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The HTC Salsa's battery life is excellent. Even under review conditions when we're taking photos every 10 minutes and constantly opening Twitter and Facebook all day, the Salsa managed to last very nearly a full two days on one charge – and with a 1520mAh battery for a mid-range phone, we can see why.
HTC has supplied a collection of power saver settings as well, which can be set to kick in and restrict certain services and adjust options when your battery falls to a certain level.
It's a useful way of stopping your phone secretly draining its last bit of power trying to connect to Wi-Fi.
Treat the HTC Salsa carefully and you'll be able to relax a little and stop panicking about where the nearest working charging point is.
Connectivity
Aside from 3G and Bluetooth, we have Wi-Fi and GPS, which are now pretty much standard and essential for a phone of this kind.
HTC always makes it easy to connect your device to your computer, with a really helpful pop-up menu that offers you various connection options.
It's here on the Salsa too, and although the actual options haven't changed (charge only, disk drive, HTC sync, USB tethering and internet pass through), we were pleased to see that the menu has been given a little bit of a makeover compared to previous HTC devices.
Not having to use proprietary software such as Samsung's Kies makes the whole thing a lot easier. And whether you're rocking Windows, Mac OS X or Linux on your computer, you don't have to start worrying about compatibility issues, which is helpful.
As for getting your stuff on the phone, the Salsa uses HTC's standard USB connection menu. Plug it in and the phone prompts you to select an action.
Mounting it as a USB drive means you can't use any functions on the phone that use the SD card, but it'll pop up as an external drive on your PC so you can drag across your Kasabian back catalogue with ease.
Also, we weren't able to find any DLNA client onboard. This wasn't too much of a surprise, as that tends to be a feature reserved for higher-end phones, and we can't see it as a feature being missed too much by the target market.
There's also another option that's not in the menu, and that is to use your phone as a wireless hotspot. It's been part of Android for a little while now and you'll find this option tucked away in the app drawer.
Technically, the HTC Salsa is a quad-band unit that supports GSM/ GPRS/ EDGE, plus HSPA/ WCDMA. It's also capable of functioning as a tethered USB modem, and we had no problems at all or any dropped signals when connecting to various Wi-Fi hotspots.
It also supports the latest 802.11n connectivity, which is handy if you've updated your router in the last few years.
As well as the proximity sensor in the front face of the HTC Salsa, there's also an ambient light sensor. This isn't a huge amount of use, but it does mean you're able to select the automatic brightness setting and have the phone adjust its own screen depending on how near you are to a window.
