The best that HTC can offer at the moment

Mar 13, 2009 18:57 GMT  ·  By

One of the most expected Windows Mobile-based smartphones of last year, the HTC Touch HD made its appearance on the market a little bit later than its main rivals Sony Ericsson Xperia X1 and Samsung i900 Omnia. Although many comparisons have been made among the three devices, it is clear that HTC Touch HD is the most attractive and the flagship of Microsoft's mobile operating system. Basically, it is only suitable to be compared with Apple's iPhone or Google's G1, which have different operating systems. The three devices look better than most smartphones on the market, which means that it's a matter of taste which one you prefer.

It's the OS that makes the difference and the three companies tried to make their devices as much as powerful and user-friendly as possible. PureMobile lent us one of these amazing devices, HTC Touch HD, so that our readers can benefit from an extensive review before actually buying it. My advice for all those that intend to buy one of the three smartphones is to try all of them, if they can and decide afterwards. As people have different needs and tastes, it is obvious that there cannot be one phone to rule them all. Announced in September 2008, HTC Touch HD was made available on the market one month later, in November 2008. The Pocket PC can be acquired for about US$800, but pricing can vary, and depends on location or plan. Only the Black color is available for this model at the moment.

Design

HTC Touch HD looks pretty amazing at first glance. Stylish and elegant, the smarpthone features the most exquisite finishes I have seen on an HTC-manufactured device. No more rough shaped edges, peeling, or scratches. It gets even better with the amazingly large screen, and yet remains so sleek. The entire front part of the smartphone is occupied by the 3.8-inch touchscreen. At the base of the screen, there are four touch keys with haptic feedback: Accept / Reject calls keys, Home key and Back key. On top of the screen, there are a secondary video-call camera and the in-call speaker. Finally, HTC decided to include a 3.5mm jack port, which you can find on top of the device. The power button is also on top, but I find it pretty hard to press. On the left side of the Touch HD, one can hardly notice a long and thin dual volume key. The miniUSB port has been placed, as usual, on the bottom.

HTC Touch HD features an Active magnetic stylus, which can be found on bottom right corner. Basically, that means that if you pull it out, the device will wake-up, or if you're in the middle of a call, it will open up the Notes application. The back cover of the phone has been made from a rubberized plastic, which assures great adherence, besides feeling great to the touch. You can only find the wondrous 5-megapixel camera and a small loudspeaker on the back. The camera is well protected by a metallic frame that looks very sturdy. Unfortunately, the camera lacks any flash or mirror for self-portraits. The microSD slot card has been placed under the back hood, but it's hot-swappable. The exact measures of the smartphone are 115x62.8mm at only12mm thickness.
This is one of the sleekest Windows Mobile-based devices, the iPhone being just 0.4mm slimmer than Touch HD. The phone weighs around 146g (including battery), which might seem a little bit too much, but I find it very well balanced and in accordance with its size. You won't have to worry about fingerprints, as the touchscreen, as well as the back cover do not attract any of these and won't get greased. The overall design is marvelous through its simplicity and I have to say that Touch HD is definitely the most appealing HTC smartphone available on the market at the moment.

Display and Camera

HTC Touch HD embeds an amazing 3.8-inch VGA touchscreen that supports 262k colors, but only displays 65k colors. The device supports a better resolution than most of the existing Pocket PCs on the market - 480x800 pixels. The resolution is better than iPhone's, G1's, but on par with Sony Ericsson's Xperia X1. Together with the new TouchFLO 3D interface, the screen offers marvelous quality viewing, which greatly improves Internet browsing and viewing of pictures. Bigger than any other HTC display, Touch HD offers an incredible level of touch and view interaction.

Thanks to the innovative TouchFLO 3D interface, HTC Touch HD is very much comparable with the iPhone in terms of the level of sophistication of the interface. The phone also features accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate, which is very useful when watching videos, playing games or slide-showing pictures. The only downside I found is the low eligibility in sunlight. Otherwise, it's the best that HTC can offer now, but who knows what the Taiwanese company plans for us.
Touch HD features the first 5-megapixel camera with autofocus and video capabilities. Two useful things have not been provided. The first is an LED flash, which makes night pictures possible, and then there's the dedicated camera button. So, in order to take pictures, you'll have to use the large touch button that is displayed when the camera function is opened. The picturing process can be done in two ways: either by simply touching the button ('Touch') or by using the "Touch and press" function, which means that you'll have about 1-2 seconds to decide whether you want to take the picture or not. The smartphone focuses pretty fast and saves picture amazingly quickly. One feature that I found to be very interesting is the fact that you can focus on any object in the picture by simply touching the screen.
In terms of quality, HTC Touch HD is another leap forward for HTC, which has improved considerably since HTC Touch Pro was launched with its very good 3.2-megapixel camera. The first HTC device with a 5-megapixel camera takes very good pictures in terms of quality, with very low levels of noise, but pretty high levels of sharpening. The interface of the camera is rich in settings, with functions such as Brightness, White Balance, and Effect. Macro mode can also be used with ease, without the need of actually selecting the macro mode available. You can even use the secondary camera placed on the front of the phone to take pictures of yourself. The 5-megapixel camera of Touch HD is definitely the best embedded in an HTC smartphone.
Movies can be recorded in MPEG4 formats, but you will only get CIF mode recording at 30fps (352x288 pixels). Overall, the camera is one of the pleasant surprises offered by HTC to its fans. Now, if only it had also featured the geotagging function, it would have been perfect.
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Menu and Software

