The Touch HD has been one of the most eagerly anticipated devices as it has generated a tremendous of interest thanks to its unique combination of a revolutionary (or should I say evolutionary) form factor and power packed innards. It offers a few “first’s” for Windows Mobile devices which we will detail as we go along with the review. However, before we do actually get there, we would like to take this opportunity to thank HTC and ofcourse Mr.Vishnu Vardhan, Executive Director, HTC, MENA for being kind enough to offer us a unit for review.
Alright then, fasten your seatbelts because here we go!!!
Specifications
Visit this link for full specs details.
Design
This aspect is perhaps one of the most important facets of the device. Traditional Windows Mobile devices have been about functionality over form which makes sense since business users would like a device that works rather than a device that looks pretty; however, the Touch series is game changing in it that it offers a blend of form and functionality making it one of a kind. The Touch HD however takes this to the next level since it’s generous in it’s offerings and is perhaps one of the first devices that can appeal purely to media enthusiasts as well. Please read on to find out why…
Hardware Tour
Front
The front of the device is the most striking part of the device owing to the gargantuan 3.8”, 800x480 pixel, WVGA screen that it has. WVGA is currently the highest resolution supported by Windows Mobile Professional today. The flush screen eliminates the frustration caused by trying to get to those hard to reach corners of the device with your fingers. Thanks to increased touch screen sensitivity and a fluid user interface, using the Touch HD is an absolute pleasure.
A first for Windows mobile devices are he 4 keys at the bottom of the screen which are touch sensitive and don’t depress as traditional buttons do; however they do offer a vibrating (haptic) feedback to let you know that an action has been performed.
Right above the screen is the phone speaker with an ambient light sensor right next to it. If activated, the light sensor automatically adjusts the backlight to ensure proper visibility in dark and bright conditions. To the right of the speaker is the 0.3 MP video conferencing camera.
Back
HTC’s adoption of a minimalist design and use of great quality material has given the Touch HD a very classy look and finish. Another first for Windows Mobile devices is the 5 MP Autofocus camera, which reinforces our previous comment about HTC’s positioning of this device as a media device. To the left of the camera is the grill for the external speaker, which we found to be fairly loud in mild to moderately noisy conditions. In a quiet room, we actually found the speaker fairly loud and good enough to use in speaker mode for audio or FM radio playback.
The lower one-fifth’s is covered in glossy black plastic, which not only feels great to hold but also is also visually pleasing. Taking the back cover off provides access to the battery, micro-SD card slot, SIM card slot and the soft-reset button (in red). Let’s take a minute to talk a little about these. The battery itself is quite capacious with 1350 mAh capacity, but power is one thing we can never have enough of! With mild to moderate use, we found the device to easily last through the workday and well into early the next day. Use of GPS is a big drain on the power and can severely limit the battery life of the device.
HTC has been kind enough to bundle a 8GB micro-SD card device, which once again reiterates our statement about HTC marketing it as a media-centric device. 8 GB on average is more than sufficient to hold your favorite music albums, a few movies and a lot of photo albums! Initially we were a little upset about the positioning of the micro-SD card but thanks to the high capacity card provided, most people would not have to swap they out often. Also, when connected to your desktop or notebook, the Touch HD has the capability of being recognized as a disk drive obviating the need for you to ever remove the SD card for transferring your photo’s or video’s to and from the device.
One thing that did bother us was the positioning of the soft-reset button. However, we are glad to report that we didn’t have to use it that often.
Left
A long volume rocker is present on the left side of the device. It’s rather easy to accidentally press this due to its length and hence preference is subjective.
Right
There’s nothing on this side of the device thanks to HTC’s intent to keep the device as minimalist and button free as possible. Personally, we’d have loved to see a camera button as touching the screen to take a picture isn’t the user-friendliest method in our opinion.
Top
The on/off button is interesting as it has a rather discrete notification LED built in which glows and blinks depending on whether it’s charging or there’s a notification pending. Also worth mentioning is the 3.5mm audio jack (finally!) which finally you to use your favorite pair of headphones. Personally, I can’t commend and appreciate a manufacturer enough for using industry standards rather than trying to enforce proprietary ports such as 2.5mm audio jack or even micro-USB!!!
