HTC Touch Cruise - Tom likes it!

Introduction, package

No doubt that the HTC’s biggest throw was the Touch. Not if there had been any problems with their portfolio, since they are selling their products under their own name, they are making the mobiles better and better. TyTN, Trinity, Kaiser, all of them were great products, only the Panda went a bit wrong. But the Touch was the thing that brought something new not only for the company, but the whole industry – not a great thing if we look at its mechanics, but it has shown that a WM-based Pocket PC can be a useable device, without any modification.

But the Taiwan company had noticed this and surfed the wave, Touch in multiple colors, the selling-rate was raising, then came the Touch with keyboard with some serious upgrades and fills, but it was still not enough for the ones looking for high-tech. But from now the company offers them an alternative, the new Touch Cruise has arrived.

The phone provided by the XXL PC arrived in a high-quality box as it’s expected. We can describe the accessories with the word ‘usual’, charger, data cable, stereo headset, case, manual, CD, that’s what we get for our money.

Exterior

The minimalist design of the original Touch received many people’s admiration, but many other fellows said that: ‘Oh, come on! It’s a copy of iPhone!’ This has probably been heard by the designers because we can see that it has nearly nothing to do with its ancestors. But it is absolutely not a problem, with this it has more in common with a cruiser than just its name. The front side is shiny and fingerprint-collecting, the back is only the latter, because it was made of soft, silky plastic. It weighs 130 grams, 58x110x15.5 mm in size, not a ballet-dancer, much bigger than the original Touch, only heavier than the Slide.

The touchscreen with its 2.8 inches diagonal size and QVGA resolution can be found on the front side. Without edge around it again, that makes it special, the ‘X’s in the upper right corner can be pushed easily. Not only the display, but the space around it shines in gold when the sun reaches it. It has an artificial metallic color, the name Touch Shine would also fit for it. Under this there’s the control panel with four hard buttons and a d-pad vs. jog-dial combo stuff. Imagine it like a normal d-pad with five ways to push into, but the circular button can be turned, easy to scroll with it. No problem with the design, our fingers won’t crack if we want to push it. The four hard buttons contain the unmistakable calling pair and two hotkeys, no software buttons. I missed them very much, because I had to push the display in this case, which was not the same.

The backside is not a big thing, external aerial-socket, mirror, camera, and loudspeaker.

The power button is the only one to be on the upper side, the volume control slide is on the left, again in solitude. This received no upgrades, or maybe our friends in Taiwan could use it in this way, anyway, I couldn’t. It has to be pushed very hard to get the mobile receive the signal. The upper side is dark plastic rubber, the other sides are made of metal-looking plastic.

Reset-hole, HTC ExtUSB-socket, place for the wristband and microphone are on the bottom side, in this order. The right side has more stuff: stylus and the button of the camera on the lower side, the latter is in a lame place, very uncomfortable to push and that moves the machine a bit when shooting the photo. I think I couldn’t take any good test photos, but I’ll write about this later. The cover hides the microSD slot from the eyes more or less.

Inside, Operating System

Thanks to the Microsoft, there was nothing to develope on the OS. The Windows Mobile 6 Professional stayed, which has no problem at all. The processor is a 400 MHz, Qualcomm MSM720, terrific little thing, much faster than the previous TI chips. The size of the RAM/ROM pair is satisfying in our age, the dynamic memory is 128 MB, the other is 256 MB, about 60 from the first and 85 from the latter are given. The device supports SDHC cards, too, so after a while we may be able to push a 32 GB one into it.

Our testing program was the usual Pocket PC Mark marked with the name of Anton Tomow, which was not liked by the Cruise, only two of the test were able to be run. Based on them I can say that the machine does what is expected. The movie playing is questionable, many people know that the weak point of the Kaiser is the driver that prevents the device from playing films with better quality – it’s a shame, but I couldn’t try DivX-movies opzimized for normal PCs.

TouchFLO, softwares

IF Touch, then TouchFlo, this software-pack makes the mobile really user-friendly. No upgrade since Touch Slide, so in default mode the well-known clock smiles on us from the main screen. However, the Start menu is new, there is a Large Start Menu option in the Settings with which we can make the menu large enough to be used with fingers – useful.

There are four icons under the clock, the first one (small house) shows the time and the event (new SMS, missed calls, etc.). The second icon (sun) takes us to a weather report-plug-in, which tries to collect data from WiFi or mobile-net. If we cannot use either, don’t click on it, because it will take a couple of seconds to shut down the "connect" window.

The third is the quick launch, we can put nine programs into it, and we can change the profile and ringtone with the last little icon. Events added to the calendar can be seen in all four states.

Things in the upper right corner can also be used by finger, because pointing at that part will bring up larger icons, so we won’t get into the battery options while trying to control the volume. The task manager is good, the ‘X’ really closes the programs (to do this after a shorter or longer push, the user decides), and currently running programs can be reached from anywhere.

