Touch Pro Reviews

[acteon]

Sprint Touch Pro - Purchased Oct. 24 From Best Buy

One of the really "decieving" things about the HTC Touch Pro is its size. (I say decieving because the pictures do not do it justice, I really love it for the size) If anyone has ever held a Blackberry Pearl it is the same size but slighly thicker. When I first got back to my apartment one of the first things I noticed about the phone was its bright screen and then later its battery life. One thing that was very difficult to set up after transferring from a Blackberry was email. Lets be quite frank, setting up email on the Touch Pro other than Gmail or Yahoo POP or IMAP was ridiculously difficult. Recently I had opened a Rocketmail account (through Yahoo) and to set that up had to add it as a regular Yahoo account and when it would not connect change the the username to @rocketmail.com. I also connect to an exchange server and find it very frustrating that if I set it to not sync my contacts they simply delete off my phone. Another issue I have is that my POP accounts do not push the email to my phone. Rather they have to sync every 5 or so minutes. I discovered later that this significantly drains the battery so I have adjusted it to every hour or so.

(Now please do not interpret this as I dislike the phone, I really love it, I just want to be fair to those who may wish to purchase it, so that they know all of the facts.) Another thing I found is that the phone is literally a battery ***** when you take it out of the box. Now while some of you may argue, I understand it is a windows mobile phone and in that realm it is acceptable. Well for myself and I feel most business users, four hours is not a work day. In order to extend the battery the screen brightness must be reduced. Indoors this is fine, I have it set the the 3rd from the lowest, with the automatic adjust off. Outdoors it is incredibly difficult to see.

After doing all of these battery adjustments the phone now will last me over twelve hours with regular use (but no wifi, bluetooth, or long phone conversations). I've heard some mention that out of the box this phone is slow and to do a hard reset. I myself have had no experienced this, my phone is incredibly fast and Touch Flo 3D is very responsive. The built in IM client for the phone is effective but lacks features (such as showing when users are idle) and unfortunately most others are very expensive ($20). Connecting the phone to a pc is very easy and everything works as expected. I have yet to try loading a video but music, youtube, and the internet work as expected. I am truely amazed by Sprint's network (I am coming from a long and hateful relationship with T-Mobile). Basically this phone just works, the camera is not a replacement for your good old digital camera but it is sufficient for picture mail and undetailed shots. A slight annoyance is the phone must be on/ in standby for the alarm to work (This may be an obvious for most people, but coming from a blackberry this was a feature I had enjoyed).

Doing a softreset is easy, and the phone comes back quickly as is expected. Something that has been mentioned a hundred times is the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack, the dongle is annoying and does not charge the phone as fast as a direct plug in to the wall. To sum up, if email is your life, stick to a blackberry (you will truely miss the push email). If email is important, but will not end your life if it syncs every hour, than this phone would generally be a good buy for you. It is responsive and a truely well designed and beautiful phone. Do yourself a favor, however, invest in the insurance, I know I did. I feel as though if I dropped this phone, it might not survive. I hoped this helped someone in their decision. If anyone is teetering and would like to speak to me personally about a specific issue, please PM me.

Have a great rest of the weekend.

[liamkennedy]

I upgraded from my ancient PPC6700 to the TP. Loving it so far. The D-Pad takes a little getting used to. I only just got the hang of pressing left/right/up/down around the d-pad. i thought all you could do was "swirl" around using it. Doh! It's a lot easier to navigate now.

WorldCard - Capturing Bus Cards
Not sure if this is new to the TP - or if it was on the Diamond.... but the WorldCard utility is fantastic. Capturing business cards is pretty spectacular.

Voice-Commander - installed by default.
I didn't know this now comes by default in WM6. Had to pay for it for my PPC6700. Glad it was included.

GPS
Used it with Google Maps - works brilliantly. Very fast acquizition of location.

That's it for now... very happy so far.

[madzilla]

This thing is a fresh breath of air over the titan. dont get me wrong. i love my titan but this phone is just "Wow". i bought it will just basic knowledge about its features. Then after i bought it i was surprised to keep finding stuff out about it that i didnt know. It has so many awesome features.

PROS: Take the Titan but then make it "Cool" and give it everything it didnt have and you have the TP.

CONS:Its not a Touch HD Pro :O

[muhbuhtuh]

i just got this phone from best buy yesterday. prior to having this phone i had the Mogul. right away i noticed the screen was a lot crisper than my old phone. it seems faster than my mogul. i love the touch flo.

the things i missed from my mogul is the scroll wheel and the ok button tabs. cause when i send texts i have to actually press send on my screen. other than that i love this phone!

