Don't panic – it’s just a Windows iPhone clone

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Wednesday, 06 June 2007 02:26

Your IT - Entertainment

HTC’s new touch-screen ‘Touch’ is a shot across the bow for the iPhone, available now in the UK before the iPhone even ships, but will it be enough to stop the iPhone onslaught?

HTC’s Touch is a very iPhone like touch screen phone, with a smaller screen at 2.8-inches, and a thicker case at 13.9mm. This compares with the iPhone’s 3.5-inch screen and 11.6mm thinness, but both phones emphasize their touch screen abilities.

The thing is, it’s clear that the iPhone has multi-touch capabilities that let you use more than one finger at the same time, such as your finger and thumb to enlarge or shrink photos, while the HTC Touch seems capable of only one finger input at a time.

HTC have developed ‘TouchFlo’ technology to accept a range of gestures, from the iPhone-esque ‘sweep of the finger’ and others which allow fingertip control of aspects of the Touch interface.

Sweeping your finger up on the display launches a 3D interace that lets you choose from contacts, media and applications. Swiping left of right brings up other commonly used features.

Finger swiping can also be used to scroll through web sites, documents, messages and more.

Unfortunately, HTC, who must have had some input from Microsoft along the way being the major manufacturer of Windows Mobile devices, have not seen fit to copy Apple’s finger controlled keyboard, making you rely instead on the included stylus to type on the small keyboard instead, although we’d expect that handwriting recognition is still available in addition to keyboard input as is standard on Windows Mobile.

HTC claim the TouchFlo interface can differentiate between your finger and a stylus, able to offer better precision for whichever method you choose to use in controlling the Touch.

Naturally, the HTC Touch is now using Windows Mobile 6 Professional, and as such comes with Direct Push Email (like Blackberry’s push mail), Office mobile for basic editing of Word, Excel and Powerpoint files and the rest of the usual Windows Mobile inclusions.

HTC have included a 1GB microSD card in the box, which we’d expect can be upgraded to a maximum of 2GB.

There’s no 3G, sadly, or video calls, but the Touch is GSM, GPRS and EDGE capable, as well as having 802.11 b and g built in. Naturally Bluetooth is there, and thankfully it’s version 2.0 with stereo streaming support along with A2DP.

There’s already been some criticism that the Touch is a blatant attempt to hijack the ‘touch control’ features of the iPhone by slapping a slightly more touch friendly interface onto the standard Windows Mobile 6 Professional experience, and to some degree this seems to be quite true.

Still, HTC claim to have been working on TouchFlo for some time before Apple’s iPhone announcement, and whether true or not, advanced touch technology is clearly a key new feature that will now get plenty of extra attention, as each side scrambles to make sure they match and hopefully even better the advances of their competition.

Unlocked, the phone sells for the equivalent of US $600 in the UK, but isn't due to arrive stateside until later in the second half of the year. That said, it's on sale now in the UK, so grey imports are likely to bring it to the US sooner, and as it's unlocked, it'll work with any GSM provider in the US, meaning it's an iPhone clone that isn't tied to AT&T!

The HTC Touch is definitely no iPhone killer in its first initial version, but merely the latest in a long line of iPhone clones that only superficially copy what the iPhone does, without providing the true depth of effortless usability that only the iPhone can offer.

But watch out, Apple – the competition has been mightily inspired, as always, by your amazing insight, and are throwing everything they have at bridging the gap. The challenge for Apple is, as it has always been, to keep on staying one step ahead, no matter what competitors do instead!