Sprint HTC Touch: Hands-on!
We hit up the original HTC Touch a few months back, and for the most part, our original conclusion still applies: Windows Mobile is not made for devices with no buttons. Just navigating around this thing is a chore sometimes, and while HTC has stepped it up by adding a "20 key" keyboard that works like T9, it’s definitely frustrating to do anything that requires more than 3 letters. In general, we don’t have a problem with the device when looked at physically. It’s just as small, feels good when your making a phone call, and is actually pretty zippy once you get passed the SureType / T9 gatekeeper. But there’s still a couple little annoyances that we can’t believe made it to the final version after this amount of time. Take this one for example: let’s say you go into Sprint TV. Ooooh! Nice! The screen rotates so you can watch TV in widescreen. Totally killer, dude! Yeah, why don’t you go exit the application and report back…"Uh, my screen never flipped back to portrait." Exactly. Totally stupid oversight, here. To flip this and look at the positive side, voice quality sounded crystal clear on the handset, with even speakerphone showing off some great tones. The IM program on here, like almost other Mobile IM programs, doesn’t deliver for our freakish AIM needs, but if you’re just doing the quick chat, it might work. All in all, it has the Windows Mobile core that will sync right up to your Exchange server, do push email out of the box, IM, you can watch TV, take pictures with a 2 megapixel camera, etc. But we just know how to do half of that because navigating is so hard. As always, full snaps in the gallery below!
Click on over to our Sprint HTC Touch gallery!
no gps no wi-fi? why would I live my mogul for this? same processor only thing diff is sprint tv and touch flo which will be hacked for the mogul the day after its released….for 249 I can use it as a backup device though
Another could have great device hampered by Win Mobile. Not only is Win Mobile not good for devices without buttons, its not good for cell phones in general. Once again, this device is no better then any other Win Mobile device. When will you people learn that Win Mobile = Crap.
Yawn!! I was afraid of this. I guess I have to wait longer for the must have phone for Sprint..Thanks for the heads up BG
theres more a full QWERTY keyboard, a T9 keypad, and a SureType-esque 20 keyboard.
Can ANYONE TELL ME WHATS WRONG WITH AIM ON WM, especially on this phone? is it slow or something?
looks kool…. but i want a blackberry version of this…. lol
Argonnj, so what device do you use? BB, Symbian, Palm, iphone? Give me a break.
Yes, WM has it’s hang ups, but facts are facts. WM has more capabilities than any other mobile OS out there.
I personally have one of almost every phone OS out there right now. A BB 8800, a Nokia N95, a iphone, a Treo 680, A blackjack, and a AT&T Tilt. Each has their own thing that they excel at, but none of them have as many features as the Tilt. And with the HTC interfaces (Touch Flo, new dialer and home screens, etc) it is easier than ever to navigate around.
Yes the iphone is easier to navigate around, but it is missing dozens on basics.
Yes the N95 also has GPS and a easy to use phone app, but the Tilt has a better address book look up and do you really want to type out a email on a N95’s keypad?
Palm is easy to use, but it is so far behind the times it’s ridiculous. No WiFi? Come on already.
BB is a email only device. It sucks at everything else. Horrible web browser, horrible graphics, horrible address book and calendar. It does a OK job at email, but honestly even that is not as good as WM. BB cannot sync existing items in inbox subfolders, and cannot use auto distribution filters from the server. WM does this perfectly on my blackjack and Tilt.
So be a hater if you want, but most people that bash WM either don’t use all the features, or don’t realize what they are missing. They just focus on the couple of things that another device does better, and conveniently ignore the dozens of things it does worse.
At least the BB version would work without daily freezes and resets.
@sdeetz
Are you sure you’re not on the payroll of M$, because they should be paying you after that endorsement.
I want the IM app off the Touch for use with my Mogul! Its gotta be out there someplace
My mogul has not frozen on me since I got it. What are you talking about? I would rather has anything over a BB, touchscreen is a must for me.
there are at least two third party keypads available… and hundreds of other third party programs… including skype… and programability you can do yourself today
is gps really necessary when you have google, yahoo, live maps anyway?
and sprint is integrating location based on tower triangulation with mapping anyway
best of all… no steve jobs
coupla keypads worth noting…
http://www.theunwired.net/?item=input-pocketcm-sip-keyboard-for-thumb-use-with-htc-touch
http://www.cootek.com/intro.html
and by the way. isn’t EDGE just slow?
isn’t it just REALLY SLOW?