Bottom
In the centre is the HTC EXT USB, which is used for charging and synchronization and is ofcourse compatible with supported HTC accessories. To it’s right is the discrete mic port.
Comparison shots
From top to bottom:
- iPhone
- Touch HD
- i-Mate 8502
- i-Mate 9502
Software
HTC Touch HD software tour video:
Software is one of the noteworthy aspects of the device as HTC has gone to great lengths to improve the usability issues with Windows Mobile. We’ll talk about the different software enhancements individually to help you understand what the device has to offer to you.
1) Touch FLO 3D
Touch FLO 3D is HTC’s answer to the UI woes WM users have faced over the years. Over the years, we have seen that WM UI hasn’t really changed that much and simple tasks can sometimes feel a little tedious to perform. This more so has gained importance thanks to the emergence of better UI’s seen on the other platforms, most notable being the iPhone. All of a sudden finger-friendliness has entered the spotlight and more and more manufacturers are now stressing importance in this area.
TouchFLO 3D contains panels to access the most frequently used features of the device such as web browser, messaging, weather, stock, communications manager, settings, music, photos etc. Please view our Touch HD software tour video for more details about the same.
2) Opera Mobile 9.5
Ok, one thing I have to just blurt out is that I HATE IE mobile. It’s perhaps the unfriendliest web browser that I have ever seen with terrible page rendering. However, thanks to efforts by 3rd party software developers, web browsing is an absolute pleasure on WM. On the Touch HD, this is particularly noteworthy thanks to its gargantuan high resolution screen. Web pages are beautifully rendered negating the need for any horizontal panning, which we all agree can be rather cumbersome.
A few screenshots to illustrate what we are talking can be found below:
Also, Opera 9.5 renders the page extremely fast and is comparable to one of the best browsers on the market i.e Safari Mobile. There are plenty of reviews of Opera Mobile 9.5 so we are not going to get into the intricacies of it as it is not unique to the Touch HD.
3) Youtube
It’s hard to deny that Youtube has revolutionized the way videos are shared on the Internet today. Uptil an year or two ago, watching Youtube video’s on a mobile device was an impossible task due to browser limitations, but thanks to stand alone clients, which have become popular over the last 2 years, watching video’s during that boring Physics class, your boss’ presentation or your wife screaming at you has never been easier!
Just imagine having the ability to watch every Youtube video right in the palm of your hand without being restricted to your desk! The mobile client has most of the functions of the desktop version such as categories and sorting by ratings, date and popularity.
What’s even more fantastic is that the device also supports video uploads directly to Youtube making you a true youtube warrior!
4) RSS Hub
HTC has been kind enough to offer an RSS reader in the Touch HD. The software is quite similar to Iliumsoft’s extremely popular Newsbreak. The reader has the ability to search for channels or import channel data from OPML files. The reader can be set to automatically refresh feeds at a set interval thereby not requiring you to constantly update it yourself. Only thing missing here is the ability to save articles for offline reading, which ofcourse can be achieved through other 3rd party RSS readers.
5) Jetcet Print
This software enables you to print directly to networked or Bluetooth printers. I haven’t personally tested this as I don’t have either of the above with me.
6) MP3 Trimmer
Another nice touch from HTC is the inclusion of the MP3 trimmer providing owners the ability to create ringtones on the fly. This was a fairly simple and straightforward process as the screenshot below suggests; all that is really required is to select the start and end point and in less than a minute you can create a brand new ringtone!
7) HTC Camera and Album
The only caveat I have with the Touch HD is the lack of a button for the camera function. However, HTC has packaged fairly useful and functional camera software giving you the ability to tweak most of its aspects such as resolution, brightness, mode, timer etc.
HTC Album is quite nice to use thanks to the Touch HD’s finger friendly UI and high-resolution screen. Image browsing is a effortless and fun to go through process with each image being just a flick away. Thanks to the built-in accelerometer, images auto-orient themselves depending on whether you hold the device in portrait or landscape orientation.
