HTC Touch

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A few weeks ago, we reported that HTC will acquire subsidiaries of Dopod International, and that new products will use the HTC branding rather than Dopod's. It didn't take long for the first product to surface and, in an event in Europe, the HTC Touch was announced. Obviously wanting to start with a bang, the Touch is touted by HTC to have features that will revolutionalize the way we think about how we interact with our mobile phones. Available immediately in Singapore and soon in the rest of Asia Pacific, this new Windows Mobile 6 Professional PDA-phone costs S$848 without operator subsidies.

Design
Without a doubt, the Touch is one of the most attractive PDA-phones to date. It has a soft-touch finish throughout the front and back, and a minimalist design with curves not unlike that of a smooth pebble. Its most unique design feature is the flush LCD. Unlike most other PDAs, the screen on the Touch does not sit slightly lower than the front surface, but is level with it to accommodate the device's TouchFLO interface--which we will discuss at length in a moment. While attractive, one possible disadvantage of this design is that screen films applied for protection may be a tad unsightly, especially the high-quality ones which are usually quite thick.

	The silver strip around the edge of the Touch.

The appeal of this PDA-phone is also due to its size. It is very slim at just 13.9mm, certainly one of the slimmest Windows Mobile devices with a touch-sensitive display. In comparison, the O2 Atom Life, another very popular model with a similar form factor, is 18mm thick. This also restricts the amount of space available for buttons.

On the front, there are only a directional pad and two buttons for calling and hanging up. Aside from those, a volume rocker and a camera shutter key are found on either side of the Touch. These two, as well as the expansion card slot, power key and a single USB connector, are all found along the silver strip that runs around the four sides of the Touch.

Unlike most phone devices, the Touch does not have its SIM card slot in a position that requires battery removal to access. A cover on its right side opens to reveal both the SIM slot and microSD slot. With much difficulty, this cover can be opened with the battery cover at the back still on. However, the diagrams that show you which way to insert the cards can be seen only when the back cover is off, which leads us to infer that removing the back is a necessary step when switching cards. And even though you can remove or insert a SIM card without touching the battery, the device still turns off automatically when you do that--which makes any reason for not having the SIM card under the battery moot. This part of the Touch is certainly awkward and needs not to be repeated in future models.

Features
Connectivity options on the Touch are almost complete, if not for the missing 3G. The availability of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth as well as triband GSM will suffice for many users, but no doubt many will avoid this PDA-phone because the option to use the faster 3G or HSDPA standard is absent.

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