HTC Touch HD runs the same 'old' Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional operating system, featuring the 3D version of the TouchFLO interface. The latter provides animated access to people, messaging, email, photos, music, weather and more. The same innovative touch-sensitive control for interacting with the device that was introduced with Touch Pro is also present with the Touch HD device. While the TouchFLO 3D enables finger swipe navigation through menus, the acclaimed accelerometer sensor automatically pivots the screen orientation from portrait to landscape when browsing the Internet, playing games, listening to music, or when watching a movie or looking at pictures.

These functions only work when the TouchFLO interface is active, and not when you're browsing the Programs or Settings areas. Taking advantage of the huge display, the interface is simply breathtaking, making it one of the best competitors for Apple's iPhone. HTC Touch HD has been equipped with only the latest applications that somewhat emulate its interface: YouTube client application, Google Maps (and GPS), Windows Media Player 10, Opera Mobile 9.5, Windows Live Messenger, Widget for weather forecast, Audio Booster, Album, Streaming Media Player, MP3 Trimmer, Adobe Reader 2.5, Esmertec Java emulator, and Games.
The tweaks and improvements that HTC introduced to the phone's interface greatly increase its functionality. One of these improvements is the Task Manager, which has been placed on the top right of the screen, near the signal and battery icons. With a simple click, you'll now be able to close all applications left opened. Basically, when you want to access one of the areas represented by the icons on the upper right part of the screen, you'll be able to visualize a small submenu (System Status), where you'll be presented with several choices, such as Communications panel, Ringtones profile, Battery status, Data connectivity, and more. The features of this device are pretty much the same as Touch Pro's. The Accept and Reject keys can be predefined to execute various actions when they're pressed for about 3-4 seconds. Users will have the choice to turn the device to Airplane Mode, lock the device, Terminate data connection, Set the Vibrate/Ringer profile, or they can simply opt for the function to display the Quick List. The list consists of the same options mentioned above, but also offers the possibility of going directly to the Settings area. The latter can also be accessed by swiping your finger on the Home page until you reach this area, and features another set of functions: Sync Data, Sound, Wallpaper, Communications, Data (Weather data download).
Navigation can be easily done without the need of a stylus, by swiping your finger to the right or to the left on the Home screen. This way, the 3D interface offers easy and quick access to areas to which you had a long way to go when using other Pocket PCs that did not support this feature. Besides the Programs bar that displays the applications that you like to use more frequently, and which can be viewed when pressing the Start icon, the device also features a panel where you can add or remove various programs, games and such as you wish. To facilitate the writing method and to come to the aid of those who are used with various inputting methods, HTC has introduced four types of keypad layouts: Phone keypad, Compact QWERTY, Full QWERTY and Keyboard. For business people, HTC has included the Office Mobile package, which now also comprises the OneNote Mobile application, besides the usual Excel, PowerPoint and Word Mobile programs. Handwriting recognition is also a nice addition.
Notes application can be accessed even when talking on the phone, allowing you to write down any information you need. The touchscreen offers you a couple of nice functions, like zooming in and out when browsing the Internet or when viewing pictures. Gamers will be happy to notice that the highly-addictive Teeter game has also been included in the device's OS. It takes advantage of the built-in accelerometer, inviting people to guide a ball through various mazes.

Communications

HTC Touch HD takes advantage of the HSDPA 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA 2 Mbps technologies to deliver a complete mobile Internet experience. Besides HSDPA technology, as a much cheaper choice, one can opt for EDGE Class 10 connectivity, but data transfer speeds will be considerably lower.

Unfortunately, neither of the two technologies works at maximum capacity, offering only moderate results (157 Kbit/s download and 5 Kbit/s upload for EDGE; 323 Kbit/s download and 5 Kbit/s upload for HSDPA). That might be almost unbelievable, but the speed is lower than Touch Pro's, which was also below average.
The only different thing I found and I was pretty impressed about is the quality of the 3G signal reception, which was quite strong.

