HTC Touch (T-Mobile MDA Touch)
Available
now 5th June 2007
HTC is a pretty established player in
the smartphone market - it has been around for 10 years
and is widely considered to be the market leader when
it comes to Windows Mobile handsets, with a wide variety
of designs available.
One problem that HTC have had is that
fundamentally, all their phones are very similar. Yes
- you can add 3G, WiFi, keyboards, touchscreens and
even GPS and then mix the ingredients around, but underneath
they're all constrained somewhat by the fact that they
run Windows.
So, the HTC Touch (codenamed
the HTC Elf and also known as the HTC
P3450) represents a new departure. Instead of supply
the Touch with a standard Windows Mobile implementation,
they've chosen to do something a little different. Using
a technology called TouchFLO™, HTC have made the Touch
very much easier to control with a finger rather than
a stylus. The Touch automatically distinguished between
a stylus and a finger - the user simply sweeps their
finger across the display and the Touch comes up with
an elegant interface that is specially optimised for
this type of use. HTC say that it is "an animated,
three-dimensional interface... the interface can be
spun by swiping a finger right or left across the display..
TouchFLO also enhances finger touch scrolling and
browsing of Web pages, documents, messages and contact
lists".
Looks familiar? Well, yes the Apple
iPhone has a similar interface.. as does the LG
Prada. This is the first time that we've seen such
an interface on a Windows phone though.. and one advantage
that the HTC Touch has over the competition will be
its ability to run Windows Mobile application.
Underneath
the snazzy interface, the HTC Touch is a Windows Mobile
6.0 smartphone with all the usual productivity and multimedia
applications. It's a tri-band 900/1800/1900 MHz
GSM device with GPRS, EDGE, 802.11 b/g WiFi and Bluetooth
connectivity. The 240x320 pixel display is 2.8"
in size and can display in up to 65,000 colours. Internal
memory is 64MB of RAM, and there is a 1GB microSD card
in the standard sales package. On the back of the HTC
Touch is a 2 megapixel camera.
It's pretty compact for a smartphone,
weighing just 112 grams and measuring 100 x 58 x 14mm.
Talktime is a reasonable 5 hours with up to 8 days standy
time. The HTC Touch is available in two colours - "elegant
soft black" and the somewhat disturbing "alluring
wasabi gree" combinations.
As well as demonstrating a new user
front end, the HTC Touch is the first truly global
HTC product as it is being sold under the HTC name for
the first time in Asia. Orange will be offering the
HTC Touch initially in the UK, France, the Netherlands
and Spain, and later T-Mobile will have a variant called
the T-Mobile MDA Touch for European customers.
Before tax and subsidy, the HTC Touch
will cost around €430 / £270 / $500. When taken
with a new contract, many customers will get the phone
for free. This is much cheaper than the frankly overpriced
iPhone which is slated at being $500-$600 with a contract..
although the iPhone certainly has the edge on looks.
|
HTC
Touch (T-Mobile MDA Touch)
at a glance
|
Available:
|
Q3
2007
|
Network:
|
GSM
900/1800/1900
|
Data:
|
GPRS
+ EDGE + WiFi
|
Screen:
|
240x320
pixels, 65k colours
|
Camera:
|
2
megapixeks
|
Size:
|
Compact
PDA-style device 100
x 58 x 14mm / 112 grams
|
Bluetooth:
|
Yes
|
Memory
card:
|
microSD
|
Infra-red:
|
No
|
Polyphonic:
|
Yes
|
Java:
|
Limited
|
Battery
life:
|
5
hours talktime / 8 days
standby
|
|
|