Introduction, package contents

It looks like HTC managed to keep to the one-year development period very precisely. A proof of this fact is the subject of our current review, Touch Cruise 2 (codenamed Iolite), which is spelled differently in many places (Cruise2) and unfortunately we don’t know which one is correct, but this is not that important. What matters the most is that we have the phone. But wait a bit! Are we sure that this is really a great thing?

The original Cruiser has been one of the last handsets before the launch of Diamond (okay, there was a Pharos, a Panda and a Sedna, but these last two were very niche models), so it didn’t have TouchFLO 3D, but the old plug-in. The new Cruise is not a symbol of development either, its specs are the same as Touch 3G’s, it has a tiny bit more memory and its user interface has a new tab. As this handset is completely new, it seems a very strange thing from HTC, the only explanation could be that it might be good for those who didn’t like the design of Touch 3G. But there is a problem: Cruise 2 costs about 65 euros more. Well, you can’t really say that the additional memory is worth it.

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We have received the phone from SpeedShop, thanks for it. The box is rather large, it’s made up of two parts, one of them has the usual data cable/charger/headset trio along with a 1 GB memory card, while the other part has a car holder and a car charger inside – well, we get some bonus for the higher price.

Exterior

The handset’s size is 102 x 53.5 x 14.5 mm, so it’s a tenth of a millimeter thinner than Touch 3G, and this is an evident proof of the close relation. But Cruise 2 has been well-fed, and thus it weighs 103 grams – this is of course still a great value for a phone in this category. The materials used are the usual ones from the manufacturer, the back has a smooth rubber coating, the side is made of hard plastic, while the edge of the front side is brushed metal.

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On top of the front we get to see a cool speaker, which has status LEDs on its sides. Below the nice tri there is the QVGA display with a diagonal of 2.8”, which is of course not sunk, so it’s easy to tap on it with our fingers, but its image quality is not outstanding. On the bottom there are four large buttons; the call accept/deny keys might be familiar, but the ones above them are new: the one on the left launches the navigation software, while the one on the right is the hotkey of the big new feature, Footprints, but we’ll discuss this in more detail later. The navigation ring has 5 directions, it’s easy to use and as a bonus we can even rotate it, so scrolling in the menu is no problem at all.

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The back side is rather plain, but it has a nice shape, which provides a firm grip for the handset. On the top we can see the 3.2 megapixel camera with fix focus, while the handsfree speaker is placed right besides it, so we can forget the flash. Well that’s about it, but I’d still like to note some things: we can find the neck-band’s hook on the bottom, just above the gap used for taking off the back side. The back pops off, but it still fits perfectly, there are no joint problems at all. The microSD slot and the SIM slot are both under the back side, and in order to swap out the SIM card we even have to remove the battery. This is a rather stupid slot, as we practically cannot take the SIM card out with our hand, fortunately there is a hole through which we can pick the card out with a needle, but on the whole this is a very stupid solution.

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On the top there is the power button, while in the top right corner there is the mid-sized metal stylus. On the bottom there is the microphone and the HTC ExtUSB connector, which is compatible with standard miniUSB cables. On the left there are the volume control keys, and that’s all we can find on the sides.

Hardware, operating system

The handset is based on Windows Mobile 6.1 and its heart is a Qualcomm MSM7225 CPU ticking at 528 MHz. The handset also has 256 MB RAM and 512 MB ROM, compared to the 192/256 MB in Touch 3G. We have 133 MB for running programs and about 280 MB for storing data, which should be enough.

I’ve measured the handset’s speed with the good old benchmark programs. We should of course compare the results with the ones of Touch 3G, as based on the comparison it could be revealed how much faster/slower the new phone is with the same hardware. In the case of Pocket PC Mark the results aren’t that unambiguous, as in the graphics test we can observe a slight acceleration, but at the file system there is a huge minus, while Whetstone Benchmark didn’t run for some reason. At VsBenchmark we get much clearer results, as besides the sound benchmark we have seen faster speeds at all tests, which can be seen on the final score as well. Sound test had an unexplainably low score.

TouchFLO and software

The new Cruise has TouchFLO 2.5G, which launched on Viva. This has the same features as TouchFLO 3D, but there are less animations and transparencies, and thus it’s extremely fast. The tabs are the usual, with the exception of one: we now have Footprints.

If I’d have to summarize what this is, I’d say that it’s the most useless thing of all tabs on TouchFLO. The point is that we can put notes and GPS coordinates on photos that were taken from here. The handset guesses based on the operator which country are we in and with the help of coordinates and Google Maps it should also know the name of the object we’ve taken a picture of, but the whole thing fails at GPS positioning, as on one hand it doesn’t work inside buildings and on the other hand it takes an awful lot of time to connect to satellites. This means that I couldn’t take a single usable photo in Spain… otherwise the whole concept is quite stupid, who would like to use a 3.2 megapixel fix focus camera to take pictures of places that he might not see again in his life? Well, probably no one.

