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!
Any update on the availability date? I hear Nov 4th, but is there any confirmation?
Lack of WiFi is a deal breaker for me. I don’t mind paying for a data pkg (I’ve had one for years), but I mind losing connectivity when roaming. Also, I prefer faster WiFi hotspots to slower EVDO…..
I love my touch. I text fine on mines. I’m here to say hello ppc6900 and goodbye ppc6700. I just need a site for free games and app downloads. If anyone can help please do so thanks
The Touch is okay I guess. This is my first PDA, and I’ve been able to navigate around it okay. Day time screen is fine for me. I’ve been emailing plaid tartan desk top photos to my self, and using them as backgrounds. There’s a hint when setting a desk top photo, you can increase/decrease the percentage of image you’ll see. Make sure to pick a backdrop where the letters will be more visable.
I’m definitely a Mac man, and would have loved to get the iPhone, but there was no way I was going with AT&T, and it’s a windows world baby! I just opened a business, so this thing is very useful in storing notes in the address book. The snyc program is fast, and easy to navigate. One of the things I didn’t like, but was able to get around-was figuring out how to email songs off my mac, and getting them into ringtones. Windows media is not my cup of tea, and I ran into problems transfering songs playable in my email, to the ring tune folder.
On a side note: the Plantronics blue tooth headset is crystal clear on the phone. Thank goodness for no more wires.
My wife and I got each a Touch. Mine came with a Dead Pixel so I had to RMA it. My only complaint on the phone is that all three (3) phones (both our current ones and the bad pixel one) keep on freezing every so often. The average freezing time is about 48 to 72 hours for regular basics, but more often if heavily used.
I noticed that the device freezes randomly, not just after a specific program or use. I also noticed the freezing is 100%, is not just in sleep mode, it actually freezes all the way, and worse, the battery consumption goes ballistic while frozen. I have seen sometimes the screen trying to light up, but you can only see a very dark image that is frozen. Only way to “wake it up” is resetting the unit. I am waiting for Sprint or HTC to release a fix because it is not good for business to have a dead phone in your pocket… yes, while frozen it is dead and no calls or notifications come in.
Now, besides this big problem, the rest in general is a very good device. If you complaint about the keyboard, well, then why the hell you go it? Get a Mogul if you want a real keyboard. Both my wife and I use any keyboard or even the free style without problems, and we DO NOT have small hands. Stop complaining and get used to your phone.
I have already hacked the phone and have a custom Cube with more “common sense” shortcuts like the calculator, and the media player. It is a little time consuming to edit each picture frame for the cube, but after done, it is well worth it.
I have also installed some utilities that give you multiple Today screens with different colors, weather, etc, and themes that include iphone icons for those that can not stay away from that phone (the iphone is useless for business if you ask me). I also installed a real Task Manager program that can kill any running application and/or program in memory. And the best par is that everything is free (you have to look for them, and no, I won’t tell cause I took many hours looking and trying them until I found the best ones).
If you are a business person, and need a multi-task device with multiple e-mail accounts, camera, TV, Word, Excel, Power point, Adobe reader, Win Zip, etc, etc, and better yet the ability to install anything you want, and keep it to the size of a Card Deck, then this is the phone for you.
Sprint/HTC: RELEASE A FREAKING FIX FOR THE FREEZING!
Thanks.
Does anyone have any recommendations for any Sprint phones? I am in need of getting a new phone and I am with Sprint. I was looking at the touch and the palm centro but all these reviews give me mixed signals. any other recommendations? thanks!
stay away from products that use windows mobile, it crashes and freezes way to much. I have the Palm 700wx and wish I would have gotten the more stable but outdated Palm 700p which runs palms software and not windows.
The Touch is good. It does have GPS, mine hasn’t freezed since I received it. The virtual keyboard is cool. My other phones including the BB and i930 weren’t as god. The iphone wasn’t as good either. The EVDO is great so that you can collaborate and talk at the same time, iphone can’t do that.
The mogul and touch have the same processor, but the mogul has half the onboard RAM – 64 megs versus the 128 on the touch. After using both phones for about a month the Touch is leaps and bounds better than the mogul. I haven’t had to do a soft reset on the touch in a couple months versus the mogul which I was having to reset at least 5-6 times a day because it would freeze up. Junky build quality on the mogul as well. The HTC Touch does have a GPS antenna, it just is not activated out of the box – Sprint has said that a ROM update will be available in Q1 of this year that will activate the onboard GPS. As for those who whine about the keyboard, download the touchpal soft keyboard. I can type significantly faster with it than I could on the hard keyboard on my mogul. It gets better as you use it more too as it recognizes new words for use later.
my htc touch phone is like..frozen. and when I turn it on it freezes at the windows mobile screen..the green one. and so i press the power button and it doesn’t shut off and it comes up asking if i’m sure I wanna shut it off so I say no and it goes to the normal screen then the touch screen doesn’t work. WHAT DO I DO?!?
This phone is junk. I returned one because it would go into sleep mode and you could not get it out unless you soft booted it. You can’t receive calls or do anything when this happens. Now, the new one I got is doing the same thing. I’ve been looking in a bunch of forums and am seeing a lot of users with the same problem.
I got a touch on saturday, and I couldn’t be happier with the windows mobile functionality. It’s great. However, on occasion the device is unable to return to operation after it has entered its “sleep” state. waking the device is futile. Any number of button combos for any length of time can not wake the device. The only way to use the touch again is to remove the battery and reboot. I’m returning it this evening.
sprint is well aware of the ‘hibernating’ screen problem – I saw another forum stating an update was in the works -
I have Sprint HTC Touch for over 3 months now and
during this duration, I have already changed the phone twice. The sleep mode issue in the phone is Universal !!1 it sucks, I am shocked HTC never thought abt it before launching !!! There battery back up also sucks !!! It barely lasts a day !!
Pls let me know if someone knows how to fix the “sleep mode” issue.
my htc touch is experiencing alot of freezing,instead i have complaints about the media player not being compatible with a lot of things on the net..i mean alot!! you really cant watch anything on the net as a matter a fact. besides that the only complaints i have about the keyboard is that it sucks!! it cant keep up with me at all and as i was writing this the keyboard became unresponsive..if you havent bought this phone yet..DONT!!
I have used several different Windows Mobile devices, the latest being the Treo 750 and HTC Mogul. Every device that I have used that is running Windows Mobile has had freezing issues. Other issues include them being extremely slow (unresponsive interface), buttons not working (although the touch screen still does), touch screen not working (although the buttons still do), background on the Today screen disappearing, etc. I just don’t like it, period. Unfortunately, there aren’t many other options with the support that Windows Mobile has. Regardless, it’s still a shoddy product. NutritionN, it is a fact that Windows Mobile freezes a LOT. Maybe not daily, but WAY more than it should. I don’t use an iPhone or a BB or a PALM, only Windows Mobile. However, if someone besides AT&T had the iPhone I’d buy one today.
u all are retards i have this phone and it rocks u all can bite my shiny metal ass
I hve a sprint htc touch and I have been having problems with it since day one. I am a video recording person and love to record videos of my children but, there’s one problem, I CAN’T HEAR THE AUDIO when I save it to my PC. And if that is not enough, I can’t find the proper codecs or whatever download is required to get it to work properly. This Phone SUCKS, I would never recommend it to my worst enemy!!!
You’re an A-Hole. this phone sucks. You must not use the features on it. What’s the sense of getting a phone with these features, and they just don’t work as they’re designed to. Again, this phone sucks and so do you!!!…