iphitus.org

There’s really two parts to this review. As a device and product, the HTC Touch is awesome. There’s just one downside. Windows Mobile.

As a “touch phone” it’s OK. I see it more as a PDA with some useful touch capabilities and believe it should be judged as such because it blows similar priced PDA’s away (at time of purchase). I don’t use the stylus often, though it has taken a few modifications and settings to get to that.

Good

• Reasonably priced, decent price for a phone/pda.
• Good hardware, looks good, durable and well made. Doesn’t creak, feels solid. Still looks new after a few months of use.
• Comes with reasonable set of accessories. Headphones, pouch, screen protector, AC adaptor, USB cable, 1gb MicroSD, paper manual
• A paper manual! I never need it, but i’m impressed that they actually include a somewhat dense paper manual, not just a 5 page quickstart (though that’s also included).
• Touchflo is useful, the contacts page in particular. Can be customised with third party freeware application.
• Good call quality, better than previous phones (Nokia 6280, Sony Ericson T600, Nokia 3315)
• HTC Home plugin is a great today plugin offering weather, launchers, clock and profiles. The other HTC added software works similarly well.
• Sprite Backup is included, which is some great foresight from HTC.

Bad

• Battery is average. I can get 2 days out of it easily, and maybe 3 if I was really conservative. If I use WiFi, the battery just vanishes.
• Touch interface is disappointing and doesnt extend deep enough, though this can be worked around with a couple of addons. PocketCM Contacts and Keyboard (Free) are practically essential. HTC includes a touch keyboard, though it’s fairly clumsy, requiring too many taps to get to simple things like punctuation. The PocketCM one also has some corrective ability, so I can enter “petson”, and it’ll suggest person. It appears that HTC’s newer products have a much more thorough touch interface.

Ugly: Windows Mobile

• Office defaults to docx, and doesnt allow to save new documents in doc. Workaround: Save as .txt before you start and then save to .doc from that. I find that blindingly stupid that it’s capable of saving as .doc, but just doesn’t allow it on new documents. Same goes for Pocket Excel. Fairly sure this can also be worked around by creating a new template using doc/xls.
• Default task manager believes that the ‘x’ button minimises. Right… Best thing to do is spend $5 and get Wisbar Lite, which also comes with a great battery meter.
• Windows Mobile alarms follow the system volume, so unless I set my volume to loud before bed - I don’t wake up the next day. Again, solved using a third party alarm application.
• Windows mobile is buggy. Soft restarts aren’t uncommon, and it has a few rough edges around the place
• Mobile IE is pretty poor. Mostly slow, and doesn’t do a great job of rendering for the small screen (even with fit-to-screen). Third party fixes this again… when Opera release Opera Mobile 9.

Overall, I’d give it a 9/10. It’s a very useful device and does everything I’ve needed it to along with a great feature set for an equally great price.