The other tabs and applications are the usual ones, but let’s see them, starting with the tabs. The first displays the current time and missed events, the second is the speed dialer, the third is for messaging, the fourth is for emails, then there are the Footprints and then there is the web tab (with quicklaunch for Opera 9.5 and YouTube), the image browser/camera launcher, the music player, the weather forecast, Google Maps, settings and the quicklaunch for other apps. In the programs we get to see the usual extras: QuickGPS (for faster positioning), RSS-reader, ZIP. The task manager from HTC is of course available in the settings, it can be used to set the X button to shut down running applications instead of sending them to the background.

Phone calls and data transfer

We’ll have nothing new, compared to the predecessor, in phone calls. I think this wouldn’t be such a big problem if we haven’t seen the new phonebook launched in Touch Pro2 at Mobile World Congress 2009, and the Outlook in Cruise 2 will look very basic compared to that, and let’s admit that based on its design it is very basic and plain. Of course the design is not everything; the program is very easy to use as we can fill it up with contact names and numbers and lots of additional infos until there is some free memory.

Messaging also remained unchanged, this is also a task of Outlook, which means SMS/MMS/e-mail support, in the case of emails there is IMAP and attachment support as well, and we can access the messages from TouchFLO as well, which is a very comfortable function. During phone calls I had no problem with sound and reception quality, we can’t say anything negative about these.

The handset has a quad-band GSM module (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), so we can use it anywhere in the world where there is network coverage. We also have dual-band UMTS support (900/2100 MHz), while we can use anything from GPRS to 7.2 Mbps HSDPA for transferring data. There is 802.11 b/g WiFi support as well, along with Bluetooth 2.0 that supports stereo sound transfer. The HTC ExtUSB connector is compatible with miniUSB 2.0 and the handset supports Mass Storage mode, when we can of course access only the data on the memory card.

Multimedia

How surprising: there is nothing new in terms of multimedia either. The camera has a resolution of 3.2 megapixels and it has no flash to help it function in poor lighting conditions. We don’t have lots of settings: white balance, JPEG-compression, exposure correction, light metering (matrix and center-weighted). The highest available resolution for pictures is 2048 x 1536 pixels, while videos can be recorded at 320 x 240 pixels. There aren’t any other extras, we can take panorama pictures, but only with manual joining.

We shouldn’t talk much about image quality, it is rather disappointing for a handset from this price range. The colors are pale, noise filtering is too powerful, edge sharpness isn’t too good either, so forcing the use of the Footprints feature has been validated again, great.

The music player is the usual one, it can be accessed via TouchFLO. It can display album covers, filters tracks by ID3 tags, it can seek, and it even has an equalizer, even though that can be used only when we have a headset plugged in. There is no standard jack output, so if we don’t like the otherwise medium quality default headset, we can obtain a stereo Bluetooth one, or we can buy a converter and have an additional cable in our pocket. Sound quality is medium on handsfree as well.

The image browser didn’t change either, but this isn’t really a problem, as it’s quite fast and smooth. The only noteworthy thing is that we can zoom by rotating the d-pad, which is a really useful function.

Battery, GPS, summary

The battery’s capacity is 1100 mAh and it can be changed. It can keep the handset alive for a surprisingly long time, I had to put it on charger only after three days, even though I have only made a couple of calls and written SMS messages. I’d say an uptime of two days if used more, but if we browse the web and listen to music as well, than we will surely have to charge it every night.

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As it has already turned out, the handset has a GPS receiver inside, which supports A-GPS as well, so it speeds up positioning with the help of GSM cell info. In the programs we can find the TomTom7 navigation software, if we choose the package that costs about 30 euros more. If our information is correct then we get the software with the cheaper edition as well, but then we can download the map of a single country.

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Summary: basically I can say the same about Touch Cruise 2 that I’ve said about Touch 3G. It’s a very good little handset, which doesn’t necessarily look better than its predecessor I’ve been talking about, and it’s basically not even better, the only attractions are 64 MB RAM and 256 MB of ROM in plus. Okay, it’s not useless, but one can get along with the memory in Touch 3G as well. I’d recommend Cruise2 to those who like the two handsets, but would also like car navigation. It might be a good choice for those as well, who don’t prefer the minimalist design of 3G or they feel the bonus memory as an absolute necessity. I recommend it.

HTC Touch Cruise 2

Bocha

Translated by Szaszati

The handset has been provided by www.speedshop.hu, thanks. Please click here to access the shop.

Specifications

HTC Touch Cruise 2 (Iolite)
	Technology	GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz UMTS/HSDPA (max. 7.2 Mbps) 900/2100 MHz
	Operating system	Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
	Size	102 x 53.5 x 14.5 mm
	Weight	103 grams
	CPU	528 MHz Qualcomm MSM72225
	ROM / RAM	512 / 256 MB
	Display	2.8” diagonal, 240 x 320 pixels resolution, 16 bit color depth touchscreen display
	Expandability	microSD (SDHC-compatible)
	WiFi	802.11b/g
	Infra / Bluetooth	no / 2.0 (A2DP too)
	GPS receiver	yes (A-GPS too)
	Audio	HTC ExtUSB output, microphone, mono speaker
	Camera	3.2 megapixels, fix focus
	Battery	1100 mAh changeable Li-Ion
	Other	HTC Footprints