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Getting Touchy Feely With The HTC Touch

// October 9th, 2007 // HTC, Tech // 10,949 views

As some of you may recall, I posted about the HTC Touch when it was launched in South Africa earlier this year and since then I’ve been itching to get my hands on one, even just for a brief moment.

I was pleasantly surprised when I received a call from the team at the communications agency Tribeca PR who graciously offered to hook me up with a review unit at the end of August. You guys rock!

So when I finally got my hands on the review unit I was absolutely stunned at the size and the beauty.  Compared to my current phone, the HTC TyTN and after reviewing the Samsung SGH-i600 (Blackjack), this is probably one of the most aesthetically pleasing phones I’ve had my hands on recently.

Measuring at a compact 99.9mm in height, 58mm in width and only 13.9mm deep, the unit even weighed in at a measly 112g.  This means no bulging pockets.  Then again, this phone is so beautiful, you wouldn’t want to keep it confined to its supplied cover (almost like a bodyglove cover) or your pocket in any event.  You really want to show it off and let people ‘touch’ it.

Speaking of which, the aptly named HTC Touch features the new TouchFLO system with which you can control the phone.  There are a number of ways for you to swipe your finger across the screen, which will bring up different GUI’s (Graphic User Interface).  For instance, swiping your thumb upward from bottom to top will bring up the TouchFLO menu, which you can then browse through by rotating it like a cube with your thumb.  You can access your media and playback music and video you’ve recorded with just a flick of a finger. 

You can obviously still use the included stylus to navigate your way around, which turns out to be a non-negotiable for typing.  The lack of a slide-out keyboard or even an alpha-numeric keypad, made typing out a simple SMS a bit of a bother. But all this can be overlooked after a few days of practicing using the on-screen keyboard.

A note on the screen – brilliant.  Indoors, the colours are vibrant and clear,  while outdoor is almost impossible (as with most touch screen phones).  I quite liked the home screen, which features a couple of quick shortcuts to things like a weather widget, your contacts, and text messages.  The handy weather widget calls up weather forecasts based on your location via AccuWeather. 

I would suggest changing the update settings though, otherwise you could land yourself a nasty surprise when the invoice for your data account arrives. As I was traveling during the time of the review, this feature was quite useful and made my wardrobe choice a lot easier.

Looking inside the brains of the phone you’ll find a 200MHz Texas Instruments CPU, 64MB of RAM with 128MB ROM running on Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional with 802.11b/g WiFi and stereo Bluetooth. Unfortunately 3G got the boot on this phone, which is really a pity.

On the outside, the Touch features a 2-megapixel camera, however you’d be best advised to carry a dedicated camera around with you as it’s not entirely up to to the task.  The lack of a flashlight makes is pretty much impossible to take quality pictures indoors. On the other hand you can get some decent pictures outside and if the lighting is perfect inside.

Included in the package is a 1GB microSD card to store all those important audio, video and documents on the go.  Speaking of documents, the full ambit of Microsoft Office Mobile applications are catered for, including PDF viewers and scope for others through 3rd party software. 

Synching my contacts, calendar  and tasks with Microsoft Outlook proved to be a piece of cake.  Although I didn’t specifically use the feature, it appears as though a push email service is available via Hotmail and Windows Live Mail.  Being a Microsoft-based phone all the usual suspects, Internet Explorer, Messenger and Windows Media Player are included as well.

I could say so much more but one really needs to touch and handle the phone to get a feeling for it. Some personal niggles aside, my overall impression is that this is a decent and useful phone. It is stylish and modern, with a couple of nice gimmicks features that will get people talking the minute they see it. Obviously you’d need a bit of a backup plan to keep them interested, but then you’re one of those hip, trendy people who can hold a conversation in any case right?

I definitely wouldn’t mind one as a present – nudge, nudge, wink, wink