HTC Touch2 – Without support for U.S. 3G
For:
HTC Touch2 has candy-bar sleek design. The smartphone offers 3.2-megapixel camera, GPS, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Windows Mobile 6.5 has brought various improvements in user –interface.
Against:
HTC Touch2 does not support U.S. 3G. The display has low resolution and does not have accelerometer.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
HTC Touch2 is powered by a 528Hz Qualcomm MSM7225 processor, 256MB RAM and 512MB ROM. It is based on WCDMA(UMTS)/GSM technology and supports quad-band of WCDMA(UMTS)/GSM 850/900/1800/1900. The operating system is Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional. The smartphone has two user-interfaces: HTC TouchFlo touch-screen and Windows Mobile Today Screen. Supported wireless interfaces are Bluetooth 2.1 EDR and IEEE 802.11 b/g.
2.8-inch touch screen LCD display has a resolution of 320×240 pixels. The additional features of HTC Touch2 are HSDPA, GPS receiver, EDGE, GPRS, call timer, polyphonic ring-tones and vibrating alert. Supported video formats are WMV, MPEG4 and 3GP. In addition, supported audio formats are eAAC+, AAC+, AAC, MIDI, WMA, WAV, QCP, MP3 and AMR.
HTC Touch2 has two connectors: 1×3.5mm headset jack – mini phone and 1×11 pin data port – HTC ExtUSB. It has 1100mAH lithium ion battery that has a life of 440 minutes of talk time and 500 hours of idle standby time.
Razzle Dazzle:
Both HTC Touch and HTC Touch 3G had modern look. HTC Touch2 has a balanced candy-bar design between its predecessor HTC Touch and HTC Touch Diamond2. It is 4.1 inches tall, 2.1 inches wide and 0.5 inch deep and it weighs around 4 ounces. The Touch2 has slim and nice body.
Inside Dope:
Microsoft had announced on September 1 that latest Windows Mobile 6.5 will be shipped with first batch of smartphones running its mobile OS from October 6. Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC had announced on the next day to launch HTC Touch2 with latest Windows Mobile 6.5. Now, HTC Touch2 is available in the market and its cost was also not released during press time. The Touch 2 has a revamped design of its successors HTC Touch and Touch 3G. Being an entry-level smartphone, the Touch2 lacks some luxury features such as accelerometer and high-resolution screen. Windows Mobile 6.5 has brought several new enhancements and exciting applications like Microsoft MyPhone Backup service and upcoming launch of Windows Marketplace. There are also improvements in user-interface. We agree that the changes are revolutionary, but still they result into making Windows Mobile smartphones more user-friendly. There are little chances that HTC Touch2 will actually come to the United States. It will be only available in Asian and European markets, but you can get its unlocked version from third party vendors.
Design and User Interface
HTC Touch2 has simple and clean design. Talk, End, Home, Start and back buttons are located beneath the display. Like Touch Diamond2 and Touch Pro2, there is a zoom bar that allows zooming in and out of documents, Web pages and photos. Volume rocker and micro-SD card slot sits on the left side. A 3.5mm headphone jack and a mini-USB jack/power connector are located on the bottom.
Windows Mobile 6.5 has made various changes in the HTC Touch2 to improve the user interface. These changes include modified Start Menu and latest Lock screen. You can also select one user interface between HTC TouchFlo user interface and Windows Mobile Today screen.
Display
2.8-inch touch screen display has QVGA resolution of 240×320 pixels. The screen is not crisper and sharper than other high resolution displays. Touch screen is resistive instead of being capacitive. As a result, it will require little pressure to select items. Also, there is no inbuilt accelerometer to rotate the display that means you only get portrait virtual keyboard. The touch-screen display is clear and bright. We found the touch screen accurate and quick responsive while testing.
Phonebook and PIM features
HTC Touch2 can store the contacts as per available memory. Each contact entry can save multiple phone numbers, email address, birthday, spouse name, home address, work address, IM screen name, and more. You can divide the contacts into caller groups and pair them with one ring-tone and a photo for caller ID. You will also get the options to messaging and e-mail groups.
The features of HTC Touch2 include three-way calling, multimedia and text messaging, voice commands, smart dialing, speed dial, speakerphone, Wi-Fi, and quad-band world roaming. The onboard Bluetooth 2.1 has supports for personal area network, business card exchange, stereo and mono Bluetooth headsets, printing, object push and hands-free kits.
GPS
HTC Touch2 supports A-GPS/GPS and has inbuilt QuickGPS utility like other smartphones. This utility will download the current satellite information via Internet to find your location. It also comes with pre-installed Google Maps that provides real-time location, text based turn-by-turn directions, conduct business searches and traffic data. HTC TouchFlo Interface will show you a dedicated Map Search tab so that you can search and get results from Google Maps.
Applications
HTC Touch2 has pre-installed HTC Debug tools, calculator, notepad, voice recorder, task list, Adobe Reader LE, and more. Microsoft has also added Windows Marketplace Mobile Edition shortcut, which will be released soon. After the launch, you can download more games, utilities and applications from Windows Marketplace. You can take backups of your applications from MyPhone Backup service and then reinstall them whenever necessary. Task Manager is located on the upper right side of Today screen. You can use the task manager to keep eyes on memory used and to close any running application.
Media Player
Microsoft has included Windows Media Player Mobile 10 that supports numerous video and audio formats including AVI, 3GP, WMV, WAV, WMA, MP3, AAC+ and AAC. HTC Touch2 also has FM radio and YouTube application.
Camera
HTC Touch2 has 3.2-megapixel camera equipped with feature of fixed focus. The still image settings include four quality settings, white balance, ISO settings, brightness controls and five different resolutions. Moreover, you can also capture Panorama shots, standard video, MMS video, picture themes and contacts pictures.
We captured some still photographs through the camera for testing. The overall picture quality was good. The still images were looking dark even with adjusted white balance and brightness. Still the overall video and picture quality was passable from a mobile camera.
Call Quality
We made few calls through quad-band based HTC Touch2 via AT&T service. The overall call quality was good. We received clear sound at our end with little background hiss. The callers also received the same sound and background noise at their end. We did not face any dropped calls while testing. The speakerphone call quality was passable. The volume was weak during outdoors calls and the callers could notice that we were talking through speakerphone. We did not get any problems while pairing Bluetooth headsets from Motorola S9 and Logitech Mobile Traveller.
Performance Testing
HTC Touch2 was a bit sluggish while testing. The browsing speed was very slow over EDGE network. The Microsoft website loaded in 2 minutes, whereas the ESPN mobile loaded in 32 seconds. We had easily watched the YouTube videos in Internet Explorer, but it took some time to buffer at starting and in the middle of playback.
Battery Life
HTC Touch2 has 1100mAH lithium ion battery that has a life of 15 days of idle standby time and 7.3 hours of talk time.
Verdict:
The user-interface improvements of Windows Mobile 6.5 have converted the HTC Touch2 in a nice smartphone for new users. As it is not bound for the United States, so it is not worthy to buy the Touch2 unlocked.
