Reviews posted by

A surprising day spent using the HTC Touch…

Htctouch

So I’ve just had a pretty typical working day with the HTC Touch handset, and thought you might like some initial impressions. First off, it was in use from 5am in the morning (catching an early flight) until 10.00 pm at night (long day!).

  • Battery life remaining at the end of the day = Around 25%.
  • Applications used = Mobile Word, Destinator 6.0 GPS navigation software, default MP3 music player, phone (3 calls + SMS), camera (one shot), WiFi (failed), games (a lot in airport terminals)
  • Overall impression = Yeah nice. The battery life was a very pleasant surprise, which leads me to believe that the power management has been improved considerably on Windows Mobile 6.0 Pro. Which is definitely a good thing.
  • Cautions = My short time trying to connect (and failing due to no suitable networks being available) seemed to suck out battery life. WiFi looks like a battery killer all right.
  • Minuses = The camera quality sucks. 2 megapixel? Hah, I’ve seen better from a 330,000 pixel camera.
  • Pluses = The GPS software worked perfectly, Bluetooth hooked up instantly each time (after initially setting the right port), and the voice was loud and clear during the journey at all times.
  • Deliberations = I need more fun games. The default Solitaire and the free Microsoft 9 Hole Golf games are not enough. Flight mode is good!
  • Deliberations II = Need a better set of earphones, and a decent eBook reader for Pocket PC. Mobile Word sucks for eBook reading, but we all knew that didn’t we?
  • Deliberations III = it’s really nice to have a super skinny phone in my pocket rather than a lumpy lump. Great form factor.

Overall I’m really quite surprised by how well the thing worked. Long time readers will know that I’m a Symbian fan, but this phone is the first time I’ve been able to say that the Windows platform actually worked well under pressure. Of course there’s still the kludgy Windows menu switching performance to contend with and those dodgy touchscreen issues to boot (esp. extreme smearing and a bit of glare), but in the end the kid did all right.

6 Comments

  • How is the touch screen’s performance? Is the phone well sealed?(do you see any dust particles in the screen yet?)

  • seriously. no one cares about the software, it’s the hardware on that thing that people want to know about. who cares about MS golf?!

  • Miikelite, it’s the software that makes it work, isn’t it? Anyway, just for information, the touchscreen has already started giving a few strange results (there’s an occasional random colour shift which happens for no reason). Also I’m finding that the screen is definitely not as sensitive as it should be, however I’m still impressed with the battery life.

  • Er actually I don't bring the touchscreen up much, because it's probably the least interesting thing on the phone for me, all things considered. :-) Just because HTC would like us to focus on what they think is a 'revolutionary' feature, doesn't mean I have to. The touchscreen works OK, just about.

    It's how the whole handset works together as a phone cum PDA that really interests me. And funnily enough, I'm beginning to realise that at the end of the day, a huge proportion of the utility of these phones to me comes down to battery life, rather than just feature set. If it doesn't last long enough to act as a decent GPS system, music player, eBook reader etc, then all the features in the world are not going to win me over. Just my way of looking at things, after a fair few years spent reviewing these products.

  • of course it’s software that makes it work, but the name of the phone is called Touch for a reason. You don’t even bring up the touchscreen until the last sentence…

  • I agree with Red, you make a lot of sense. whats the point in having all the power and memory if the battery lasts a couple of hours.

comments powered by Disqus

Side Advert

Write For Us

Personnel

Managing Editor:
Nigel Powell

Associate Editor:
Caitlyn Muncy
Associate Editor:
Dan Ferris
Ecological Editor:
Debra Atlas
Technology Editor:
Fritz Effenberger
Asian Editor:
Hu Ping
Reviews Editor:
Kevin Evans

FB Like Box