HTC Touch
Rabu, 05 September 2007 by Diet
HTC Touch entered the game officially on June 5, 2007 with their showing of the HTC Touch. This is a Windows Mobile Professional (aka WM6 Pocket PC Phone) with a screen that's not only stylus-friendly like all PPCs, but finger sensitive. The screen requires a firmer touch than prior Windows Mobile devices, so if you get one, don't be shy-- press firmly for best results.
The Touch uses a difference kind of touch screen to achieve finger-friendliness, especially gesture-awareness. It's not a multi-touch display like the upcoming iPhone and you can use a stylus, again unlike the iPhone which needs a human touch to work correctly.
Features at a Glance
Now that i've covered the touch screen and UI, let's get down to the basics. The HTC Touch runs Windows Mobile 6 Professional on a 201MHz processor with the standard 64 megs of RAM and 128 megs of flash ROM. It's an unlocked triband GSM phone with EDGE for data. The first version released will be triband 900/1800/1900MHz, which is better suited to Europe and Asia than the US where AT&T uses the 850MHz band heavily (T-Mobile uses 1900MHz, with only some 850MHz roaming).
The first version will be released in Taiwan (HTC's home) this summer, while a US triband version with 850MHz will come out before the end of this year. The remarkably small Touch has WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, a 2 megapixel camera and a standard QVGA resolution display. The HTC Touch is available in two colors: black and wasabi green.
Design and Ergonomics
This is a beautiful and small phone. It looks elegant, extremely modern and sexy. The Touch has the same rubbery soft-touch finish as the T-Mobile Dash (aka HTC S620) and Wing: it feels great and helps keep the device securely in hand. The matte black finish does show fingerprints, but not as much as glossy phones. A chrome strip wraps around the edges of the phone, again making for a great look.
The device is made of plastic, including the chrome trim. The curved corners and bottom taper make it feel natural in the hand and there are no edges to catch on pants pockets nooks and crannies. At 3.95 ounces (112 grams) and 0.55" (13.9mm) this is the smallest Windows Mobile Professional phone on the market.
Phone Features, Reception and Data
The HTC Touch is a triband 900/1800/1900MHz GSM phone that's unlocked for use with any GSM carrier. The phone lacks the 850MHz band used heavily by AT&T in the US and by T-Mobile for roaming service, but HTC say a triband 850/1800/1900MHz version will be out by the end of 2007. I have to wonder why it isn't quad band, though; global travelers will be at a disadvantage with a triband phone. As with most recent HTC-manufactured phones like the Wing and the Cingular 8525, call quality is excellent and the volume is average by GSM standards. Though not deafeningly loud, the speakerphone's quality is good through the small rear-facing speaker.
The Touch has Cyberon's Voice Speed Dial, but there's no hardware key assigned to this function, and the only user-assignable button is the camera button (which has only a press but not a secondary press-and-hold assignable application). Voice Speed Dial uses voice tags rather than true voice recognition, but it's very accurate and works with Bluetooth headsets and car kits. Like all Windows Mobile 5 and 6 phones, the Touch has call history, photo caller ID, and supports call waiting, conference calling and flight mode. For data speeds, the Touch got an average of 85k on T-Mobile US. You can also use the phone as a wireless modem for a notebook over Bluetooth, though EDGE speeds aren't as compelling as 3G.
Camera
The 2 megapixel CMOS camera with fixed focus lens takes acceptable photos, though not as good as the HTC TyTN (Cingular 8525) 2 MP camera. Given how little room there is inside the phone for camera hardware, i not surprised that image quality took a hit compared to its much bigger brother. Images suffer from excessive foreground sharpening (so much so that detail is actually obliterated) that jars with un-sharpened background areas and creates a sense of limited focus. When resized down to VGA or 800 x 600, photos look decent but they still lack natural detail and contrast and white out add harshness to the images. Images sometimes have a purple color cast, as you can see in the photo of the dark gray buddha to the right.
