HTC Touch with WM6 Professional
From pocketnow.com
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Introduction
Almost a month before the Apple iPhone will be released, the first touch-sensitive finger-oriented-user-interface mobile phone was released by HTC. It's called the HTC Touch and builds upon Windows Mobile 6 Professional with some new touch screen technology and finger gesture recognition software. While the Touch will not compete in the same market as the Apple iPhone and HTC has said that it was in development long before the iPhone announcement, it's impossible to ignore the similarities and make comparisons.
Will the Touch earn the hearts of the European and Asian markets longing for the flashy Apple iPhone? Or will the one-finger-touch-screen interface prove to be less user-friendly than built-in hardware keyboards? In a time where the entire smart-phone industry has been moving towards hardware keyboards for one-handed tactile-based interaction, it's anybody's guess. Read on for our thorough review!
Review Date: June 19, 2007
Picture Highlights
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| Yes, it's that small. | The Touch Flo launcher application
cannot be found in the Start Menu, you have to slide your finger from the HTC logo on the device upwards in order to open it. Sliding your finger left to right or vice versa rotates the launcher to different 3 dimensional sides which give you access to different screens of buttons. |
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| The Today screen adds a nice big plug-in up front. The bottom row has 3 buttons that you can use to switch between the "home" area, weather, and a launcher. The home screen shows a very large clock and in the second row you see icons for unread emails, unread text messages, and missed calls. Pressing the weather button shows a big graphic of today's weather, and gives you access to the forecast for the week. | The phone dialer uses a custom skin designed by HTC. The buttons are nice and big, but we're missing on-screen Talk and Speed Dial buttons. In the menu, you'll also notice the ability to send text messages and search the company directory is missing |
Overall Impression
At first I expected the Touch to be a pretty low-end device. It has about the same specifications as the old HTC Prophet with an unimpressive 201Mhz OMAP processor. Adding the ability to press such small buttons with your finger is a great improvement over standard touch screens. Furthermore the animated launcher interface and the iPhone-like push scrolling features add some exciting flash to the Windows Mobile operating system. Everyone I've shown this device to has been extremely impressed. Some thought it was the iPhone while others thought it was better than the iPhone.
What HTC has done is combine a bit of flashy animated fluff with the power of a Windows Mobile device and added one-finger usage usability. Generally, one-finger user interfaces implement large buttons that take up significant portions of the screen meaning you'll have less commands available per screen. The Touch keeps the efficiency of smaller buttons in the normal Windows Mobile interface, while adding the ability to activate those buttons with a larger finger thus creating a "best of both worlds" mobile device. Not only that, but the Touch recognizes the difference between a finger with a large surface area and a pointy stylus. If you drag a scrollable screen with you finger, the screen scrolls. If you drag with a stylus, the content of the screen becomes selected. That means you're not giving up features for the sake of simplicity!
On the other hand, having a touch-screen-only interface means you'll have to use your eyes to look at what buttons you want to press. You won't be able to just feel for the buttons or develop motor memory. I tried to use this while driving, and it was extremely dangerous without having hardware buttons. What's worse is that the screen is barely visible when you're outside in the day time.
If you're looking for a phone that's retains the power of Windows Mobile (sync with Exchange, push email, install 3rd party applications, etc.), adds some impressive 3D animation, doesn't weigh down your pocket, and really doesn't need a stylus, the HTC Touch is what you'll want. If you're a power user who needs GPS, HSDPA high speed internet, and a hardware keyboard, you'll have to look elsewhere. Overall, I was much more impressed with the HTC Touch than I thought I would be. I can see it being very popular in the markets where it will be released.
Rating
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