HTC Touch

Trying To Be An iPhone:

This handset isn't the iPhone, but HTC the manufacturer behind Sprint's version of the Touch certainly does what it can to introduce iPhone-esque swipes and glides to the Touch's Windows Mobile 6 interface. The company does so with hardware tweaks and its own software, written to integrate with Windows Mobile yet provide a very different, more simplified experience. The result includes screens such as this one: a home screen that's easy to read and navigate compared with a typical Windows Mobile home screen. Other screens include a weather shortcut and a customizable quick-launcher. The TouchFLO interface is single-touch, as opposed to Apple's multitouch design, and you can't pinch and squeeze. What it does do, though, it does well: Swipe your finger from the Sprint logo on up, and you'll activate the cube interface; swipe your finger again from left to right (or the reverse) to rotate through "faces" of the three-dimensional cube. The interface has a dialing-shortcuts screen (up to nine contacts with images); a screen with six large square shortcut buttons to Sprint's software store, instant messaging, Internet Explorer, SMS messaging, the device's Comm Manager, and e-mail; and a Sprint shortcuts screen leading to Sprint Music and TV shopping services, plus Sprint On-Demand for current news, weather, sports, and finance information (customized by zip code). You can use touch to scroll or page through options in many of the Windows Mobile applications, including contacts, calendar, and e-mail.

Design and Storage:

The Touch has an elegant, streamlined design that makes it stand out from the crush of new phones that have crossed my desk. It's slim and easy to hold, in part because of its contoured shape and in part because of the textured paint on the removable back plate. The phone has few buttons: Rectangular talk and send buttons flank the five-way navigation pad, a power button sits up top, and a camera shutter button resides at lower right, shown here to the left of the flip-open door that conceals the microSD card slot (a 512MB card comes with the device). The door cleverly melds into the mirrored trim of the phone--unless you know it's there, you wouldn't see it.

Specifications:

Processor TI's OMAP™ 850, 201 MHz Operating System Windows Mobile® 6 Professional Memory ROM: 128 MB SDRAM: 64 MB DDR Dimension 99.9mm (L) X 58mm (W) X 13.9mm (T) Weight 112g with battery Display 2.8" LCD touch screen with backlight 240 X 320 dots resolution with 65,536 colors Network GSM/GPRS/EDGE Tri-band: 900, 1800, 1900 (The device will operate on frequencies available from the cellular network.) Device Control HTC TouchFLO™ 5-Way navigation control Connectivity Bluetooth® 2.0 Wi-Fi® IEEE 802.11 b/g HTC ExtUSB™ (11-pin mini-USB and audio jack in one) Camera 2.0 megapixel CMOS color camera Audio Built-in microphone and 3-in-1 speaker Windows Media Player supported formats: AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, WMA, WAV, QCELP, MPEG4, AMR-NB, AMR-WB Battery Rechargeable Li-lon battery Capacity: 1100 mAh Standby time: Up to 200 hours Talk time: Up to 5 hours Expansion Slot microSD™ memory card (SD 2.0 compatible) AC Adapter Voltage range/frequency: 100 ~ 240V AC, 50/60Hz DC output: 5V and 1A