@argonnj
i don’t know why you’d say that wm6 freezes and needs resets daily. I’ve had a wizard, a hermes and now a kaiser and i’ve never had any major problems (might chalk that up to XDA Devs). Symbian’s cool, Blackberry’s aiight and Palm OS sucks.
And trust I’m on nobody’s payroll.
For high powered super smart phone users WM is probably the way to go if BB is not an option. For the more casual user out dated it may be, palm is a better alternative. I was just in the AT&T and Sprint store. I played with BBs and WM phones and the new palm centro. Surprisingly the Centro was not a bad phone to operate. Good phone for a newbie or casual user…just my opinion.
Honestly, the Apple fanboyz coming up with “daily freezes and resets” for WM is so old. Seriously old. You use something besides WM, so you’re supposed to be very, very smart; correct? Come up with something about WM that is actually fact-based…please, just for a change.
I switched to a GSM Touch from a BB, and I’ve been getting along great. The only negative was coming up with a very good virtual keyboard, and I’ve now found that with TouchPal. The Touch is the best overall PDA Phone I’ve used. This one looks even better with the beefed up memory and horse power…and EVDO speeds.
Looks pretty sick to me, I want one.
BTW are you guys calling my Tilt fat? HU! I’ve never been so insulted, nor has my Tilt, in our lives. So cliche BG, so cliche. Gosh.
- Bob: Thanks for the links to those apps, been wondering what they were.
I feel bad for continuing this but, I agree with NutritionN – the usual attacks against winmo as being prone to crashes and bugs are often without premise. They’re usually the result of neophytes (having so many users there are many) not figuring out how to close ram-hungry programs, or people who blindly perpetuate the anti-Windows sentiment.
Contextual comment – the touch seems to get very mixed reviews of its usability. All I hope for is that the 400mhz processor pushes things along at a more acceptable pace. And for Bubble Breaker to accept my stubby fingers.
Not sure what is it so diffficult to navigate around? My girl friend has the HTC Touch for sometime now and she (being a non-tech person) has no problem using the phone. Indeed she has been texting me all the time with the phone, so it must have been quite snappy to do so. And yes she likes the TouchCube. She thought it is quite sexy
I seriously doubt those folks saying “wm freezes and resets daily” are really using wm cause I’ve had 3 wm devices and unless I manually soft reset after installing an app I don’t have that problem I was having a freezing problem on youtube but it was a flash problem not wm.
I have never had my Mogul freeze up ever and I have had it for about 2 months now. The only time i reset the phone is after an app has been installed and it tells you too.
WM is not as bad as ppl think but if your an iPhone/Apple fanboy your not going to even listen to this anyways.
Nino
why does apple come into play here? the posts about how bad WM is comes mostly from BB users, not apple. Although i agree, WM is just like Windows, alot of functionality but at a cost.
Having fiddled with one at work for a day, here are a couple of basic observations.
Pros;
Size
Call quality
the touch screen works ok, although it takes some getting use to, its no iphone.
Cons;
While it shows a Qwerty keyboard you can’t actually use it. for some strange reason when you go to type something in ie a message or a url it converts to a SureType-esque 20 keyboard which is maddening.
That alone killed it for me. Neither this nor the iphone will be replacing my curve anytime soon.
I have had the HTC Mogul for about 4 months or so and i am not that impressed.
PRO’s:
- has easy to sync software
- descent e-mail but not as good as my buddies blackberry
CON’s:
- can’t see the screen in daylight
- lots of delays and freezes
- cx’ling programs is a pain in the ass
- it’s not easy to dial numbers in a one hand op like most other phones
- battery life SUCKS! I get about 1.5 day standby if that…
OK SO WHY ARE YOU GOING TO TALK ABOUT IT HERE? THIS IS FOR THE SRINT TOUCH, DUMBASS