[ayinde6]

I joined Sprint 3 years ago with the purchase of a Treo 650, since then I have owned the Treo 650, Treo 700, The HTC Touch and Now the Touch Pro w/new contract. With that said let me say that The Touch Pro (TP) is the best Phone I have ever owned. All the Phones mentioned above were great in their own right, but the TP blows them away. Since I have started using PDA Phones for work and play, there has always been something that was missing or something I wish was different about them. As is the case the with the TP, but they are VERY few this time.

No phone is perfect in my opinion, not even the “Heaven Sent” IPhone which I am so sick of hearing everyone compare every new Phone that comes out to. The IPhone is a GREAT phone I would never dispute that, but from what I have read it has it’s share of issues also. Besides these are two totally different types of Phones, and in my Opinion you can’t go wrong with a windows mobile device with all the bells and whistles for the work and play combination.

Enough of my soapbox let’s talk about this wonderful phone.

Pros and Cool features

1. Chrome Finish will make you say WOW! Yes it does attract fingerprints, but so does the PSP, DS Lite, PS3, IPhone, etc. Notice a trend here? People (mostly guys) like glossy, shiny new toys, the glossier the better. And I am one of those people so if I have to wipe my phone every now and then cause of fingerprints I will, this is in NO WAY a CON, unless someone has found a way to have glossy, shiny items without them attracting fingerprints.
2. TouchFlo3D is amazing!! I was able to get a little taste of it on my HTC Touch in 2D form, but there is no comparison TFL3D is amazing. It is a fluid and beautiful very easy to navigate interface. Take the time to customize it to your liking and you will be amazed. (Hint Play with the Music Player…WOW) I’ve read a lot people saying it is slow, but I just don’t see it, maybe I have a better model or something. I did do a hard reset before I started using it, maybe that helped.
3. I love third party apps, and what they can do for this phone. I have only 2 Programs I have paid for and I owned them with my Touch regular too. The rest is freeware. Like apps to automatically lower and brighten your back light depending whether you are outside or inside. or Gyrator 2 which will have your TP screen flip when you turn it. Works like dare I say the “IPhone” I didn’t even know the TP had this feature so I was pleasantly surprised by it.
4. Typing on the slide out keyboard is a breeze and a very welcome addition. Like I said I owned Treo’s before so going to the HTC Touch Reg with no hard keyboard was a challenge for me until I found a free program that work great for typing. But know just slide it out and type away.
5. Camera quality is great, much better than what I was used to
6. Internet Browsing is GREAT with Opera installed out of the box.
7. YouTube program installed out of the Box, I wasn’t a big YouTube fan, but I am now.
8. Screen display is ABSOLUTELY beautiful!! Best I have ever seen in a phone. Pics, movies, backgrounds, wallpapers, everything looks gorgeous on this phone.
9. Wi-Fi is a nice addition, although I haven’t really had time to play with it properly.
10. Sound quality is great for me, not sure what everyone else is talking about, I hear who I am talking to clearly and don’t hear any buzzing everyone else complains about, again maybe I just got a good phone, “Knock on wood.”

Cons, like I said no Phone is perfect…

1. Everyone is correct about the Battery life it does suck pretty bad, I mean I get about 4-5 hours straight with normal use. This is NOT a Big CON for me because I had a charger everywhere (car, work and home) for my regular Touch and they fit the TP, so I am always covered. Plus I am pretty sure some company like Seidio will come out with extended batteries very soon.
2. Another Con for me, not a big one though is the placement of the volume button, I go to turn my volume up or down and it feels like I am going to push the keyboard out. I find myself holding both sides of the phone to turn the volume up or down.
3. Another minor con would be how the mail tab is set up…if you have more than three email accounts they won’t all have preview icons to the right you have to use the D-Pad to preview them.

Well that’s my review of the Touch Pro, bottom line is, if you want a phone that can virtually do everything i.e. GPS, Email, Text, Web, Music, Videos, and oh yeah it makes phone calls too. With lots of bells and whistles you can’t go wrong. As long as you get a good device and not defective, take time to tweak the interface to your liking, you will be pleased no matter what phone you upgrade from. I titled this review “no one phone can please everyone” because there is not a phone out there that everyone in the world will love and if there is I would love to meet it. So you are going to have less than favorable reviews from some, but all in all I am sure this phone will please 80% of the people that buy it, in my opinion.

[SprintTouch08]

i agree with most of that other than im a guy and think the amount of chrome is tacky and itll be the first thing to scratch, watch just give it a few months for the thread with rants and raves how crappy the quality is. the shiny black sides like the diamond or GSM Pro would have been a much better choice. Im not a high school kid from the hood with 24" chrome rims. Im over 25 and a new attorney, the "bling" is old and not for a look for a pure business phone.

[PocketPcUser]

So, I want to say thanks for those who have already wrote their reviews. I agree with most.

I just briefly played with it in the store, and mind you, it was still attached to the security device, so it wasn't a proper introduction.

