The AT&T Fuze, also known as the HTC Touch Pro, is a smartphone running the Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system. It has a gorgeous 2.8-inch touchscreen with VGA resolution, a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and a 3.2-megapixel camera with an auto-focus lens and an LED flash. It is 3G-capable and can connect to AT&T's 3G network as well as those outside of the U.S. With GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, it offers additional connectivity options to keep you in touch and on track in a variety of situations. At $299 after a mail-in rebate with a 2-year contract from AT&T, it's a bit on the pricey side, particularly since it doesn't come with much in the box beyond the bare necessities to get you started.

While the Fuze looks petite, it's thick and heavy, which doesn't make for an entirely pleasant experience for long phone conversations or carrying it in a pants pocket. The rear cover is faceted to give the impression of a cut jewel and isn't all that attractive in reality.

Making a call on the Fuze is easy and quick using its on-screen virtual keypad. Unfortunately, the interface is not responsive at all otherwise - the Fuze has an additional interface, called TouchFLO, on top of the standard Windows Mobile one that is pretty yet horribly slow and we recommend you turn it off immediately once you get the Fuze to spare yourself frustration.

As a full-featured smartphone, the Fuze is capable right out of the box of syncing your contacts, calendars, notes, and tasks with your PC, though Mac users will need to do a little more work to set this up. Email is also very robust, with the ability to handle multiple email accounts and push email via a Microsoft Exchange Server. SMS and MMS messaging are also very good, though using instant messaging could be an expensive proposition since AT&T charges you for each message sent and received as if it were a text message.

The Fuze's default web browser has a lot of features and replicates desktop browsing pretty well, allowing you to keep multiple web pages open at once, save bookmarks, review your browsing history, and more. While its screen is a decent size and has great resolution, it's still not as good a browsing experience as found on other touchscreen devices with larger screens.

The Fuze features 3G connectivity on AT&T's network that will get you faster browsing speeds than you'll find on other EDGE-only devices. You could also travel abroad and be able to connect to the high-speed networks of other carriers, though you should be sure to check your calling plan beforehand to understand how much roaming like this will cost you and make changes as needed. The Fuze also has a Wi-Fi radio so you can get even faster speeds on your own home network or at a Wi-Fi hotspot, and its Bluetooth radio will let you connect the Fuze to stereo headphones, headsets, hands-free car systems, and more.

Performance (read the full lab performance results at www.wirelessinfo.com)

The sound sent by the Fuze is good, presenting no issues that will make it harder for the person on the other end of the line to hear your voice in its full glory. The sound received by the Fuze is another story, with areas in the frequency range where sounds will be artificially amplified and cut off in others. Side tone, the amount of your own voice piped back to you to help you judge how loudly you're speaking, is much lower than the ideal level and will prompt you to compensate by speaking more loudly than necessary.

The Fuze's imaging test results were disappointing relative to other phones we've tested with similar camera specs, posting poor still image and video resolution results. Unlike other cameras with auto-focus lenses that we've seen, the live preview on the Fuze is constantly fuzzy until you active the auto-focus, making it harder to frame up your picture.

In terms of battery life, the Fuze lasted 6 hours and 38 minutes in our call time test and an impressive 14 hours and 46 minutes in our music playback test – both of these are very good times for a 3G device. Web browsing battery life was the shortest of the bunch, but this is normal since powering the backlight and keeping a data connection open are very taxing on the battery.

Comparisons (read more in-depth comparisons at www.wirelessinfo.com)

The Fuze is a very capable device that can do just about everything you'd need a smartphone to do. However, it's disappointing that it comes with the bare minimum of accessories, missing a hands-free headset and an expansion card to give you more than the paltry 512MB of internal memory it has. At $299 after a mail-in rebate with a 2-year contract, it's also more expensive than other devices that are just as powerful and that provide a better experience in other areas. The Blackberry Storm matches the Fuze with superb messaging and PIM capabilities and it still costs $100 less than the Fuze. The iPhone 3G isn't well-known as a business-oriented device though it is Microsoft Exchange Server-compatible and there are over 25,000 3rd-party apps available for it, and it offers an excellent multimedia experience. At $199 for the 8GB model, it also comes in at a good deal less than the Fuze.

On paper, the Fuze sounds very compelling, but the unresponsive TouchFLO interface, its poor imaging performance, and clunkiness and heaviness prompt thorough consideration of other smartphone alternatives.