Full Review: HTC touch from Bell (Canada)
Posted by: Adrian Corscadden in Technology, gadgets
I have been living with my new HTC Touch for over 2 weeks, and now have a good idea of its features. I am now expanding on my previous first reaction to the phone. Wikipedia has a good page with the rundown of the HTC Touch’s stats. NOTE: the Canadian version doesn’t include 802.11x.
Touchflo
The HTC touch breaks away from the pack of standard Windows Mobile devices by integrating a new touch interface to Windows Mobile Professional. They have modified the ‘Today’ page as well as added a finger friendly application launcher called Touchflo. As Touchflo is pretty hard to describe in words, here is a quick youtube video that demonstrated Touchflo.
I have found Touchflo to be very useful, and I hardly every have to use the stylus. This interface is responsive, which gives the illusion of tactile stimulation.
Plan
In Canada, Bell is offering the HTC touch with an unlimited data plan for $7/month. There have been reports around the blogosphere and forums that this plan is restrictive. I can assure you that this plan is not restrictive for any software on the phone. It provides unlimited access to the internet and email. Even high demand software like Sling Player Mobile is allowed. The only limitation, is that the phone cannot be used as a bluetooth modem for a laptop. Bell is able to do this because the HTC touch is marketed as a cell phone, not a smarphone.
Browsing
This section doesn’t apply specifically to the touch; it applies to any Windows Mobile device. I am now doing quite a large chunk of my feed reading on the go with google reader mobile. This has had an unexpected effect on my reading habits. Since google reader mobile displays pages individually, I tend to read each headline more thoroughly. On the full version of google reader, I tend to quickly scroll through headlines when I am overwhelmed with new items. I am impressed with the browsing speed; text only pages load very quickly, and images load in a reasonable amount of time.
PIM
Windows Mobile has the upper hand on PIM over the iPhone. As I have never used a Blackberry, I cannot compare the touch to one.
I have been using GooSync to sync my google calendar to the touch. This is accomplish over the air, so I never have to dock the phone to sync anything.
My biggest gripe with the phone is that Outlook doesn’t work with IMAP for gmail. This isn’t HTC’s or Microsoft’s fault; it is Google’s. The mail application will show the headers of new emails, but will not show any HTML content. Google is supposedly working on the problem, but it hasn’t been fixed yet. I use Outlook to collect headers and to notify me of new emails. After I view the header, I access my gmail account from Internet Explorer to view the email.
Multimedia
Multimedia is where the touch could use some improvement. Due to its weak 200mHz processor, the picture browsing interface lags and video playback is often choppy. Video playback in Sling Player is actually better than the included Windows Media Player. The Touch tries to mimic the iPhone’s interface by using gestures to navigate through pictures. Again, I don’t think this phone has enough processing power to fully utilize this. The gestures are slightly different than the iPhone, but they are still intuitive.
Text Input
The HTC touch relies on two main input methods. The touch has all of the standard stylus input methods familiar to Windows Mobile users. On top of the standard methods, HTC has added and onscreen keyboard and keypad, which are both usable with fingers. The keypad is a standard cell phone keypad with 3 letters per button. The keyboard is similar to the one on the new Blackberry Pearl and has two characters per button. The touch keyboard is my favourite method of input, however it is not perfect and I am thinking of buying the Spb Keyboard, which offers a full screen keyboard.
The screen does tend to gather a few fingerprints, but the screen is not indented, allowing for quick cleaning on sleeves and pant legs.
Battery Life
Battery life isn’t a big issue, but it is worth noting that the touch doesn’t get great mileage. I pretty much have to charge it every night. Battery life is one area where the 200mHz processor is actually beneficial.
Verdict:
You should buy one.
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I’m calling up Bell tomorrow at work to find out how much time is left in my internet contract. If it’s done I’m canceling, ordering dry DSL and picking up a HTC touch.
