HTC Touch Viva

The Touch Viva’s specifications are very similar to the original Touch, but there are some differences in design aspect. To begin with, the little device has in fact grown up in every direction; this is somehow strange, since its bigger size doesn’t lead to anything new. The screen is 2.8”, running in QVGA resolution, but it doesn’t find its place exactly on the same plane the front side is, which makes it different from the other devices of the series. It’s a bit concave, which spoils the overall appearance a bit, but the main reason to mention it, is that in Windows Mobile most of the screen buttons are situated over the angles and edges, to which you can’t reach very easily using your fingers only. The display boasts bright and saturated colors, but this is only until it falls prey to the noxious direct sunlight. When this happens, the image becomes pale and hard to read.

First off, it’s probably easiest to list what the HTC Touch Viva doesn’t have. There’s no 3G, though there is Wi-Fi, and there’s no GPS and no headphones. There’s not much in the way of onboard memory either, with just 256MB, though there’s a microSD slot underneath the battery.

The HTC Touch Viva is different from other Touches in that the touch screen is recessed a couple of millimetres from the phone’s casing. While this might provide some protection against scratches if you lay it down on its face, it has the effect of making it more difficult to use.

It’s hard to activate the touch screen at the sides with your finger or thumb, meaning you have to rely on the side-mounted stylus. It’s not a disaster, but it can be a nuisance, especially when you want to activate a scroll bar in a hurry.

That aside, the TouchFLO interface that sits on top of the Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional OS is still a winner, making it easy to organise your favourite apps. It doesn’t look quite as flashy as the 3D version available on the higher end models, but it does the job well enough.

Windows Mobile users should feel quite at home with the 6.1 OS, newcomers shouldn’t be too troubled with the interface due to the improve response time. And expert users will want to delve deeper in to Windows, where most of the tweaking occurs. The Touch Viva has an OMAP 850 201 MHz processor and with the dialled down functionality probably explains the improved response time.

The task manager tab makes another faithful comeback, though don’t expect Windows Mobile to automatically shut off programmes remaining on your task manager. So you’ll have to do periodical clean-up your task manager.

As usual, you can set up playlist through HTC’s music player-sorting, adding and creating new playlist are all a breeze to do. Audio quality is good, and at maximum volume our songs came out pretty clear. Another plus is the TouchFlo’s music player ability to recognise your music playlist automatically when you insert your MicroSD card. You can still op for the Windows Media Player, as it works similarly as before. The device also sports a Youtube player.

With Mobile office, you can do work on the go, from Word processing to Excel documents. The phone has PIM functionality, from calendar/organiser, alarm, adobe document reader, notes, tasks and push e-mail.

Another plus is the impressive battery life, which lasts up to almost two weeks on standby mode. We also managed to cram in a day’s worth of battery life from surfing, texting and calling.

We were hoping that Opera was bundled into the Viva, but Internet Explorer does come along with Windows Mobile 6.1.