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HTC Touch Smartphone
User Experience - The Software, Phone & Organizer, and Multimedia
The Software Now we've come to the most poignant part of the review -- the software and interface. This is the area in which the Touch gets so many things right, yet falls short in a few key areas. Let's start of with the basics. The phone runs Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional, just like many other devices, but it has a few tricks up its sleeve. HTC put some extra effort into the software and hardware behind the Touch's screen, and it shows. The culmination of this effort is the TouchFLO system that runs on top of WM6, and it is pretty slick. HTC has created a custom home screen fit for the Touch's tactile theme. The upper half displays one of three views. In the first, the current date and time are displayed. The second view shows the weather information for the currently defined area code. The third view allows you to access several of the device's settings, from brightness to screen orientation to ringer mode. There are three "tabs" below that facilitate switching between views. The lower half of the screen contains the usual information that a Windows Mobile device has to offer - to-do list and calendar items plus any information provided by other applications - news, e-mail, and more. TouchFLO has been touted as the Touch's killer app, and I found it to be a great way to get at some of the phone's better features. Swipe your finger upwards from the bottom of the screen and you are presented with a three panel, rotating interface for many of the phone's key functions. On the first panel you have access to the three major multimedia functions of the device: the Sprint Power Vision music store, Sprint TV, and Pocket Express, a news and information portal. The second panel presents phone functions: 9 speed dial icons that display contact pictures and a toolbar below that has buttons for the phone, recent call list, contacts, and to edit the speed dial locations. This is a great way to quickly dial the folks you talk to most often. The third panel is an application launcher that has buttons for the Sprint software store, an instant messaging application, Internet Explorer, SMS, the communications manager, and e-mail. All in all, this aspect of the TouchFLO interface gives you a fun and functional way to access the phone's goods. It's too bad TouchFLO doesn't work in landscape mode. Phone & Organizer Since the Touch is primarily a phone, it's probably important to take a look at how well it works in this capacity. If you press the left soft button, the dialing interface opens and you can begin to dial the desired number. The dial pad is large and easy to read, but dialing suffers from a bit of interface lag. As you dial, potential matches from your contacts are displayed below the number you are dialing. You also have the option of searching through your contacts to make a call. Once you find the contact you would like to use, tap their name and select a number to dial. Voice quality was better than almost any cell phone I have used to date. Volume was loud, call clarity was excellent, and callers on the other end couldn't tell that I was calling from a cell phone. The speakerphone was adequate, if a little quiet. Text messages and e-mail are handled from the same messaging application. With a finger swipe left or right, you can change mailboxes. Writing messages is a bit of a chore because of the provided input methods. You have several options for text input: the standard Windows Mobile keyboard is present along with two that are unique to the Sprint version of the Touch. HTC created a number keypad like you would find on a normal phone, employing T9 predictive text to handle alphanumeric input. They also provided a touch keyboard that closely resembles the SureType keyboard from the Blackberry Pearl series of phones. This keyboard also uses predictive text so you can speed up input. Because of the small screen size, typing on this keyboard can get a little hairy at times. Accuracy was less than I would have liked for a primary input method. A hardware keyboard would work perfectly for the Touch (fortunately, HTC has announced a newer version of the Touch - the HTC Touch Pro - that is almost identical except for the addition of a sliding hardware keyboard). You won't be writing a novel on the Touch, but it works well enough for texting and short e-mails. The calendar application on the Touch is top notch. Windows Mobile has always taken care of its users with excellent PIM functions, and the Touch is no exception. You can view upcoming appointments in agenda, day, week, and month views, and you can also make this information available on the home screen. This is a much more robust calendar than can be found on any other phone. The Touch ships with mobile versions of Microsoft's Office suite: Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. This allows not only viewing of documents but limited editing capability. Again, input limits the functionality of these applications a bit, but they will work well in limited application. It's a nice change from other devices where you only have the capability to view such documents. Multimedia While you may be looking towards purchasing the Touch primarily for business purposes, you don't devote all of your time to work - and neither does the Touch. The multimedia functions are present and accounted for, and while some of them may not perform to the highest of standards, you can have lots of fun with the phone. The camera on the Touch is standard fare for a mobile phone these days, meaning that it performs fairly well with good lighting but suffers in dimly lit areas. The camera application, however, is a pleasure to use. There are tons of little features that you would expect (photo effects, burst mode, timer, some goofy photo frames, and white balance) and a few that are delightfully surprising (three different metering modes and anti-flicker for pictures of displays). The video capture app shares many of these features and the same excellent interface. Many of the TouchFLO interface elements present themselves when working with the camera or the photo viewing application. Swipe left or right to scroll through photos. Draw a full circle clockwise to zoom in or counterclockwise to zoom out. A half circle in either direction rotates the photo. These commands take a little bit of practice, but work well once you get used to them. Windows Media Player Mobile handles both audio and video on the Touch. Audio plays back very well, but I can't help but wish for a better solution for attaching a different set of headphones. Using the included USB dongle to plug in my Shure headphones to the Touch seemed like too much hassle, and the included headset is just adequate. A standard audio port would be nice. Video playback on the Touch is very inconsistent. From a fresh start, you can achieve a decent frame rate, but attempting to play video after the device has been running for a while usually results in a barely viewable experience. Frame rate drops to an unacceptable level until the phone is restarted. A reset can help alleviate this bottleneck, but it seems a bit ridiculous to have to reboot the phone so that you can watch a video. Stick to audio playback, and you'll be fine. Internet browsing on the Touch is second only to the iPhone in terms of usability and functionality. While you won't get quite the experience of the desktop-class browsing available from Apple's device, Internet Explorer Mobile renders web pages well and uses some Touch-specific gestures to ease navigation. Swiping a finger horizontally or vertically scrolls a page in these directions - this is so much easier than using the scroll bars to navigate a site. Sprint's EVDO data connection is plenty fast for basic browsing. Overall, it's a perfectly acceptable mobile browsing solution. Rounding out the entertainment features are a few Sprint exclusives and one fairly standard application. Sprint has created a surprisingly adept mobile TV service. Sprint TV offers access to several different content categories. Sports, entertainment, news, and more can be accessed via the Sprint TV browser. Some of the news channels are (nearly) live broadcasts. Quality was nothing to write home about, but considering the channels were coming in over the wireless data connection, it was perfectly acceptable. Sprint also offers a music store that provides "hundreds of thousands of full-length songs" available for purchase over the air. I did not have an account set up to test this feature, but it seems to have some unique benefits and drawbacks. You can purchase songs from anywhere that you have a data connection, but you also must be connected to the store when you play back songs. If you need to have the song right then and there, it will serve your needs - just don't plan on listening to any of this purchased music when you are out of service range.
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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