WiFi and Bluetooth
The HTC Touch has 802.11b/g WiFi. WiFi worked reliably for me on my encrypted 802.11g network and range was good for a Pocket PC phone (despite the phone's small size). Data speeds averaged 1097 kbit/s, which is middle of the pack for Windows Mobile devices. The WiFi status control panel applet shows current SSID, mode (Infrastructure or ad hoc), Tx and Rx rates, BSSID, channel and signal strength. You can set the amount of power the WiFi radio consumes using a 3 position slider, set up LEAP and secure certificates.
Battery Life
Here's where the Touch makes up for its weak CPU performance: battery life is superb by Windows Mobile Professional standards. The phone lasted 3 days on a charge with moderate use (about twice as long as the HTC TyTN/Cingular 8525) and longer with very light use. HTC claims 5 hours of talk time and 200 hours of standby and that's reasonably accurate according to our tests (i got 4.6 hours talk time). Standby was right on target. Given the wide range of things you can do with Windows Mobile phones, it's hard to describe an average usage scenario, but i tested the phone by making calls, listening to MP3s for an hour each day, watching a 2 minute video each day, looking up calendar and contacts information, checking email manually 8x/day and surfing the web over EDGE with Bluetooth left on at all times. WiFi will consume battery life faster, as will streaming media, though given the Touch's weak video playback performance i don't foresee many folks watching hours of video on the device.
Conclusion
The HTC Touch is a beautiful, very small PDA phone, something i just about never get to say. It's the perfect phone for style conscious buyers who need a PDA's features and advanced functions, but don't want to carry an ugly brick. However, those who text or email frequently won't be happy with the tiny on-screen keyboard and (very functional) handwriting recognition. The Touch isn't meant to compete with hardware-keyboarded PDA and smartphones like the Treo 750, Cingular 8525, T-Mobile Dash or BlackBerry 8800. And while the touch user interface is a step in the right direction, it's really just one application launcher rather than a pervasive change to the phone's interaction on the whole.
Pro: Beautiful, very light and very small. Touch screen is a step in the right direction. Excellent music playback quality through the included wired stereo headset and through stereo Bluetooth headphones. Very good battery life by Windows Mobile Professional standards. Bluetooth 2.0 and WiFi 802.11b/g keep you connected and WiFi helps with the lack of 3G.
Editor's rating:
The Touch uses a difference kind of touch screen to achieve finger-friendliness, especially gesture-awareness. It's not a multi-touch display like the upcoming iPhone and you can use a stylus, again unlike the iPhone which needs a human touch to work correctly.
Features at a Glance
Now that i've covered the touch screen and UI, let's get down to the basics. The HTC Touch runs Windows Mobile 6 Professional on a 201MHz processor with the standard 64 megs of RAM and 128 megs of flash ROM. It's an unlocked triband GSM phone with EDGE for data. The first version released will be triband 900/1800/1900MHz, which is better suited to Europe and Asia than the US where AT&T uses the 850MHz band heavily (T-Mobile uses 1900MHz, with only some 850MHz roaming).
The first version will be released in Taiwan (HTC's home) this summer, while a US triband version with 850MHz will come out before the end of this year. The remarkably small Touch has WiFi, Bluetooth 2.0, a 2 megapixel camera and a standard QVGA resolution display. The HTC Touch is available in two colors: black and wasabi green.
Design and Ergonomics
This is a beautiful and small phone. It looks elegant, extremely modern and sexy. The Touch has the same rubbery soft-touch finish as the T-Mobile Dash (aka HTC S620) and Wing: it feels great and helps keep the device securely in hand. The matte black finish does show fingerprints, but not as much as glossy phones. A chrome strip wraps around the edges of the phone, again making for a great look.
The device is made of plastic, including the chrome trim. The curved corners and bottom taper make it feel natural in the hand and there are no edges to catch on pants pockets nooks and crannies. At 3.95 ounces (112 grams) and 0.55" (13.9mm) this is the smallest Windows Mobile Professional phone on the market.
