HTC Touch Pro2 - huge'n'good

Foreword, accessories

Windows Mobile combo devices with a full keyboard have always been a separate category in the ever growing world of palm handsets. Many people say that the mobile Windows is only good because there are handsets with a QWERTY keyboard, which use it – it’s something like the fanatics for Nokia’s old communicators, the difference is that now we’re practically talking about devices that differ from their companions only in having a keyboard.

We recently had HTC’s latest flagship mode, Diamond2 for testing, which is the successor of the popular Diamond. Those who are a bit more informed might know that the diamond doesn’t come alone as shortly after there is a pro edition coming up – this review is about this pro.

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HTC Touch Pro2, supplied by SpeedShop, is of course the successor of the “plain” Touch Pro, thus being a member of the series launched with Wizard. Although it is Diamond2’s brother with a keyboard, there are some other differences between them (just like in the case of the predecessors), but these are not related to the box, since that looks just like the one the new Diamond2 came in: it’s small, it’s black and on the inside it’s a bit sloppy, but at least it’s made of environmental-friendly cardboard. We won’t get many accessories, unfortunately HTC still gives a charger head that needs the data cable, so if we’d like to charge our Pro2 on the night stand, we have unplug the data cable from the computer – and vice versa. The stereo headset is also included in the package, and we also get a leather carry case.

Exterior

The new Pro is simply beautiful on the front, as the display is huge, there is a black rim around it, this being surrounded by a shiny frame. When taking a look at the sides, we might feel something completely different, as the 17.3 mm thick Touch Pro2 looks like a huge handset: this feeling is further emphasized by its weight of 178.5 grams. The two other sizes (length of 116 mm and width of 59.2 mm) are not that big, but due to its thickness and weight it really looks large. We can’t say anything bad about the materials used, as although it’s basically made of plastic, these are high-quality ones and feel good to touch.

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On top of the front panel we can see the phone speaker, which is theoretically made of two separate speakers, these having a great sound quality according to the specs. Besides them there is a status LED, while below we can see a discrete HTC logo and the secondary camera. In the center there is the 480 x 800 pixels large TFT display with a diagonal of 3.6” – it’s a resistive panel which can display 65.536 different colors. Below the display we can see the zooming bar we’ve already met on Diamond2: this is a touchpad which can be used for zooming in or out in applications that support this feature. There are four small buttons on the bottom, the ones on the sides are for accepting/rejecting calls, between them there are the classical Windows and back keys.

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The back panel is also a stylish piece. In the center there is a brushed metal part which has the rear microphone, the mute key – details coming a bit later – and the 3.2 megapixel autofocus camera. These are surrounded by a grated part, which looks as if the whole thing would be one large speaker – of course it’s not, but there are two smaller speakers beneath it. The external part is made of a somewhat shiny, lacquered plastic, which is a bit slippery, but it basically provides a comfortable grip.

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On top there’s the power button, while on the side we can see the volume control keys. The HTC ExtUSB connector (used for the headset, charger and data cable) is on the bottom, and although it’s compatible with standard miniUSB cables, it’s still outdated, it would be high time for HTC to change it to the widely accepted microUSB + 3.5 mm jack duo, but of course they couldn’t sell that much of the already manufactured accessories. We can take the massive metallic stylus out from the bottom left corner: it’s fortunately not a telescopic one.

When sliding the phone open we get to see the QWERTY keyboard, and I can say only great things about it. The “useful” area is large, since the upper part goes a long way, but the layout is also superb. One of HTC’s representatives told us at this year’s Mobile World Congress that they are trying to create something that resembles a “real keyboard”, and I’m happy to announce that they’ve managed to do this. The keys are placed in five rows, thus we can type numbers without pressing any functions keys – and as I have already mentioned, the layout is great anyway, everything is placed logically, I can say that Touch Pro2 has the best keyboard in the range of these types of handsets. Another thing that might be useful for many of you is that the display can be folded (á lá Kaiser), so the handset looks like a kind of mini-computer when put on a table. Otherwise the mechanics has no play, it looks like a really resistant one.

Hardware, operating system

If we take a look at the hardware we can see that the engineers didn’t really change it. HTC has been using the same Qualcomm MSM7201A CPU since a long time ago, this has been changed in Diamond2 to MSM7200A, and this is used in Pro2 as well – many users expect this chip to have no lagging at all when playing back MP3 songs, as there were some example for such problems in the case of the predecessors. The CPU has a clock speed of 528 MHz, which is an average one, but handsets from other manufacturers have proven that in the case of Windows Mobile handsets it’s not the raw power that counts, but optimization, as not matter that there is a 1 GHz processor inside a device if the drivers are badly written. Otherwise the chip’s features are up to date, just like the memory size. We have 512 MB ROM and 288 MB of RAM, we can use nearly 250 for storing data and about 70-80 megs for running programs – there is 95 MB available after boot, but as soon as we start some applications this will drop below 70 many times, even if we close running applications – this is a sign of a strong memory leak, fortunately the next ROM version will fix it. The storage can be expanded, the SDHC-compatible microSD slot can be accessed by taking the back panel off.

