The HTC Touch Pro is a new take on the classic HTC TyTN, which many people still love to this day. But is this Qwerty-hiding smart phone a massive improvement on its predecessors or is this an unnecessary upgrade? We took it on the road to find out if the Pro is worthy of adoration or just another touchscreen smart phone.
The HTC Touch Pro will be available on several major networks for free on a monthly contract.
Design
When you first pick up the HTC Touch Pro it looks and feels chunky but it's really not that big -- it's about the same size as a Nokia N95. The Pro feels satisfyingly solid and not too light either. It has a quality feel that gives it an edge over lighter, more flimsy-feeling phones. It boasts a lovely soft finish too, so it's a pleasure to hold.
In line with the HTC Touch Diamond, the Pro has a glossy front that houses a large VGA touchscreen, which looks impressively sharp and is great for viewing videos on. Below the screen you'll find a series of navigation buttons, including a touch-sensitive scroll wheel that you can also click, as you would a four-way navigation key.
Touchscreen and scroll wheel aside, the Pro's slide-out Qwerty keypad is the real show-stopper. Compared to the keypad on the TyTN or TyTN II, the Pro comes with an extra row of number keys, and overall the keys are smaller. While it's easy to type with, some TyTN users may find they need some time to adjust.
Features
In an attempt to make using Windows Mobile easier to use with a touchscreen, HTC has incorporated its own user interface, TouchFLO 3D, which is also on the Touch Diamond. This overlaid menu gives you finger-friendly access to most of the Pro's features and while we found it worked faster on the Pro than on the Diamond, it still lagged occasionally.
What really differentiates the Pro from the Diamond is that while on the Diamond you have to put up with just a touchscreen and nav keys, on the Pro you can slide out the full Qwerty keypad and start typing away, which adds much more functionality to most of the Pro's features, in particular the Web browser.
Using a bespoke version of Opera Mobile 9.5, browsing the Web on the Pro is rather enjoyable. Especially so as you've got a full keyboard at your disposal and HSDPA or Wi-Fi to choose from when you want to connect to the Internet. You can view full Web pages and zoom in and out by tapping the screen.
If it's navigation you're after, there's built-in GPS, which you can use with Google Maps or other third-party mapping software. The GPS receiver works as expected -- you need to be outside in order for it to work to its full potential. Once the GPS locked on to enough satellites we didn't encounter any major problems.
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User reviews8
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Connophones 4 June 2011
Good: the camera is good at natural light, the touch screen is good and responsive, the internet is nice ans=d fast, flash support is good. THE PHONE IS MADE REALLY WELL!!!!, I HAVE HAD MINE SINCE IT FIRST CAME OUT YEARS AGO, it is a very good phone. plus it looks great, and it offers windows phone with features like windows mobile office, with word, pp, exel,publisher
Bad: the battery life isnt great, music player isnt great, AND THE SPEAKERS ARE SIMPLY AWFULL.
Comment: i think that this phone is great, it is made very well and does what it said on the box. BUT, if you like music this phone is defiantly not for you. also if you are a bit of a dumbass with phone the windows mobile does take some getting used to, and if you really like your apps this phone is not for you. BUT if you like social networking, fast internet, great easy to use email and a great touch screen THEN THIS PHONE IS DEFINATLY FOR YOU!!!!!, it is just a big shame that the music player and speakers are really rubbish, and that there arent really any apps that you can get...
Kyle-Stefan Ward 8 October 2010
Good: Good QWERTY Keyboard. Nice bright screen.
Bad: HTC Audio Manager has never worked since I had the phone. Terribly laggy. The noise it makes when you send a text gets irritating very fast. It starts slow and gets nothing but slower.
Comment: I bought the phone in March hoping that I would get a nice fast phone as there aren't many applications to run on it, but it took a while for it to load when I first turned it on and HTC's Audio Manager didn't work. I dismissed this as unimportant as I have an iPod anyway and Windows Media Player on the device did work.
The phone was initially a very good phone for me however I've found that the more I use it, it has become incredibly slow. Within 6 months, there is now a 3-10 second lag when I open the keyboard for the screen to rotate and when texting or emailing I'll find that I have typed a message on the keyboard before half of it is even displayed on the screen, with it lagging substantially. During the text conversations, it becomes apparent that there is part of the touch screen (the far left and right sides) which don't actually work, so you can never highlight a full message and trying to use the on-screen keyboard is an absolute nightmare.
Although I haven't had that many phones, I found my LG Viewty to be of more use to me than this phone... It had a better battery life, the on-screen keyboard was brilliant, the camera was better, the phone didn't lag as much and the volume on it was much better.
Overall, I believe that there are much better phones out there for the price. In my opinion, I wasted £220 spending money on a phone which ages so rapidly. I think this phone should vanish into obscurity if it hasn't already done so.
mobilephonemart 3 October 2009
Good: the FULL qwerty keyboard
Bad: loading up time from when first switching on
Comment: great phone, really like the full qwerty keyboard, many other phones with keyboards are only half with the numeric keys missing. the touch flo is smooth and easy to use. just need to set the resposivness setting to tailor ur requirements when sliding and scrolling.
get for setting up and accessing email accounts. with unlimited internet on your tariff its a great piece of business kit to carry around with wifi to add.
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