HTC Touch Pro review

The scene of the PDA market can sometimes be highly confusing. On one side there is the mighty iPhone 3G where as to counter it are winmo devices like the Samsung Omnia i900, HTC’s Touch Diamond. Well these devices are good, but for a serious business user these devices almost mean nothing. Yes, nothing because they don’t come with any dedicated hardware keys. So all that big touchscreen real estate they talk about has to be shared with the virtual keyboard and in case you have big chubby fingers, then those devices are almost useless for you.

The phone comes packaged in a box shaped like a pyramid with the top chopped off identical to the HTC Diamond and it really is well packaged and looks very enticing. Inside the box is the phone, wired headset, spare stylus, CD ROM with a user manual and extra software, battery, mains charger and a USB cable, all neatly tucked away inside.

Nothing really new inside the Touch Pro compared to the Diamond except the addition of an on screen tilt sensor calibrating tool. Not sure why you would need this but it is there if you ever do. Apart from that you have the usual Windows Mobile goodness like Windows Live, Google Maps, Office, Opera 9.5 and the HTC Youtube application which I found very slow to use, even over WiFi.

The GPS worked very well with TomTom and Google Maps locking very quickly and both looked fantastic on the VGA screen.

The battery life is so much better than the Diamond, it is a bigger capacity battery and it shows, other differences are the increase in the amount of Ram but unfortunately only 512MB storage of which the OS takes up quite a lot of. Also included is a TV Out feature unfortunately HTC have not included a cable for this so its a bit useless.

HTC have taken the flack on the Diamond, learned from it and released a very solid, well performing device, the TouchFlo 3D works perfectly now and enhances the device greatly. Added to that, high quality hardware, a great slide out keyboard, lots of Ram and this device is a winner. Its a work horse with a lot of power and runs as smooth as silk. I cannot think of many negatives, it has all the features, good battery life, good camera, WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS.

Positives
* Touch Flo3D
* Slide Out QWERTY Keyboard
* VGA Screen
* HSDPA
* GPS

Negatives
* It feels fat but it is not really compared with the Nokia N95
* Still not a fan of the angled back panel

Specification

Processor
Qualcomm® MSM7201A™ 528 MHz

Operating System
Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional

Memory
ROM: 512 MB
RAM: 288MB

Dimensions
102 mm (L) X 51 mm (W) X 18.05 mm (T)

Weight
165 g (with battery)

Display
2.8-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with VGA resolution

Network
HSPA/WCDMA:

Europe/Asia: 900/2100 MHz

Up to 2 Mbps up-link and 7.2 Mbps down-link speeds

Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE:

Europe/Asia: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz

(Band frequency and data speed are operator dependent.)

Device Control
TouchFLOâ„¢ 3D
Touch-sensitive navigation control

Keyboard
Slide-out 5-row QWERTY keyboard

GPS
Internal GPS antenna

Connectivity
Bluetooth® 2.0 with EDR
Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/g
HTC ExtUSBâ„¢ (11-pin mini-USB 2.0, audio jack, and TV Out* in one)

Camera

Main camera: 3.2 megapixel color camera with auto focus and flash light
Second camera: VGA CMOS color camera

Audio
Built-in microphone, speaker and FM radio with RDS
Ring tone supported formats:

MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, WAV, and AMR-NB

40 polypho
nic and standard MIDI format 0 and 1 (SMF)/SP MIDI

Battery
Rechargeable Lithium-ion or Lithium-ion polymer battery
Capacity: 1340 mAh
Talk time:

Up to 378 minutes for WCDMA

Up to 419 minutes for GSM

Standby time:

Up to 462 hours for WCDMA

Up to 367 hours for GSM

Video call time: Up to 189 minutes for WCDMA
(The above are subject to network and phone usage.)

Expansion Slot
microSDâ„¢ memory card (SD 2.0 compatible)

AC Adapter
Voltage range/frequency: 100 ~ 240V AC, 50/60 Hz
DC output: 5V and 1A