Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Monday, 04 February 2008 08:26
Opinion and Analysis
Page 1 of 3
HTC’s iPhone-esque ‘Touch’ has been upgraded to include a slide-out
keypad and a 3.5G HSDPA chip running on Telstra’s 850Mhz Next G
network. HTC’s first Touch didn’t really touch me at all, especially in the midst of iPhone mania, so just how
touching is HTC’s new version?
Although HTC, one of the world’s largest makers of Windows Mobile smartphones, launched their original 2G Touch a few weeks before Apple launched their iPhone in the US to great fanfare, especially given its iPhone-esque touch screen, one thing was clear: it was still no iPhone.
But given that HTC has much more experience in making smartphones than Apple, many more partners, and dozens more models under their belt, it was always a given that we’d see an upgraded 3.5G HTC Touch model long before Apple would get their act together in releasing a 3G (let alone 3.5G) iPhone.
And that, of course, is what happened. HTC launched 3.5G Touch that runs on the 2100Mhz 3.5G network late last year, but this didn’t work on Telstra’s Australia-wide 850Mhz 3.5G network.
This has all now changed with the introduction of the HTC Touch Dual 850. Equipped with a 400Mhz processor and double the memory of the original Touch, along with a slide-out keypad that allows for easy number dialling and entry of text, the new Touch is much better than the original version.
The keypad comes with a QWERTY keyboard, but instead of having a separate key for each letter, the keypad has two letters on each key, similar to the Suretype system seen on devices such as the original Blackberry Pearl.
Typing away on the keyboard proved remarkably easy, at least for me, and it was certainly good to have a physical keyboard back – especially given Windows Mobile’s own onscreen keyboard is best used with a stylus and is nowhere near as easy to use as the on-screen keyboard seen on the iPhone.
HTC’s version of a finger oriented touch interface is called Touch FLO, and it seems to be a bit easier to use on the new Touch Dual compared with the original Touch, even allowing you to ‘flick’ through your photographs in iPhone style, although sadly there is no ‘multitouch pinch’ you can use to zoom into, or out of, your photos, as you can so wonderfully do on the iPhone and the iPod Touch.
So, when will HTC improve Touch FLO, what else is new and what does it cost? Please read onto page 2.
