Posts by Richard

Owner's Review

Hi All,

I've been enjoying the HTC Touch for about a week now after a run of very good phones from Nokia; the most recent of which was the N95 which like a past reviewer, I've had 2 years of good use from!

I'll start with the Cons because this is the shorter list:

1) Compared to the N95, the quality of the onboard 5-megapixel camera isn't brilliant. You have to be in good lighting conditions and the quality of video recording is also not great with some lag and blurring. It's fine for the casual user or podcaster but won't blow you away.

2) Being a Nokia fanboy, I had a couple of days readjusting to the interface - this wasn't too painful but I don't find it as intuitive as the Nokia interface (e.g. it's difficult to turn your alarm off in the morning!). However to give you a comparison I gave up on my Work-phone (a Sony Erricson Cybershot something or other) because I just couldn't learn to love it. Both HTC and Nokia are streets ahead in usability in my opinion.

3) Windows mobile has been skinned and skinned very well indeed. It's fine for now but you can tell it's there! I'm looking forward to being able to flash the phone to Android as soon as someone figures out how ;-) That may solve some of the other cons too such as -

4) Seems to have trouble with some inexpertly encoded media files maintaining a/v sync under divx whilst others work fine.

5) I don't know what they were thinking with the headphones they included. Yuk.

....and the Pros:

1) It's beautiful, the screen is large and gorgeous and easy to read in any lighting condition short of direct glare. The colours are vibrant and it's big enough to watch comfortably on the train!

2) Voice and Video calling is crystal clear. This is the first phone I'd seriously consider video calling on.

3) Touchflo 3D is brilliant and I will certainly miss it a lot should it ever be possible to flash to android.

4) Browsing the internet is fast and responsive as it is on the majority of desktops. I've barely needed to go on my PC since I got this phone.

5) Music player means my Ipod is now gathering dust.

6) I actually find the weather and stock tracker gadgets rather useful! Not to mention the Youtube player.

7) The camera has a great panoramic feature and is more than good enough for taking snaps of the dog when out walking or a friend doing something embarrassing on a night out. I can't say I've missed the flash.

8) The catalogue of software out there is amazing and not centrally regulated which is great for diversity.

9) The GPS function runs rings around any other I've seen in a phone. Google maps is lovely to use on the touch.

10) I love the email functionality and the sync to outlook calender.

11) The sheer variety of input methods is great. I've opted for the phone keypad method as it allows for one hand usage which is important when you are carrying things to work!

12) The battery life is so much better than my Nokia even with heavy usage.

Overall:

It's basically a class act all the way. I was discussing HTC with my IT manager the other day who has a Touch Diamond and we both agree that with this latest series of phones they've basically gone form being a cheap producer of phones branded for other companies to a maker of quality, well thought out products.

It deserves the 90% rating the register gave. A N95 style camera/video recording facilities would have added 4% for me, decent headphones in the box would be +2% (seriously, what were they thinking! They are worse than the Ipod standard ones and that's saying something) and sorting out the little software niggles would have added another 4% out of the box.

The tilty marble game is more than an adequate replacement for snake :)