Product Reviews

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HTC has been on a roll lately. Not content with gathering plenty of praise for its re-branded smartphones, such as the Orange SPV E650, it's also released a steady stream of own-brand devices, such as the TyTN. But the Touch is its most ambitious model yet. There are just seven physical buttons on the Touch, and all of your interaction is supposed to be via the 2.8in, 240 x 320 touchscreen.

Nothing unusual there - touchscreen PDAs have been with us for years, but the Touch is the first smartphone on the market to include an extra layer of software that's designed to interact more fully with the finger. HTC calls it TouchFLO, and it's extremely effective. Swipe your finger from the bottom of the screen to the top to start the software and you're presented with large icons, perfectly sized for using a finger. The initial view provides you with icons to launch media player, but swipe left or right and the screen swivels around, offering further icons for communications and application launching, and a final view presents a wall of contacts.

The TouchFLO interface also includes music controls, and there's a telephone application built-in for dialling. But, select virtually any other option, including SMS or email, and the wow factor is instantly lost. Windows Mobile 6 heaves itself into view, and you're left prodding at

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a tiny onscreen keyboard and page furniture. While this is several times slower than entering a text message into a predictive text-enabled keypad, the onscreen keyboard is reasonably accurate, even with the pads of your thumbs.

The impression you're left with is one of a job half done. The areas of the Touch that TouchFLO extends to are little short of brilliant and a great advertisement for a future where all phones might have stylus-free touchscreens, but the Windows Mobile 6 aspects are a distinct disappointment. HTC tacitly acknowledges this by including a stylus, which slots into the back of the phone.

The hardware itself is a beautiful piece of design. The Touch weighs just 112g and is only 14mm thick, which means you'll hardly notice it in a pocket. And the screen is excellent too - the only time we had trouble was in direct sunlight. Flip it over and you'll find a decent two megapixel camera. It might not be the last word in resolution, but it captures colours accurately, and holding the Touch sideways means you've got a lot of screen space to accurately frame a shot. HTC also includes a 1GB micro-SD card, which is ample for a few short films or a mid-sized music collection.

Wireless options are reasonable without being a headline feature. GPRS and EDGE are practical for inbox synchronisation, although the latter is about as much use as a steering wheel on a motorbike here in the UK. But the lack of 3G means online video is out, and we noticed a distinct slowness while browsing the web with the Touch, compared to the 3G Nokia N95.

The Touch is tantalising proof that software and hardware designers are fast approaching the stage where all you'll need to control your phone is a set of reliable fingers and a touchscreen. But it isn't there yet. It's no good being able to start a text message with your fingers if you can't write the text message itself. And the same goes for browsing the internet, replying to emails, and even simply browsing files. While the Touch is the best piece of handheld, touch-sensitive design that's available now, there are products on the horizon that look set to work even better - and that's without even mentioning Apple's iPhone.

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