Thanks for the post. I’ve been thinking of picking this phone up and have been looking for some realistic, hands-on reviews like yours. Questions: when you browse with IE, is the experience at all like it is on a desktop PC? (I’ve never used a smartphone, so I have no point of reference.) Are you limited at all in accessing websites, checking email, etc., or is it just like usual? Finally, you said that multimedia performance is lacking. So is watching a movie on the Touch a realistic option, rather than on an iPod? Thanks for your help.
Why are you refering to the bell touch as having a 200mhz processor, almost positive bells touch has a 400mhz processor
@Eddy, IE on windows mobile is not as good as on a regular computer. The browsing experience on a windows mobile device is somewhere in between the iPhone and a regular cell phone. The touch isn’t a great multimedia device. Compared to an iPod, it doesn’t have near the storage capacity and the UI for media isn’t that good. I still use my ipod for music and videos.
@Lee, yes, you are correct. I just checked my phone and it does have a 400mhz processor. Thanks for the correction.
My Daughter in Toronto got one with Bell and for the first week loved it. I almost bought one but the quirks she had was that it was low, the phone cut off many times, it would not sync with her Outlook becuase she uses Vista and the battery life sucked. Other than that, it was great.
i always see people refering to the htc touch as 200mhz and i dont know why. maybe the previous model was but the one i picked up from bell last week is 400mhz. heres what i see under device information on my touch.
cpu – qualcomm(r) 7500
Speed – 400mhz
Ram Size – 128
flash size 256
data bus 32bits
storage size 152(internal)
display res 240×320
colours – 65536
battery life is not great…
Yes DJ you are correct….I checked the stats on my phone and the Bell one does have a 400mhz processor.
I got this phone (with Bell Mobility) 2 weeks ago and seams to have two problems:
1) Inside a big store with steel roofing (like Home Depot or Rona) the receiving signal is very weak, communication even failed sometimes.
2) When receiving or making a call I hear like a little static noise (I’m not using BT headset or speaker on).
Anyone else has these problems with this phone? Should I return to change it?
Thanks
My opinion on this phone is not good. I find it very non-user friendly, and after using it for some time, I’ve found that it has many quirks to get around. For example, when you’re browsing google and click on the search bar. You would expect the keypad to show up, but it never does. This requires you to scoll all the way to the top, click on the address bar to bring up the key pad, then scroll back down to the address bar and click on it again. This sometimes brings up the keypad, but often it shows up with numbers only, and when you try switching to letters, it does not respond. Another problem, and maybe there’s a way around it, is that it has almost no satisfactory alarm tones. You’re limited to a quick beep or tone, hardly adequate if using it as a wake up.Possibly the worst thing about this phone is the service it gets. I’ve never had so many dropped calls. I could be chatting next to another bell user with a different phone, both talking, and while he/she has no problem, I will have to redial 2 or 3 times to talk for a total of 15 minutes. This tells me that it’s not the service provider, rather, it’s the phone itself that is the problem.The one good thing about the phone that I can vouch for is the sturdiness. I discovered this only because one day, I’d finally became fed up with the phone and threw it across a field, perhaps unconsciously hoping it would shatter to pieces so I could justify buying a different one. However, it still worked just as good as before (which is not very good).Save yourself a headache and buy something else.
Well Let’s see got the phone in June had it for about five months, it worked great for about the first three. Now the problems arise, this phone froze seven time after the third month and one time i needed to complete a hard reaset to fix the problem. That being said i had to go on the internet and find out how to do so as such information was not included in the phone instruction manual and upon doing so found FORTY other people who had needed to do the same thing 2 or 3 times. And standing in a friends kitchen the screem broke and i had a hard time getting through to bell’s warranty center to get the phone back and was pushed back and forth between the store and warranty center.
My Vote is not to buy this phone
The processor chip is called as slightly more recent design number however it and the GPU are likely the similar speed since the 3GS. The old Touch using the same Processor and GPU since the 3G was faster. Besides having the clock speed turned up higher the Contact has much less software programs to run because it is not a telephone. It ought to beat any iPhone to day in overall performance.