These are the things I noticed:
- If you are a guy who wears your finger nails a few weeks before clipping them, you're lady friend might appreciate what the keyboard forces on you; you simply have to keep your fingers clipped, as it really impeded on my use of the keyboard. I literally have to cut them past the tips so I can feel the keyboard accurately.

- Obviously, for girls/ladies, this might mean that this device isn't for you. I found that I could not accurately type, with nails that were normal lenth to a little longer. However, I couldn't imagine typing or doing anything with some of the nail-lengths I have seen girls wear, so maybe they are just better at it. Hint: Just try it out before you buy.

- For those that say the device is larger than it appears, I disagree; I thought it was TINY! I couldn't belive how small everything was, both in a good and bad way.

- The speed of the device was surprisingly fast, and the internet connection was just a tad bit faster than I am used to, using Wifi on my 6700. So, that may just be Opera, or the Data Connection speed.

- The TouchFLO interface was amazingly fast, and I didn't ever notice the RAM running out, even with many programs running. Even with a memory leak, I don't think you will ever run out of memory on this device. I think they could have just put 172MB of RAM, and have plenty left over. For those wondering about RAM, after a soft-reset, I noticed that it sat at about 200MB free RAM. I'm thinking that the reason HTC put so much RAM in this device, is because they want to see this device upgraded to WM6.5, which was recently mentioned online. Search Engadget Mobile, and you'll see that they even think that sources say we will see WM6.5, before we see WM7. So, this means that if there is WM6.5, then it should be middle of next year releasing. Maybe HTC also knew something, and planned ahead of time?

- Overall, this device is a huge upgrade from any device on the market, currently. I think it outdoes just about any other upgrade/replacement, that I can think of. 6700 -->>6800 just added GPS, and in some variants, added a stick of memory. 6800-->>6900 - HTC TouchFlo introduced, and the beggining of truely flat-touch screens.

- Screen quality I felt was superb, and almost comparable to the I-Phone1G; except, it doesn't seem to play well with direct-light. I don't own the I-Phone, but I think this handles light better.

- I will say the hugest problems I have with this device, are two things: The Stylus sucks! Although it isn't the retractable kind from the Tilt, it is still too short, IMO. Also, having no additional hard-keys on the right side of the device, seems like bad planning, almost as if they forgot to properly design the interiors to accomodate the buttons. The hard-keys on this device, are the devices physical down-fall.

- Based on what I have seen from Youtube, this device handles TV Out Extremely Well!! It just is amazing how they have improved on this feature. It handles video almost as good as a DVD player, making you wonder if you might just store your videos on your 32GB card, instead of lugging around your DVD's.

If I had to rate this device, based on price, quality, features, I would give it a 8. But, for certain carriers, I would give it an 9 because I noticed that certain carriers or locations give you more accessories. So, 8.5/10.
Hope this review helped. I plan on buying it in a week or two, so I hope to have a more thorough and proper review for that date.

[yotoad]

the only thing i'm noticing is build quality -- the creaky battery cover, the piece where the "home" picture is is not flush with the screen . . . things like that are making me wonder about how long this phone is going to last compared to the build quality of my 6700 -- that thing is built like a tank (except for the joystick)

thoughts from other users? i'm looking forward to finding a good touch pro case (pouch like the 6700) that's slim and pocket-able

[MLawes]

I love the phone! Definitely an upgrade from the mogul. It is a sexy looking phone, although somewhat slow in response time for certain functions. I wish it was a little more touch sensitive. I love the extra row of keys on the keyboard but i dont like the rubber feel of the buttons. I also wish the battery cover was like the gsm version. I still love this phone.

[aughsum]

My review.. I've only had it for a few hours.

Its too big and its too small.

I wish they would have retained the moguls size, given us a flush 3.5" screen with no bezel real-estate and slimmed down the form factor.

Need one more button: plan on mapping one of the volume buttons to the flashlight and using the other to bring up the volume control, then using the screen to control the volume.

****ty camera. for a 600$ phone you could put a good camera into it.

I dont know how I feel about touchflo.. I miss the old-school productive look. I may disable it. I'll give it a few days.

Love opera mobile.. its slow but whatever. empted to try the new version of PIE since all i use it for is facebook, gmail and wikipedia.

love the youtube app; its about time.

that stylus is going to get so lost..

why couldnt they just give us a regular case like the one that comes with the gsm version of the TP? If you're going to put this on your belt just go ahead and shoot yourself in the face (then again, its way too thick to put in your pocket..

One of the biggest features of the phone is its video out feature and there is no video out cable?

Overpriced, especially given the fact that the iphone 3g is 200 and the verizon blackberry storm is going to be $99.

Screen looks amazing.. just wish it were bigger.