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HTC Touch Smartphone
User Experience - The Hardware
The HTC Touch has a 2.8" (320x240), 65k color screen, which is on par with most other smartphones, but it feels small considering the input methods offered...more on that later. I was also slightly disappointed with the viewing angles - when you look at it just right, the colors and contrast are excellent, but a slight tilt in any direction leaves you with a fairly poor view of the content on screen. The screen is flush with the top edges of the casing and it feels great in your hands. You don't normally see a touch screen on a device like this, and HTC made specific hardware and software changes to allow for effective operation whether by touch or stylus. You have to press quite a bit harder than many other touch screens, but I got used to it quickly. Above the screen, a black metal grille hides the phone's earpiece and LEDs that represent signal status and bluetooth. Below the screen there is a 5-way navigation pad, the talk key, and the end key for phone operation. The 5-way navigation pad is very functional and works well for thumb operation. The talk key will answer a call or bring up the dialing interface if the phone is at the home screen. I really missed the presence of left and right hardware buttons that are normally found on Windows Mobile phones; you have to activate these contextual functions with the touch screen, which can be a pain if you are used to doing it with hardware buttons.    On the left side of the phone you will find the volume slider and the oft included, rarely used, lanyard hole. On the right is the camera button, stylus slot, and the access area for the memory card slot. The memory card slot is, and seems to always be, a point of ignorance for "smart" phones. Nokia used to put its MMC slot under the battery. That was a headache. The Touch's slot can be accessed without removing the battery, but you will have to remove the back cover of the phone. Once the back cover is removed, you will have to do battle with a piece of trim that often refuses to come off. I wish this memory card slot could have been left out in the open, but it's not that big of a deal if you don't plan on changing cards that often. The back of the phone is home to the lens for the integrated 2.0 megapixel camera, a self portrait mirror, and the loudspeaker for ringers and the speakerphone. A mini USB port is found on the bottom of the phone and the power button (which turns the screen on and off with a quick press, powers off the phone upon a longer hold) rests on the top of the phone.         The physical design of the phone is quite attractive. The screen tends to gather a fine layer of fingerprint smudges very quickly but the rest of the body stays pretty clean. The Touch is trimmed in a dark chrome border and the rest is covered in black "soft touch" plastic. This material makes the phone relatively easy to grip so it won't slide out of your hand easily. The phone weighs in at 4 ounces and has dimensions of 4" tall by 2.4" wide by 0.6" deep. The screen is 2.8 inches diagonally with a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels. I can't get enough of how tiny this thing is - it is the perfect size for a phone that lives in your pants pocket and is comfortable in the hand when making phone calls. I think it is the smallest smartphone that I can recall using. That may, however, turn out to be both a blessing and a curse - more on that later. Now that I've painted a picture of the exterior looks, we need to look under the hood for a bit. After all, what good is a Ferrari with a go-kart engine driving the wheels? The initial version of the HTC Touch ran on a TI 200 MHz processor and had a fairly small amount of built-in memory. The Sprint version of the Touch is powered by a different processor, the Qualcomm MSM7500 running at 400 MHz, and has twice the memory of the original (256 MB ROM, 128MB RAM). The phone feels a bit underpowered. Quite a bit of interface and input lag were noticed, and video playback was less than stellar. Sprint's edition of the Touch is lacking the WiFi found in the GSM version but it makes up for this with a fast EVDO data connection. If you don't mind paying for an unlimited data plan (starting at $69.99 a month with 450 anytime minutes and "unlimited everything"), this is a great alternative. Using the broadbandreports.com speed test, I got between 400 and 500 kbps average speed with fairly low latency - plenty fast for most applications. The Touch includes Bluetooth 2.0 with support for wireless stereo audio. No prime-time multimedia phone has any excuse for not including this feature at this point in time. Streaming to a good set of headphones or a car stereo is wireless bliss. The battery life was less than stellar by my measure. The standby time was excellent at about six or seven days until the phone shut down but active use was a different story. I used the data connection occasionally, made several calls, and used some of the media applications for about an hour each day and I couldn't get the Touch to last longer than lunchtime on the second day. Considering the device's size that would be expected, but I would be willing to sacrifice a few tenths of an inch for a more substantial battery.
Page 1: Introduction & First Impressions
Page 2: User Experience - The Hardware Page 3: User Experience - The Software, Phone & Organizer, and Multimedia Page 4: Conclusion 
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