Sprint HTC Touch - User Reviews - Post your FULL reviews here!

[Cicatrize]

Revised 11/10 - BATTERY LIFE
Revised 11/11 - BATTERY LIFE, OZ IM, TouchFLO in WM apps, OVERALL

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I know there are others out there, but I wanted to provide people with a full review on it, and explain some of the things in detail about the phone.

FORM FACTOR & FEEL

The Touch amazes you when you first take it out of the box. Its weight is equivelant to that of a "standard" phone, and the size is nothing short of impressive. It's about half the thickness of the Mogul, a little shorter, and the same width. There are only a few buttons, but the buttons it does have have extremely nice tactile feedback, and the D-pad is one hell of an upgrade from the Mogul's. The casing feels better than any phone I've ever had in my life. It has a nice, soft, rubbery feel to it, and fits in your hand very easily. The weight is a major advantage here, as well, because when you hold it, it's hard to tell you're even holding a pocket PC. I am incredibly pleased with the feel of this phone. I give it a 9/10.

PERFORMANCE

Having the Mogul for so long, I was beginning to get used to sluggish performance, and waiting for things to happen. This is no longer an issue with the Touch. The memory management seems to be quite a bit smarter, and the combined power of DDR RAM and the 400MHz processor is a fantastic treat. The entire operating system is snappy and responsive, and makes life a lot easier when dealing with multiple applications. Of course, we're still dealing with a hungry Windows Mobile 6, which can still show its demanding nature at times, but overall is much better than your average WM5 PPC. I give the performance an 8/10.

SCREEN/DISPLAY

The exterior screen almost reminds me of an iPhone. It feels very solid; almost as if it was a heat sensitive screen, and not a pressure sensitive screen that was able to receive feedback from a stylus. The outside of the screen is a huge upgrade from HTC's other pocket PC's. I'd rate the screen exterior a 10/10. I think it's absolutely perfect.

The display is very bright and colorful, but only if you're looking at it head-on. As you tilt the phone forward, an extreme loss of contrast occurs, and becomes worse the further you tilt it. When you tilt it back, an extreme overabundance of contrast occurs, and also becomes worse the further it's tilted. When viewing from the sides, not much loss of anything occurs. It is still clear and readable. I would give the display a 7/10, only because of the angle issues.

THE INTERFACE

What can I say? I really like it. The cube is quick, and provides nice large button access to some of my favorite applications. I don't really see myself using the favorite people list, since I have that on the HTC Home plug-in on the today screen, but the other two sides of the cube prove to be useful. I have gripes about a few windows and TouchFLO, such as the Programs and Settings folders. It seems that the slightest movement will shoot the focus all the way to the bottom (or top) of the window, which can be frustrating at times if you wish to only scroll a little bit. I actually find myself using the scroll bars more often than not, but to be quite honest, it doesn't really bother me, and my fingers are rather large. It seems they've made the scrollbars a bit larger for the Touch, and it helps a lot. I'm not a fan of the iPhone, but I do wish the Touch had a better interface on the Today screen. This is all just my opinion, but I think more touch-friendly buttons right on your front page is a huge convenience, and should be taken advantage of. They did add one row of 5 applications (phone, music, photos, livesearch, and Sprint TV), and I actually like the plug-in and use it.

I LOVE the volume slider. I really wish my Mogul had this. I know some people don't like this very much, but I think it's better than using a scroll wheel, especially since we're dealing with a touch-based interface anyway. Overall, I'd give the interface an 8/10.

CAMERA/VIDEO/PHOTO ALBUM

The camera's actual picture quality seems to be a little better than the Mogul, but I can't really tell yet. The pictures seem crisp and clear (for a 2.0mp), and the video isn't actually bad at all. The lack of a flash kinda sucks, but honestly, the "flash" feature on the Mogul is a complete waste anyway. I never found it to be helpful in any situation, especially since the subject was always blinded by the flash before I could even take the photo.

The album is awesome. All you do is slide your finger left or right, and it will go to the next photo, or you can do a slideshow. While viewing a photo, you can tap-hold to move it around, tap and move your finger in a 1/4 or 1/2 circle to rotate in either direction, or you can literally "circle" a part of the picture you want to see, and it will zoom in to that exact view. For once, I might actually use the photo album in a phone of mine. This is an excellent feature, and a great upgrade to the photo viewing system. I give the camera/video/album features an 8/10.

THE KEYBOARD (OMG!)