The menu is standard, but there is an iPhone-like scroll by HTC, well, what to say, still pretty lame, moderately useable – it is better to turn it off and use the one in the SPB Socket Plus 4, at least that works well. The cube-rotation part is not missing, I don’t want to bore our returning customers, the others will find this part in review of the normal Touch Slide. Fortunately there is no problem with the speed, we can bring up our contacts without any trouble.

There are two software-based keyboards besides the standard one, they can be used pretty well with fingers, but they take over more than half of the screen.

Calling, data communication

Basically there is no problem with calling although the voice quality is far from perfect, I can say it’s Windows Mobile-like – I hope the PDA phones will reach the "normal" ones at this area. The volume level can be set with the lame slide, at higher levels it’s loud enough to hear our partner on a bus, they will hopefully not complain of our voice quality because the microphone is fair.

The GSM module is four-channeled (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), a good marketer would say: wherever you travel, the Cruise will be a reliable mate. I only say: in 2008, the minimum in this price range is the support of third generation networks. We can use WiFi-t (802.11b/g) and HSDPA-t (3,6 Mbps) for browsing, if these are not available, the stuff supports UMTS/EDGE/GPRS depending on where we are roaming. The Bluetooth is version 2.0, supports A2DP. No infra.

The softwares connected to the calls are well-known, too. The contact list is default, but it has an iPhone-like plug-in, exactly a column containing the abc, this makes searches easier. There are zounds of extra fields, detailing would be very boring, let the pictures talk.

No problem with message handling. It has MMS support, e-mail client, the latter one naturally handles attachments and authenticated SMTP servers, too.

Multimedia

Let’s start announcing the multimedia abilities with the camera. 3 megapixels, autofocus without flash. I’ve mentioned the crap placing of the exposing button, this leaves its impress on the photos done, which are well-quality ones anyway. The highest resolution is 2048 x 1536, 320 x 240 pixels at videos. The setup opportunities are the usual, anything can be set what is available on a phone, expect the sensitivity. Photometry (matrix and centre-weighted), exposition-correction, effects, everything is available.

Audio files can be played with the software called Audio Manager - as it is expected. Its design fits the spirituality of the stuff, can be handled by fingers, sound tracks can be sorted by artist, album and style, it handles playlists. Fast scrolling can be done with the slide, but no equalizer or megabass function is available in the player. The previous one exists, it can be edited in separate software, it only starts with connected earphones, weird. The sound quality of the default earphones is average, this is negative at this stuff, because we will have to use this failing a 3,5 mm jack plug-in, except buying a converter. The quality of the loudspeaker is horrible. FM-radio is, available, it can be reached from the menu.

The picture-viewer is well-known, I think it belittles the multi-touch, because it has the same functions as the software of the iPhone but without demanding touch with more fingers. Naturally it’s not the same feeling to zoom for example, but it can be done, a circle should be drawn around the area, and wow, it happens. The pictures can be rotated with nearly the same method (drawing a half-circle), moving is the same as in the Apple software. The speed is much better than in the Touch Slide.

GPS, battery, summaries

Fortunately the GPS module is not failing: it’s a 20 channeled NMEA 0183, works fine, finds the satellites fast, but if we have no time to wait that 1-2 minutes, we can help with the software called QuickGPS, which downloads some data from the net to make positioning faster.

The battery is and 1350 mAh one, worked for two days. At hard usage (GPS, music playing), it will have to be charged every day surely.

Summary: the Touch Cruise is a pretty well stuff. It’s size is acceptable, it has every services required today, the amount of faults and annoying mistakes is low. Handling is comfortable thanks to the touchflo which is surprisingly fast, the most irritating thing is the ExtUSB connector, which highly demolishes the musical abilities. If you want a well-quality mixture device, you can buy it with no doubt, if you can afford the 600 euros for it.

HTC Touch Cruise

Bocha

Translated by EQMontoya

The HTC Touch Cruise was provided by the XXL PC.
The phone is on the markets at:
Budapest VI. Jókai tér 6.
Budapest VI. Teréz körút 18.
On-line at www.xxlpc.hu

Specifications

HTC Touch Cruise (P3650)
	Technology	GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz + UMTS, HSDPA
	Operating system	Windows Mobile 6 Professional
	Size	58 x 110 x 15,5 mm
	Weight	130 grams
	Processor	Qualcomm MSM7200 400 MHz
	ROM/RAM	256/128 MB (85/60 MB free)
	Display	2,8 inches diagonal, 240 x 320 pixels, 16 bit colour depth touchscreen
	Extendability	microSD (SDHC compatible)
	WiFi	802.11b/g
	Infra/Bluetooth	no/2.0 (A2DP, too)
	GPS module	20 channeled
	Audio	HTC ExtUSB connector, microphone, mono loudspeaker
	Camera	3 megapixels, autofocus
	Battery	1350 mAh replaceable Li-Ion
	Others	HTC TouchFLO, HTC RollR scroll-wheel, FM-radio