The HTC Touch is one of HTC's most attractive and controversial handsets to date. At its launch, HTC firmly denied that the iPhone played any part in the Touch's design and added that the Touch was the first device of its kind.
But with such similar styling and a finger-friendly interface, it's impossible not to draw the comparison. It's out in the next couple of months for free on a monthly contract and SIM-free from eXpansys for about £310, but can a Windows Mobile 6 handset really take on the might of Apple?
Design
The majority of handsets running Microsoft's mobile OS are butt ugly. Fortunately, the Touch doesn't fall into this category -- it's a design masterpiece you can proudly take out of your pocket and show off to your mates.
It's slim, light and features a large, easy-to-view, colour touchscreen. The Touch's casing has that lovely rubbery finish that feels great and the handset fits really well in your hand, making it enjoyable to hold.
As the name suggests, it's all about the touchscreen, which is the primary way of interacting with your phone's contents. The screen is large -- 71mm (2.8 inches) -- and yet small enough to reach every corner comfortably with your thumb.
Features
HTC has created a menu interface called TouchFlo, which is activated by flicking your thumb up from the bottom of the screen.
The TouchFlo menu presents you with a set of applications, media apps and contacts that you navigate through by swiping your thumb left and right. It's presented in a three-dimensional way and gives the illusion that you're turning a multi-faced block.
It works rather well, although you have to press the screen a little harder than you might think. Unfortunately, as soon as you click one of the thumb-sized buttons, you're ejected back into the less thumb-friendly Windows Mobile interface. You then need to pull out a stylus to input text messages or browse Web pages properly.
The lack of a phone-wide finger-friendly interface isn't great -- compared to the iPhone this is pretty lacklustre, but compared to most of the Windows Mobile devices out there it's a great improvement.
Another HTC-made improvement is a new start page that displays the time, weather and a quick-launch section for accessing your apps much faster than before. It's a small improvement technically but a big one for users, since it cuts out a lot of clicks.
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User reviews3
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Geoff Morgan 19 May 2008
Good: Size, features, style
Bad: Poor quality, touch screen is 'touchy'
Comment: At firs this seemed like a worthwhile improvement over my O2 Atom, but it seems that HTC is still struggling with product quality. Like my Atom, this unit is buggy, hangs, turns itself off occasionally and is generally difficult to live with. I won't buy another product that comes out of any of HTC's factories. The touch feature is a gimmick, it only works on a few screens and is often unresponsive. The phone would be great if it performed as it was supposed to, but it doesn't.
James Kelly 15 August 2007
Good: Touch flo, makes it easy to use as a phone
Bad: Memory runs out far to easily
Comment: This is my first Pocket PC device so I dont know how it compares to other WM6 devices so this is just a general user review.
The home screen is really impresive with the time displayed clearly and three large tabs to get you to the weather and an application launcher. The touch flo is easy to work, my only problem was knowing how much pressure to apply to the screen for it to work. What I have found is that if you use your thumb then be prepared to press the screen quite hard, you can however use a lot less pressure by using a fingernail (or stylus). For a pocket PC novice the touch flo system does not go deep enough into the system i.e. press contacts and your straight into the normal contacts list which is tricky to navigate with my fat thumbs. I have however found an excellent bit of software called PocketCM-0.8b. This links seemlesly into the touch flo and makes the whole experience of using your phone as a phone alot better.
The wi-fi feature is good and I found it easy to connect to my home network so using skype, Live messenger and Tomtom plus is really quick and easy. Viewing web pages is a waste of time in my opinion on such a small screen.
Bluetooth is up to date and supports stereo headsets. I've used it for streaming music from my phone to the laptop which is plugged into the home stereo. I also have a bluetooth gps which connected fine, tomtom 6 by the way works brilliantly, much better than on my old SE P910i which i've now retired!
The music application that HTC provide is ok, I prefere WMP, it can at least play the songs in the correct order! HTC's player plays songs alphabetically which I think is a let down. It does however update the music library automatically.
I have found quite a bit of software to make the HTC Touch a better device, one I mentioned earlier. The other is a T9 phonepad ad-on from HTC (google HTC Touch pad). Live messenger needs updating to build 1400 as the supplied version doesn't show any online contacts. Spb Backup is a usefull tool for obvious reasons. Don't get too carried away with extra software though because the on board memory is appauling. I've installed what I can on the supplied memory card but still have trouble with low memory.
Ryan Jong 16 June 2007
Good: Interface, though superficial, can become good
Bad: Have to buy software to be able to use it
Comment: Yes the cpu is slow, yes there can be some lag, yes there is no 3G. BUT its a good phone. Only thing is that you need to buy TenGO thumb to complete the phone. THERE IS NO T9 PHONEPAD ON THE PHONE! This means that you cannot operate the phone with one hand (very important to me). HOWEVER, once you install tenGO thumb, one hand operation is possible! It suddenly becomes a one-handed stylus free phone!
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