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Pros
- Powerful feature set.
- Slick interface graphics.
- Sensibly arranged, five-row QWERTY keyboard.
- Better software bundle than you get with AT&T's version (the HTC Fuze).
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Cons
- Expensive.
- Poor battery life.
- Middling reception quality.
- Confusing "dual-OS" interface.
- Could be faster.
- No camera button or standard 3.5mm headphone jack.
HTC Touch Pro (Sprint) Specs
802.11x/Band(s): | Yes |
Bands: | 1900 |
Bands: | 800 |
Bluetooth: | Yes |
Camera Flash: | Yes |
Camera: | Yes |
Form Factor: | Slider |
High-Speed Data: | 1xRTT |
High-Speed Data: | EVDO |
Megapixels: | 3.2 MP |
Operating System as Tested: | Windows Mobile Pocket PC |
Phone Capability / Network: | CDMA |
Physical Keyboard: | Yes |
Processor Speed: | 528 MHz |
Screen Details: | 262K colors |
Screen Details: | 480x640 |
Screen Details: | TFT |
Screen Size: | 2.8 inches |
Service Provider: | Sprint |
Storage Capacity (as Tested): | 288 MB |
It's raining TouchFLO Windows Mobile smartphones. Hot on the heels of AT&T's
The Touch Pro has a few minor cosmetic changes but is otherwise identical in appearance to the Fuze. For instance, it has a soft-touch silver back panel, whereas the Fuze is black, and a dark chrome ring around the front panel, which the Fuze lacks. It's also slightly larger than the Fuze, measuring 4.2 by 2.1 by 0.7 (HWD) inches, although at 5.3 ounces, its weight is lower than the Fuze's by half an ounce. Sprint's version of the five-row QWERTY keyboard makes much more sense than AT&T's: It has a full row of numbers across the top, and symbol shortcut keys where you'd expect them to be. The keys remain too flat and stiff for fast typing, but the design is still powerful and flexible for more intensive document editing and messaging. The rest of the details are the same, including the controls on the phone's face, the packaged accessories, and the centerpiece: the bright, crisp 2.8-inch, 640-by-480-pixel touch screen.
On Sprint, the Touch Pro is a dual-mode (800/1,900 MHz) CDMA phone, featuring both EV-DO and Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) radios. Reception was a little weak: In a rural area, the Touch Pro vacillated between 1X and EV-DO modes, while a nearby
In past HTC device reviews, including that of the Fuze, we've lamented the Windows Mobile–TouchFLO combination, so I won't rehash everything here. Suffice it to say, though, that depending on the task, you either get a pretty interface that works with deliberate finger touches or a cluttered Windows-like interface that requires the stylus. And sometimes you jump back and forth between them even when you're in the middle of a single task, such as during media playback, Web browsing, or when configuring the phone's deluge of settings. The handset also feels sluggish in use, despite its relatively powerful 528-MHz Qualcomm CPU, 122MB of free user RAM, and respectable benchmark scores. I'd bet some hardware graphics acceleration would do wonders for TouchFLO.
For e-mail, the Touch Pro's built-in Outlook Mobile mail client hooks into Exchange servers, supports Microsoft Direct Push, and can read POP, IMAP, and common Web-based mail accounts. The HTC Touch Pro edits Word and Excel documents and views PowerPoint files. The handset also synced with a Windows Vista laptop on the first try. Combine all this with the five-row keyboard and you've got an excellent mobile office.
In addition, Sprint includes a more robust software bundle than AT&T does. The Touch Pro features ClearVue Presentation 5 Pro, a third-party app for creating and editing PowerPoint files. Sprint also throws in RSS Hub, a mobile RSS reader that comes preloaded on the handset with over 100 links to news, entertainment, sports, and tech sites, among other categories. The reader gives you a several-line summary of each article, along with a link to fire up the browser and read the rest. You also get Handmark Pocket Express, a neat little information aggregator for things like weather and sports scores, and Titan, Sprint's Java virtual machine. There's less crapware on the Touch Pro than on the Fuze, although, like many handsets these days, it's still loaded with nonfunctional icons and demo programs.
Other mobile apps on the Touch Pro mirror the ones on the Fuze. Opera Mobile renders desktop Web pages well, helped plenty by the VGA screen resolution. The IM client connects to AIM, Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger accounts in a tabbed interface.
Music sounded incredibly tinny on the included wired earbuds, and just as bad over the minute built-in mono speaker on the top. Treble was warm but lacking over a paired set of Cardo S2 stereo Bluetooth headphones. As for the Touch Pro audio interface, it displays album-art thumbnails and lets you flick through them with your finger, but it takes several seconds to switch tracks. At one point I got stranded on the home screen with music playing in the background, and the Task Manager wouldn't quit the app. I had to navigate back to the music player and close it from there. Videos, including DivX and Xvid files, played back smoothly, with occasional stutters when blown up to full screen mode.
There's no dedicated camera button on the handset, which makes it tough to snap a picture quickly when the opportunity presents itself. The 3.2-megapixel camera took blurry, flatly colored photos and couldn't resolve details as simple as books on a shelf 12 feet away (all the bindings sort of blurred together). The autofocus mode, which can't be disabled, added several seconds to the phone's shutter delay. The Touch Pro has an LED flash that is bright for a flash of this kind. In this regard the Touch Pro is a nice improvement over the
Overall, the HTC Touch Pro is a bit more pleasant on Sprint than the Fuze is on AT&T, thanks to its lighter weight, improved software bundle, and better keyboard. However, its battery life result is more than two hours shorter than the Fuze's, and it's not as good a voice phone. Sprint smartphone buyers should also consider the Touch Diamond, which is less expensive but lacks a QWERTY keyboard. The
Benchmark Test Results
Continuous talk time: 3 hours 8 minutes
SPB Benchmark: 431.4
CPU index: 2197.98
File system index: 181.16
Graphics index: 899.45
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