We could only use Pocket PC Mark from our usual benchmark software, as VsBenchmark doesn’t support displays that have an aspect ratio different from 4:3. Somehow the Whetstone CPU test didn’t run, but we can see from the other marks that HTC’s new handset has no speed issues at all.

The handset’s operating system is Windows Mobile Professional 6.1 – it’s already sure that there will be a free upgrade available for 6.5, but only Microsoft knows when will this happen. The graphical user interface is the well-known TouchFLO 3D, this is the latest edition we’ve already seen on Diamond2, thus it has all the features and software. Let’s see what these are!

Software

There are no new features in terms of software if we compare it to Diamond2, but this is no problem, as TouchFLO 3D does a great job. As this is a GUI that replaces the Today screen, we can access all important features without using the Start menu. From left to right we can see a tab displaying missed events, then there is a graphical phonebook, the SMS and e-mail interface, the calendar that launched in Diamond2, web stuff, stock info, the image viewer, music player, the weather forecast and finally we have the settings, but of course we can reorganize these or even disable the parts we don’t use. It’s great that when pushing the screen up we won’t get a lame quick menu like it did on the original Touch Pro, but we still have the TouchFLO interface. The tabs disappear, we can make them appear again by tapping a small button, and they disappear again after we’ve used them. I don’t know what the reason is for this, I think it would be better to have them constantly displayed – it’s probably made this way to conserve screen real estate.

HTC has though of users who will upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.5 – where there will be no classical Start menu – so they have already made it disappear. By pressing the Start button we get to a customizable quick launch menu, where we can open a list menu (by pressing all programs) that has a great scrolling routine. This might be strange and a bit uncomfortable at first for long-time users, as in case of a long list it might be time-consuming to find the program we want, but since we can place favorite apps to the quick launch menu, this is in fact a better method than the old one. The scrolling is still not as good as the one on iPhone, but it’s more than usable.

We’ll se the default Windows menu in two place: we can access the original control panel through settings and our messenger, Outlook, is the same old one – with the difference that when we’re typing a message we get to see HTC’s new virtual keyboard, which is although much better than the default Windows keyboard, we will probably used it only if we have to type with only one hand, as we have the great QWERTY keyboard. Besides these two parts the whole user interface is uniform and it even looks good, it’s a worthy rival to Apple’s much hyped handsets both in design and usability. Finally we don’t have the feeling of having a patched up Windows device – it might sound funny but it’s great that we don’t even see on HTC’s new models that we’re using Windows Mobile. Of course the reason for this statement of mine is the operating system’s somewhat outdated user interface that is hard to use with a finger, I didn’t refer to any other aspect.

There is no lack of extra software either. We have Adobe reader, a calculator with scientific functions, Google Maps, a Java runtime environment (JBlend), a wireless presentation application (JETCET Presenter 5), an RSS reader and a business card digitizer (WorldCard Mobile).

Phone calls and data transfer

Sound quality has always been one of the weakest spots of Windows Mobile devices. There are still many people using E-TEN handsets that have their microphone turned on only 2-3 seconds after pressing the call accept key – there is no such problem with HTC’s handsets, but Touch Pro2 performs even better. There is a straight talk label on the back of the device, which refers to the handset’s sound quality (even though “clear talk” would have been more appropriate). This is because the handset has a superb quality phone speaker and two microphones, which produce much higher quality than similar handsets. Those who I’ve been talking to have told me they hear me “loud and clear”, on my side I just simply had great sound quality.

There are some other extra features related to phone calls. Just like on Diamond, this handset also launches the notepad if we pull out the stylus during a call, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. A new feature is that there are two sliders on the dial screen, the left can be used to switch between voice/video calls, the one on the right can switch to conference mode, thus we can call multiple numbers. HTC is most proud of the handsfree: if we put Pro2 upside down on a table during a call, handsfree is automatically turned on. In this case sound quality is unfortunately quite poor, or at least not better than on any other mobile phone – we can be barely heard and we can barely hear the other one. I think it’s impossible that anyone will use this on a company brainstorming session, but HTC has such visions. There is a button on the back as well, this is lit in green when handsfree is turned on, and as soon as we press it, it mutes the microphone and turns to red. This whole handsfree idea is not bad at all, but it would need a better sound quality. It’s still great that the distance sensor besides the screen doesn’t only control the handsfree, but it also does the display, so if we put the handset to our face during a call, the display is turned off, which is good for saving power and we won’t press buttons accidentally.

