HTC Touch on Sprint Cell Phone Review
By Mark Brezinski
Reviewed.com Editorial Staff
November 20, 2007
The HTC Touch is a Windows Mobile Professional device with a large touch screen and a form factor similar to the iPhone, so comparisons are inevitable. We found the Touch’s TouchFLO interface to not be as good as the iPhone’s touch screen, but the Touch provides more business-oriented software functionality. The Touch is a bit wide, but it’s very thin and sat comfortably in our hand. The Touch is available for $249.99 with a two-year contract from Sprint, or $499.99 without one.
The Touch isn’t the easiest phone to make calls with because of its screen. We found it to be on par with other Windows Mobile Professional phones with touch screens, but it takes almost twice as long on average to type out a number on the Touch than it took us with the iPhone. Once you’ve got a call going, however, the Touch offers all the call management options you could want. Contacts and other organizational software are also handled very well, as is typical of Windows Mobile Professional. Business users should find everything they need on the Touch. We typically perform timing tests for all major organizational programs, however, and the Touch only fared well on those where the d-pad circumvented the need to interact with the touch screen.
Audio quality on the Touch is good for the most part, though there are some quirks. Our tests showed the Touch tends to slightly overemphasize a chunk of the frequency spectrum on incoming calls; higher pitches might sound a bit louder than they should. The Touch also overemphasizes your voice fairly evenly across the spectrum. Furthermore, the phone’s side tone, the amount of your own voice that gets played back to you, is a little low. This will make you feel like you’re speaking softer than you really are.
As far as imaging, the Touch doesn’t have the best hardware, but its software is quite good. The camera has slightly lower than average resolution on both still and video capture. It also has trouble with color. The Touch won’t replace dedicated cameras and camcorders, but images and video should look alright on the device. Video and music playback is handled by Windows Media Player Mobile, which offers solid functionality.
The Touch has great messaging software. It handles both e-mail and text messaging very well; while it isn’t a BlackBerry, it is close. There are just two problems. The first is the lack of MMS support, meaning you’ll have to rely on e-mail to send pictures. The second, and far more detrimental issue, is the keyboard. Typing on the Touch is not an easy task; it’s slow and awkward. Those who rely heavily on their phones for e-mail or texting might want to steer clear of this device. There is a good selection of additional software, as is typical for Windows Mobile devices, although the browser isn't as good as that found on the iPhone. The custom TouchFLO home screen is more of a gimmick, mainly because you can't customize it to fit your needs.
The battery on the Touch underachieves in every category: calling, music playback, and Web browsing. The Touch only lasted 3 hours and 11 minutes on our calling test, which falls significantly short of the 4 to 5 hours we’d expect. Music playback was also weak, lasting 4 hours and 45 minutes when most phones play 7 to 8 hours. Browsing is very battery intensive, but 3 hours and 17 minutes isn’t the 4 to 5 hours other phones score. Again, we’re comparing the Touch to the average; many phones score above the mentioned times.
We look at the Touch as a step in the right direction. There are times when TouchFLO is helpful, but it can also be frustrating. Unfortunately, you have to interact with the Touch Screen to access most functions, and this can get annoying, especially when entering text. At $250 with a two-year contract, the Touch is cheaper than the iPhone and has a more mature suite of applications, but it isn't nearly as good when interacting with the interface.
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