. Pictures came out pretty sharp, as well they should -- this is a 5MP camera that we're talking about.

Controls: There's an optical track pad that we found interesting -- it's located right under the screen. For people that are trying to resist the almighty touchscreen, this is something that could come in handy.

Other Features:

Bluetooth
GPS
Java
Threaded SMS

Summary:

In short, we really like the HTC Aria. Even though this is a phone that's already been out on the market for a while, we wanted to showcase it anyway. How many times have you had to get a phone for a teenager who goes through a lot of phones? Yeah, we thought so. Getting slightly older phones that still have a lot of cool factor is a great way to really make sure that you're getting value for the money. It’s tempting to just assume that you should go with the newest all of the time, but if your phone company offered you one of these, we suggest taking it and having a blast. Why not check it out for yourself?