The handset has a quad-band GSM module (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), we can use GPRS, EDGE, UMTS or HSDPA at 7.2 Mbps and HSUPA at 2 Mbps. We have WiFi and Bluetooth, support 802.11b/g and version 2.0 with stereo sound respectively – these have a new interface, so accessing their features is much easier than it was before. The HTC ExtUSB connector is compatible with miniUSB 2.0, thus it provides fast data transfer, and we can use the handset as a card reader or a modem when connected to a computer.

I can’t write much about messaging, Outlook does a great job, may that be SMS, MMS or e-mailing. It’s worth mentioning that the handset has a YouTube client and an Opera Mobile browser, which is not as fast as iPhone’s Safari, but it’s still the best on Pocket PCs.

Multimedia

The handset’s main camera has a resolution of 3.2 megapixels, autofocus and there is no flash. The highest available resolution for photos is 2048 x 1536 pixels, while videos can be recorded in VGA resolution. The software’s user interface is a new HTC app – of course Diamond2 already had this – we practically don’t see anything in the viewfinder, while focusing can be done with the single on-screen virtual button. We can define the focus point, we just have to tap on it on the viewfinder. Otherwise the application has quite a lot of settings, we can make panorama pictures (with manual joining only), we can set white balance, sensitivity (ISO 100 – ISO 800), jpeg compression, white balance (average and center-weighted), there is a self-timer and some effects. The usual marketing stuff like shoot on smile and things like that are missing, but I didn’t miss them at all.

Image quality is quite good, as the colors are bright and the dynamics range is quite high. It’s also sure that this handset won’t win the golden camera awards, as we can see traces of powerful noise filtering on the pictures. Still, the 3.2 megapixel photos could even be printed, and this is a rare thing amidst Windows Mobile gadgets.

The lack of a 3.5 mm headset jack is becoming a more and more stressful problem, so the musical part starts with a negative thing, as there is no standard headset connector on the device. I think the engineers managed to improve sound quality, sounds are clearer, but I have heard some background noise with the default headset, which was quite annoying. Sound quality is not very good on handsfree, it has quite a lot of boominess. The player is otherwise okay, we can use the equalizer when the headset is plugged in, it can filter tracks by ID3 tags (artist, album, etc.), we can see album covers. Fortunately the music lag we’ve heard on the predecessor is now gone, music playback is continuous even when there are lots of programs running in the background.

There is theoretically no FM radio on the handset, at least it’s not included on the list of programs. It has turned out, however, that the machine has all the physical things it needs to receive radio broadcasts, only the program is missing. Probably not even the guys at HTC know the reason. Those who have some know-how with HTCs can install a radio software from another handset, which will work without a problem.

Other, summary

The handset has a GPS receiver, the latest version of iGO ran okay on it. There were some serious issues with the GPS on the previous handset, but I can’t tell if these were corrected or not.

The battery has a capacity of 1,500 mAh, which suggests a long uptime, but since the display is quite large (so it needs a lot of power), we just have to do with the average 2-3 days of uptime – two days if we listen to music, and three days if we only make calls, but not too much.

Sumary: HTC’s latest handset is basically a great handset, but it has its bugs. It currently costs about 615-650 euros, which is a hue sum, it raises some questions, as it’s still a phone. For this sum we can get the more advanced Samsung i8910 HD, which of course won’t affect Touch Pro2’s merits, but it’s a fact that it currently costs a lot. And it’s even very large, but at least it’s easy to use. I’d really recommend it at a lower price, but this way I can’t do it, no matter how good of a handset is.

HTC Touch Pro2

Bocha

Translated by Szaszati

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

Specifications

HTC Touch Pro2
	Technology	GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz UMTS/HSDPA 900/2100 MHz
	Operating system	Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
	Size	116 x 59.2 x 16.65 millimeters
	Weight	178.5 grams
	CPU	528 MHz Qualcomm MSM7200A
	ROM / RAM	512 / 288 MB (250 / 95 MB free to use)
	Display	3.6” diagonal, 480 x 800 pixels resolution TFT touchscreen
	Expandability	microSD (SDHC-compatibility)
	WiFi	802.11b/g
	Infra / Bluetooth	no / 2.0 (A2DP too)
	GPS receiver	yes
	Audio	microphone, mono speaker
	Camera	3.2 megapixels, autofocus +VGA for video calls
	Battery	1500 mAh changeable Li-Ion
	Others	QWERTY keyboard, tilting display, FM radio, gyroscope, HTC TouchFLO user interface, distance meter at display, automatic handsfree, dual microphone