8) Worldcard Mobile
This application enables you to recognize text on a business card by taking a picture of it. Honestly, this was a bit of a hit and miss as there are a lot of variables involved in this process such as light, distance, steadiness etc. Sometimes, the information was quickly recognized while sometimes it required us to edit the information after importing it.
9) FM Radio
It’s pretty self explanatory so we are not going to say much about it except that it requires the headset to be connected for this function to work. Also, the device has the ability to output audio either through the headset itself or the external speakers, which in our opinions is a nice touch.
10) Keyboard software
HTC has packaged proprietary keyboard software (with multiple layouts) to improve text entry due to the lack of a dedicated hard keyboard. The keys are fairly large and we found it rather easy to use and thanks to word completion, spell correction and auto-substitution, we were able to belt out words rather quickly. Without being presumptuous HTC has given the end user a variety of keyboard options as shown below:
It is difficult for us to suggest as to which keyboard layout is the best as this is an individual preference. It’s best to try out the different options for a set period of time to decide what best suits you.
Youtube video of HTC Touch HD Keyboard software:
Please view our HTC Touch HD Software tour to see other software enhancements such as stock, weather, email, browser, communication manager and speed dial widgets.
Overall, HTC has taken great effort in ensuring that the end user has a enjoyable user experience and in our opinion HTC has succeeded brilliantly.
Ergonomics
This is something we lay particular stress on in each of our review as in our opinion, ergonomics plays an important role in day-to-day use. It’s hard to ignore that the Touch HD is a fairly large device but that is debatably a trade off due to it’s power packed technology and myriad of features. In our opinion the device itself is more media centric for obvious reasons but at the same time appeals to the corporate segment due to its WM roots. The only niggle that we had with the Touch HD was that it wasn’t the most ideal one-handed device. A lot of people tend to disagree with this, but again this is an individual perception and something that one must try hands on to be able to decide. From our use, text entry and general usability was rather uncomfortable with one hand.
Telephony and Connectivity
The Touch HD is a Quad-band GSM and Dual-band 3G/HSDPA phone. What this means is that although the device would work fine on any GSM network, high speed internet will not work only in USA due to the use of a different (850/1900) 3G/HSDPA band there. That said, EDGE is still supported there so you will have access to data, but it just won’t be that fast.
The device also supports WiFi (b&g), BT 2.0 + EDR and GPS (with A-GPS). GPS is a pleasure to use thanks to the large high-resolution screen and thanks to the assisted GPS feature; satellite lock-on times are significantly reduced. Infact, we found it good enough to even replace a stand-alone GPS unit. However, what is important is battery life and unless connected to a car charger, expect battery life to be significantly decreased with GPS use.
Conclusion
Overall, the Touch HD is one of the best device in its class (if not the best) and sets a benchmark for future devices. The high-resolution screen, increased sensitivity touch screen, fluid Touch Flo 3D and various software enhancements make the user experience extremely enjoyable. Being a media centric device, the touch HD is an absolute pleasure to use for browsing the web, watching videos on youtube, movie from your personal collection, browsing photos or just listening to music (thanks to the 3.5mm jack).
Ofcourse no device is perfect and we do have a few tiny bones to pick with the Touch HD. It’s large size in our opinion does not make it an ideal fit for business users mainly due to the lack of one-handed use (controversial topic). The lack of more hardware buttons, especially for camera and maybe a scroll wheel on the side make usability rather uncomfortable at times. Lastly, the presence of the micro-sd card slot and the soft reset hole below the battery cover are a step back in our opinion. However, it is important to re-stress that these design choices are mainly to preserve the minimalistic aesthetics of the device and are hence acceptable.
Pros and Cons
Pros:
- Large, high-resolution screen
- Fluid TouchFLO 3D
- User friendly thanks to finger friendliness
- 3.5 mm audio jack
- Great battery life
- Packaged 8GB micro-SD card
Cons:
- Lack of camera button
- Difficult to use one-handed
- No flash for camera (being a media centric device)
- Lack of North American 3g/HSDPA bands (850/1900)
List of our Touch HD video reviews here.
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