HTC Viva - TouchFLO turbo

Introduction, accessories

Once upon a time there was an HTC Touch, also known as “the answer to iPhone”. It was a pleasant little handset; it has brought many users to be its loving fathers, so it has bred descendants like Slide, Cruise and the young titans Diamond and Pro, who have made half of the world’s hearts go wild. But the father didn’t forget its pioneer son and so it has re-bred it (or cloned it?) and named it Viva… what?

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I am sorry if I have made You, dear Reader, a bit mixed-up with the bit childish intro. The situation is that HTC has re-released the basic handset in this great wave of “Touches”, or maybe if it’s not the same, they still have identical hardware. But why? Surely because Touch and Dual have become outdated and they don’t have the user interface called TouchFLO 3D and that’s a real hit nowadays. However the 200 MHz TI OMAP is no hit at all and based on this it’s really hard to understand this decision of the manufacturer. But if we look a little bit closer we might have a completely different opinion – as HTC is no fool.

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We have already published a review of the handset last week, where we have questioned the handset’s right to exist. But since then a new software has arrived, which in theory is still not final, but it is advanced enough to allow us to write a review of the phone supplied by SpeedShop. I wouldn’t have thought in my dreams that a new ROM can change the image of a handset in such a manner, but this is the situation. However, let’s not be so hasty. Since it’s not a final piece of hardware, the handset arrived in a white cardboard box and based on its size it could even have an IKEA kitchen furniture inside, but no, it has the PDA, a charger, a data cable and a stereo headset. This list of accessories might be different for the final edition that will be commercially available, but this is not very probable, because this is still an entry-level product.

Hirdetés

Exterior

One just has to Viva to Touch as they are very close relatives. Let’s begin with the size, shall we. The new handset has gained and lost size, so it has been changed, as if a runner would start going to the gym and get addicted steroids all of a sudden – or vice versa, I don’t know. It has become a bit wider and thicker, its exact size is 104.5 x 59 x 15.8 mm (the predecessor was 99.9 x 58 x 13.9 mm large, just for comparison). But it weighs 2 grams less, so the balance will show 110 grams if we’d put it on it.

There are much more significant changes in the materials used. The predecessor was made of a rubber-like plastic that was pleasant to the touch and provided a firm grip. It would be an exaggeration to call it premium category, but anyway, it was a great thing. Viva is not bad either, but it’s made of slippery, shiny fingerprint-magnet plastics, no one will think that it’s a top model, which is no problem, because it isn’t. It’s still not bad to take it in our hands, it fits my palm and everything, but I would still have been happier if it had been made of some higher quality materials. Assembly quality isn’t bad either, I didn’t hear it cracking or something, but the center of the back can be depressed a bit, but if this annoys someone, you can just put a piece of paper underneath and it’s done.

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On top of the front we can see the phone speaker with the 2.8” QVGA touchscreen below it. Which is lowered. And this is not a good thing for such a device, as it has a really negative effect on usability with fingers. Fortunately the situation is not that bad, as the rim is inclined towards the display, but it’s still hard to press the X button in the corner. The controls are on the bottom, there aren’t many of them, just the call handling keys and the five-way d-pad, which has lots of play it really makes a low-quality impression.

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The back is not extravagant either, probably “let’s collect dust” has been the motto when designing it, as the camera lens and the handsfree speaker are both lowered. This doesn’t look good and it’s not practical either. There is a gap on the bottom too, that’s where we have to attach the wristband.

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On the bottom there is only the power button. We can take the stylus out from the top right corner, it’s a medium sized pen made of metal, it’s quite easy to use. There is nothing on the right side, while on the bottom we can see the microphone and the HTC ExtUSB connector, so the inevitable volume control keys are on the left.

Hardware, speed

Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, 200 MHz TI OMAP CPU, 128 MB RAM and 256 MB ROM, 75/138 MB being free of these – this is how the inside looks like in a nutshell. Touch had the same stuff, although its first edition half the memory as back then the OS was the WM 6, but we can still say that there’s no significant difference. We have benchmarked the speed at the preview, but we did it again due to the new ROM. Here are the results:

Pocket PC Mark results didn’t change, but VsBenchmark shows an improvement of nearly 40 percent, which is just great! It’s strange, however, that the results of the sound system test have decreased dramatically – I have ran the program again and interestingly it yielded the same results once and the second time it was extremely weak, just like in the benchmark at the preview. I really have no other explanation for this than the non-final ROM.