Ok, so I "knew" the on-screen keyboard on this thing was going to suck before I even turned it on. The funny part is, I thought completely wrong. The 20-key keyboard with XT9 predictive text is not only easy to use, but acknowledges your input from your fingers VERY quickly. The response time on it is uncanny when compared to the Mogul's onscreen keyboard. Within a couple hours of texting and practicing with it, I was a pro. I'm actually pretty sure I can type on the 20-key as fast as (if not faster than) my Mogul's hardware keyboard. I'm serious. This keyboard really blew me away. It does take up a large chunk of the screen, but it really doesn't matter for texting or for e-mails. If you really need to see something, you can just tap the "20" at the bottom and hide it for a second, then bring it back up. It's really not that much of an inconvenience. I did not like the 14-key keyboard very much, but this is all preference. I can see how some people may like this better than the 20-key, for instance, if they were used to texting on a regular phone with XT9 input. The problem is that the space key is a little smaller than the one on the 20-key, and that irritates the hell out of me.

The only thing I don't like is how to do numbers & punctuation. You have to hold the key down for a second or two, and that can be a pain if you have to type out a long number, or have lots of punctuation. However, due to how quickly the kb responds, you can click the "XT9" button twice (fast), and it will be on the "123" mode for number input. Not too bad, if you need it. The standard "abc" input, like on most regular phones, is annoying, and I'm not even going to cover it in this review, since it sucks, and always has since the dawn of time. I give the keyboard a 9/10. I am shocked at how awesome it is.

BATTERY LIFE

With heavy usage including IM's, browsing, e-mail send/recieves, this battery does not last very long. Under moderate usage, it seems the 1100mAH is actually better than the Mogul, however under heavy usage, I'd say the 2.16 ROM for the Mogul boasts a little bit better life than the Touch. For what it is, I'm still impressed with the battery life. I'd give it a 7/10.

AIM/Yahoo!/MSN messengers

The built-in messenger programs are awesome. I really think this is something that should have been released for PPC's ages ago, and believe they should all come with it. The application is very easy to navigate, and easy to use. The only problem I have with it is that when the keyboard is open, you're restricted to a view of only 4 lines of IM text, which can be a little irritating if the person you're chatting with is typing anything of length. So far, I've only used AIM and MSN, since I don't really use Yahoo! Messenger, but with those two, I'm really loving the app so far. I'd give the OZ IM app a 8/10.

TouchFLO and WM applications

I briefly went into TouchFLO as a whole earlier in the review, but wanted to explain how it works in the standard WM apps like PIE, Contacts, and the WM windows. Honestly, I think it really sucks. I've completely given up on scrolling windows with my finger, since they scroll way too fast, and you have no control over how far it goes. It especially is horrible in PIE, which I guess I don't mind since I use Picsel and Opera Mini 4 a lot more often anyway. I give TouchFLO a 4/10 when dealing with Windows Mobile GUI.

OVERALL

Overall, I'd rate the phone an 8.0. It's still very new, and post-development hasn't even begun yet, so I'm sure once that happens, it will boost my opinion up to an 8.5 or 9, but I'd say a solid 8 is very good for a brand new phone with a "different" technology. Do I regret switching from the Mogul? Not in the least. The Touch conquers in a lot of aspects the Mogul falls incredibly short. It's also nice to not "have to" use the task manager to close programs. I can leave 10+ programs open at once and still have around 55-60MB of free RAM left. And holy hell, is that nice.


Let me know if there's anything I didn't cover, but that's the main things I wanted to review for everyone. I hope it was informative. As I said, I will be updating this later too.

[EtherealRemnant]

Your review makes me more and more excited for this thing to arrive. Like seriously.

[Cicatrize]

Yeah, this phone is WORLDS apart from the Mogul. I expected a nice touch phone, but was very skeptical of its features and its onscreen keyboard. I have no regrets ditching my Mogul...at all.

[EtherealRemnant]

See, I stopped using the Touch keyboard on my Mogul. I found that I liked using the stock WM keyboard better with the keys set to large size. Perfect for me and only took up a 1/3rd of my screen.

So I'm very very excited.

[Musicman247]

I've been using PCM Keyboard on my Mogul the past few days in anticipation of getting a Touch. Now if only Sprint would reply to my emails!

[Cicatrize]

I love the onscreen keyboard, and I'm a huge hardware kb person.

[Cicatrize]

PCM is horrible for me, actually. I like the HTC 20-key a lot better.

[Blaqdymun]

Only thing I miss on my Mogul is the sliding keypad... i use touchpal's keyboard and Touch is a sleeker, much more sexy PDA. I am still keeping the Mogul.

[Cicatrize]

Revised 11/11 - BATTERY LIFE, OZ IM, TouchFLO in WM apps, OVERALL

[machtenx]

The Touch is a finished product. The Mogul is still in beta. Life is good.

You know you have a good phone when you don't feel the need to tweak and delete everything. It feels faster, and it's more than the memory. I can type one handed with this thing when I couldn't on the Mogul. This is the way future devices will be.