Phone Features, Reception and Data
The HTC Touch is a triband 900/1800/1900MHz GSM phone that's unlocked for use with any GSM carrier. The phone lacks the 850MHz band used heavily by AT&T in the US and by T-Mobile for roaming service, but HTC say a triband 850/1800/1900MHz version will be out by the end of 2007. I have to wonder why it isn't quad band, though; global travelers will be at a disadvantage with a triband phone. As with most recent HTC-manufactured phones like the Wing and the Cingular 8525, call quality is excellent and the volume is average by GSM standards. Though not deafeningly loud, the speakerphone's quality is good through the small rear-facing speaker.
The Touch has Cyberon's Voice Speed Dial, but there's no hardware key assigned to this function, and the only user-assignable button is the camera button (which has only a press but not a secondary press-and-hold assignable application). Voice Speed Dial uses voice tags rather than true voice recognition, but it's very accurate and works with Bluetooth headsets and car kits. Like all Windows Mobile 5 and 6 phones, the Touch has call history, photo caller ID, and supports call waiting, conference calling and flight mode. For data speeds, the Touch got an average of 85k on T-Mobile US. You can also use the phone as a wireless modem for a notebook over Bluetooth, though EDGE speeds aren't as compelling as 3G.
Camera
The 2 megapixel CMOS camera with fixed focus lens takes acceptable photos, though not as good as the HTC TyTN (Cingular 8525) 2 MP camera. Given how little room there is inside the phone for camera hardware, i not surprised that image quality took a hit compared to its much bigger brother. Images suffer from excessive foreground sharpening (so much so that detail is actually obliterated) that jars with un-sharpened background areas and creates a sense of limited focus. When resized down to VGA or 800 x 600, photos look decent but they still lack natural detail and contrast and white out add harshness to the images. Images sometimes have a purple color cast, as you can see in the photo of the dark gray buddha to the right.
WiFi and Bluetooth
The HTC Touch has 802.11b/g WiFi. WiFi worked reliably for me on my encrypted 802.11g network and range was good for a Pocket PC phone (despite the phone's small size). Data speeds averaged 1097 kbit/s, which is middle of the pack for Windows Mobile devices. The WiFi status control panel applet shows current SSID, mode (Infrastructure or ad hoc), Tx and Rx rates, BSSID, channel and signal strength. You can set the amount of power the WiFi radio consumes using a 3 position slider, set up LEAP and secure certificates.
Battery Life
Here's where the Touch makes up for its weak CPU performance: battery life is superb by Windows Mobile Professional standards. The phone lasted 3 days on a charge with moderate use (about twice as long as the HTC TyTN/Cingular 8525) and longer with very light use. HTC claims 5 hours of talk time and 200 hours of standby and that's reasonably accurate according to our tests (i got 4.6 hours talk time). Standby was right on target. Given the wide range of things you can do with Windows Mobile phones, it's hard to describe an average usage scenario, but i tested the phone by making calls, listening to MP3s for an hour each day, watching a 2 minute video each day, looking up calendar and contacts information, checking email manually 8x/day and surfing the web over EDGE with Bluetooth left on at all times. WiFi will consume battery life faster, as will streaming media, though given the Touch's weak video playback performance i don't foresee many folks watching hours of video on the device.
Conclusion
The HTC Touch is a beautiful, very small PDA phone, something i just about never get to say. It's the perfect phone for style conscious buyers who need a PDA's features and advanced functions, but don't want to carry an ugly brick. However, those who text or email frequently won't be happy with the tiny on-screen keyboard and (very functional) handwriting recognition. The Touch isn't meant to compete with hardware-keyboarded PDA and smartphones like the Treo 750, Cingular 8525, T-Mobile Dash or BlackBerry 8800. And while the touch user interface is a step in the right direction, it's really just one application launcher rather than a pervasive change to the phone's interaction on the whole.
Pro: Beautiful, very light and very small. Touch screen is a step in the right direction. Excellent music playback quality through the included wired stereo headset and through stereo Bluetooth headphones. Very good battery life by Windows Mobile Professional standards. Bluetooth 2.0 and WiFi 802.11b/g keep you connected and WiFi helps with the lack of 3G.
Editor's rating:
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