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Looks cool without a cover

Still, this is not the point, but how does the handset perform during everyday use. I am happy to announce that it’s incredibly good! TouchFLO is like three times as fast than on Diamond, which is due to the screen that has quarter the resolution. The menu system is really lightning fast, although we have to wait quite a lot for the applications to launch, due to the small OMAP CPU. The overall impression is still pleasant. Feast you eyes:

TouchFLO, software

TouchFLO is more or less new. I could call it TouchFLO 3D Light because it has the same functions as the one on Diamond, just a couple of effects are missing. You could have seen its speed on the video on the previous page, so let’s see the features…

…which, as a matter of fact, are also the same as the ones on Diamond. There is a difference, however, in the visuals, as the photos in the image viewer don’t float, but fade; this is spectacular enough, no problem with that. The album covers work the same way at the music player and to tell the truth I think that this is a much better solution that the damn slow browsing in the basic version. The other parts didn’t change so we have weather forecast, speed dialer and quicklaunch tab, web part with YoutTube and Opera 9.5.

There is no lack of settings either. We have a task manager that can teach the X button to really close apps, not just minimize them to the tray. Stuff on the tray can also be handled with a finger as icons get magically larger when tapping around there, so the chance for mispressing is about zero percent – by the way the stuff on the Start menu are also large, so tapping works perfectly over there too. Scrolling is available in all Windows menus; fortunately the clicking sound can be turned off. We also have USB Mass Storage mode if we’d like to move data quickly to the memory card. The set of software is the usual: Adobe Reader, RSS-reader, Streaming Media, Zip.

The software keyboards are the ones you can see on the picture, both are great for typing. Choosing the best for you mostly depends on your finger size, as both can be used this way, just not by everyone.

Phone calls, data transfer

I had no problems with sound or reception quality during calls. It’s a new thing that the controls (handsfree and similar things) are behind a virtual cover during calls; this has to be “pulled away” with our fingers – a smart and practical feature. Accepting calls can also be done with sliding, if we really want to disregard hardware keys, but why would we do such a thing?

Call-related software are the usual, Outlook is in charge of messaging and storing contacts. This means we have an e-mail client compatible with authenticated IMAP servers and attachments, an MMS editor and we can store as many contacts as we want and we also have lots of extra info fields. The calendar is also a prime quality one – the thing is that Windows Mobile is still the leader in PIM functions.

There has been a small change in terms of data transfer, as Viva now supports all four GSM channels, the predecessor didn’t support 850 MHz. We can use GPRS or EDGE for transferring data, there is no 3G – by the way Touch 3F is also coming soon, but that’s another story, let’s not stray off. Fortunately we have 802.11b/g-compatible WiFi, Bluetooth supports A2DP and is of version 2.0, just like the miniUSB-compatible HTC ExtUSB connector. There is no GPS receiver inside.

Multimedia, summary

The camera resolution is 2 megapixels and it has fix focus. The image sensor can’t be too large as the images taken by it are very noisy, even in spite of having a strong, oil-painting-like noise filter, and the dynamics range is also low, so the “camera phone of the year” award is not going to Viva, that’s sure. There are quite a lot of settings: white balance, JPEG compression, light metering (average and center-weighted), and exposure correction (+/- 2 EV in 0.5 steps). We can record videos at a resolution of 176 x 144 pixels.

The new handset is of course not afraid of music either. Tracks can be played back with Audio Booster, which can filter them by artist, album, genre and composer – of course we can use playlists too if we want to. It displays album covers; it’s easy to use with fingers, so it’s completely okay. The equalizer still launches only if we have the headset plugged in, this is a great mystery, but it’s not that annoying. Sound quality is medium both on the handsfree speaker and the headset.

Before summing it up I’d like to mention uptime too. There is an 1100 mAh battery supplying Viva with power, which can keep it online for even three days, thanks to the low power-consumption CPU – of course if we’re also listening to music this is reduced to one and a half days or two at most. And now for the summary: the gross price of Viva will be around €270 EUR. We have to pay a similar amount for Touch Slide, but we shouldn’t forget that Viva is a new handset. And as such it’s worth this money, as although it’s not made of premium quality materials, it still runs TouchFLO lightning fast and it comes with almost all required functions. It’s a great pity for the lowered display, but no matter, I can still recommend it.

HTC Touch Viva

Bocha

Translated by Szaszati

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

Specifications

HTC Touch Viva (Opal)
	Technology	GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
	Operating system	Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
	Size	104.5 x 59 x 15.8 mm
	Weight	110 grams
	CPU	200 MHz TI OMAP 850
	ROM/RAM	256 / 128 MB (138 / 75 MB free)
	Display	2.8” diagonal, 240 x 320 pixels resolution, 16 bit color depth touchscreen
	Expandability	microSD
	WiFi	802.11b/g
	Infra/Bluetooth	none/2.0 (A2DP too)
	GPS receiver	none
	Audio	HTC ExtUSB output, microphone, mono speaker
	Camera	2 megapixels, fix focus CMOS
	Battery	1100 mAh changeable Li-Ion
	Other	HTC TouchFLO