Furthermore, the device features Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g technology, Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP and miniUSB 2.0. I tested the speed of the Bluetooth data rate transfer, and I was a bit disappointed. While the receiving speed is above average (around 86 KB/s), the sending speed is below mediocre (only 38 KB/s). Either way, the device includes a wide range of connectivity options, most of these being wireless (Wi-Fi, HSDPA, aGPS).

The HTC Touch HD supports SMS, MMS and email. Thanks to the 3D interface, users will be able to thumb scroll longer messages in the Inbox. Dynamic font resizing (zooming in/out with the scroll wheel) is also available. HTC Touch HD offers Message delivery reports in its Settings menu.
Regarding the phone's capabilities, the HTC Touch HD is compatible with GSM850, GSM900, GSM1800 and GSM1900 networks, which will widen its usage around the world.
In terms of telephony, HTC Touch HD is definitely an improvement, as HTC smartphones generally have big issues when it comes to in-call sound quality. Even though the sound is nowhere near what Nokia devices can offer, I have found the quality pretty acceptable in terms of loudness and clarity.

Processor and Memory

HTC Touch HD is powered by a Qualcomm MSM7201A 528 MHz chipset, which includes a dual-core processor. The device also features a dedicated graphics chip (64MB RAM reserved for graphics), which can be noticed from the Graphic benchmark results. Still, I haven't been that impressed by the speed of the phone, on the contrary. I have found no improvements regarding browsing through menus, not to mention the lag of the device when more applications are running. Strangely, games or movies are handled pretty well, almost flawless, I could say.

The device comes with 288 MB DDR SDRAM, 512 MB ROM, much like its Touch Pro predecessor.
As I have mentioned at the beginning of the review, HTC Touch HD comes with an 8GB microSD card in the sales package. Basically, you have 8GB storage space included, thanks to the microSD card, which is more than enough for any heavy user. The memory slot has been placed under the back cover, but it's still hot-swappable.

Multimedia

HTC Touch HD follows in the Touch Pro's footsteps as a business tool, but comes with a little bit of improvement regarding sound quality. While HTC devices aren't renowned for their music capabilities, it seems that HTC makes improvements with every new device that it launches. That is the case with HTC Touch HD, which appears to be superior to its predecessors, but still has a long way to reach iPhone's performance or any other high-end multimedia oriented phone.

Moreover, its bulky construction and weight might scary some of the music lovers. Nevertheless, Touch HD includes a very nice music player with an eye-candy interface that strongly resembles Apple's iPod. It uses album art and visualization, and features a rich Library that can be used to sort files by artist, genre, or composer. I did not notice any hiccups when running various music files, but anything is possible. Unfortunately, the most important aspect related to music, the Equalizer, can only be accessed when the headphones are inserted. The device comes with some average quality headset, but thanks to the 3.5mm jack port included, you can now use professional headphones. The quality of music is surprisingly good, above average, I could say.
The device also features an FM radio that can sum up 20 base stations, but is only available with headphones inserted. RDS function is available and reception and sound are pretty good.
The dedicated video player only runs movies that feature Windows-compatible codecs. The latest ROM provides a really smooth video playback experience, with no skipped frames or lags. To be able to run any kind of movie, you should use a third-party movie player.

Battery

HTC Touch HD features a large 1350 mAh Li-ion Polymer battery, with an official stated autonomy of up to 440 hours in standby mode, and up to 8 hours of talking time.

Again, these numbers are overrated, with the Touch HD offering, in fact, a little above four hours (check out the screenshots), on par with Touch Pro.

Impressions

I was visually impressed with the new HTC toy, but after using it for a while, I didn't find serious improvements to its performance. I will say over and over again, as long as you don't have the right software behind a component, it will not work at its full capacity. Graphic drivers are a necessity for HTC devices that feature 3D interface. Still, Touch HD is better than any other HTC device and a leap forward for the Taiwanese company.


The Good

The amazing touchscreen, the 5-megapixel camera, as well as the cool design are among the strong points of HTC Touch HD. I would also like to mention here the rich sales package that contains an 8GB microSD card. Music quality is also an improvement from the previous model, as well as the 3G signal reception and the in-call sound clarity.

The Bad

I would've expected some improvements in the performance department. I was pretty disappointed to find that HTC Touch HD seems to have almost the same benchmark results as Touch Pro. Not that the latter is not good enough, but smartphones that feature the TouchFLO 3D interface always seem to lag when browsing the menus. The situation changes when this is not active. I would also like to mention the fact that HSDPA connectivity, as well as the other connectivity tools (EDGE, Bluetooth) work below average, which is unacceptable for such an expensive high-end device.

Sales package

HTC Touch HD handset 1350 mAh Li-ion Polymer battery USB to PC sync cable 8GB microSD card AC Power Adaptor Spare Stylus Headset Manual CD-ROM.

Photo Gallery (103 Images)

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