By John Chan
13/11/2007
URL: http://asia.cnet.com/reviews/mobilephones/0,39051199,42048146p,00.htm

Based on popularity and sales charts tabulated for our monthly Top 5 handhelds feature, the HTC Touch seems to be a very popular WM6 (Windows Mobile 6) PDA-phone. This is not surprising because the Touch has a very attractive design and, especially if you are getting an operator discount, a very accessible price.

Just a few months on, HTC has a new handheld in the same series, the Touch Dual. If you don't go into the details, you will only notice that it has no Wi-Fi (like in the original) but comes with 3G and a slide-out keyboard as its main advantages. It may seem like the Dual's improvements are canceled out by its lack of Wi-Fi connectivity, but this is not the case. This new PDA-phone is quite a big leap over the original Touch, so much so that a potential buyer may be able to brush aside the fact that it cannot connect to free wireless hotspots.

Design

At first glance, the physical differences between the Touch and Touch Dual may not be immediately apparent. With the keypad closed, the Dual is longer than, but not as wide as, the original. It is slightly thicker, too, but at 15.8mm is still incredibly slim for a PDA-phone. This is quite a feat considering the Dual has a slide-out keypad hidden under the display.

The material used for the chassis of the Dual is made of a soft-touch plastic which feels good in the hands. The LCD is flush with the body, so the only protrusions you feel on the front are the directional pad, call/hang up buttons and a raised bump below the screen which helps the thumb get a grip when sliding the screen up. A silver strip which runs around the entire edge of the Dual has a few more buttons including volume control, camera shutter and the power button. Like many other 3G phones, the Touch Dual comes with two cameras--a rear-mounted one for 2-megapixel snapshots and a front-facing VGA one for video calls.

A little force is all that's required to move the screen up because of a spring mechanism. A numeric keypad with a total of 16 keys is then exposed. The number keys are laid out like you'd expect in a regular mobile phone with three shortcut keys along with the backspace key flanking them on the left and right. Though there isn't much space between keys, we did not encounter problems getting used to the layout and tactility of these buttons. One thing that can be improved in this keypad is an OK key to get out of screens. Without one, you have to stretch out your thumb or use another hand to tap the top right corner of the display to get out of applications or move back a screen.

The mini-USB port and microSD slot are both found on the left side of the device. The mini-USB is the only connector on the Dual, which means regular wired headsets using the 2.5mm audio connector cannot be used or will require a converter to mini-USB.

Features

Connectivity options in the Touch Dual include HSDPA, triband GSM with EDGE and Bluetooth. Like many other HTC devices, it detects which operator your SIM card is from and starts a wizard to configure the settings for the data connections. As mentioned earlier, the Dual does not come with Wi-Fi, a potential deal-breaker for users accustomed to having this wireless option. We thought that this would doom the Touch Dual to mediocrity, but in reality its other features more than make up for this lack.

As its name suggests, the Touch series is about controlling the device with the fingertips. This was somewhat realized in the original Touch with features like a modified Home screen with large buttons, stroke actions that bring up a special shortcut screen, finger scrolling through long lists and tweaks to the screen's sensitivity that allow you to use a thumb to engage the tiny onscreen X button for closing applications. All these have remained intact on the Touch Dual, with improvements that are significant to its usability.

First, one more main tab has been added to the Home screen. This lets you switch between sound modes and also brings you to the ringtone selector menu quickly. The HTC Task Manager application remains activated by touching the top right corner of the Home screen, but this has been improved to show how much memory is being used.

Like on any other WM6 Professional device, tapping on Start will bring up a list of applications. What's different on the Touch Dual is that the text and icons on the Start menu are much larger than normal, making it easier to get to the application you want without a stylus. A similar idea is found on the top status bar. Instead of having to aim and touch the tiny icons (to perform tasks like check the battery and change the volume), tapping on the status bar brings up a callout box with enlarged icons, big enough to hit the right one even if you have huge thumbs.

Another significant improvement to the UI (user interface) is in the contacts list. A vertical bar on the right side lists the alphabet in ascending order. To get to a contact that starts with M, for example, you only have to touch the letter M. If you miss, slide up or down and the letter will appear in the middle of the screen to tell you where your finger is. All you have to do is stop when you reach the right one. This is almost identical to what's available on the iPhone, but hey, it works and is a great addition to the WM6 contacts UI. In the messages app, swiping left and right will also scroll between messages, somewhat like flipping through real pages of a paper document. This will probably be more useful for emails than text messages because you usually read SMSes as they come, but many unread emails come together especially when you receive them in the morning.

Collectively, these features are part of the TouchFLO interface developed by HTC's R&D team. This has also been extended to its photo gallery. In there, actions like stroking left and right will scroll between images while circular actions will zoom in to a particular point. This will probably get you some oohs and ahhs from friends, but doesn't always work as well as we'd like. It isn't as polished as what you get on the iPhone, so a bit of work may have to be done to improve it.

Aside from improving the UI using the touchscreen, both the slider and hang up button also have special functions. The Dual can be set to show a Quick Tasks menu when the slider is pushed up, giving you immediate access to common tasks like writing a new email, creating a new contact, among others. The other addon is being able to press and hold the end call key to bring up a Quick Lists menu which changes key settings like turning on keylock and setting to silent mode.

Most of the commonly used features like the phone, contacts list and messages have improved UIs. Unfortunately, tiny icons that require a stylus are still present in things like the calendar and Web browser. But overall, HTC has done an admirable job with the Touch Dual, covering most aspects so that only fingertip actions are needed most of the time.

Performance

Another major reason the Touch Dual is much improved over the Touch is the processing power. It comes with the 400MHz Qualcomm MSM 7200 processor and 128MB of RAM. This makes it much more responsive and thus the TouchFLO interface and addon applications work much more smoothly. We did not experience slowdowns in our days of use and the included Task Manager application made monitoring and freeing up memory easy.

We got about two days of use on a single charge of its 1,120mAh battery. Call quality was good for normal calls and the speakerphone was decent, too. It wasn't all that loud, but good enough for use in a car when a handsfree kit isn't available and during video calls.

Conclusion

We lamented that the HTC Touch was sluggish and lacked 3G connectivity. These have been fixed in the Touch Dual with added, dramatic improvements like the inclusion of a numeric keypad and an incredible evolution of the TouchFLO interface. Now, WM6 was not built with user-friendliness as its greatest strength, which is why we really liked the Palm Treo 750 for its improvements to the UI. Like Palm, HTC has done an excellent job tweaking the experience so the entire product becomes more accessible to the user. It goes further by making the Touch series really attractive and slim, so switching from a mobile phone from brands like Nokia and Sony Ericsson becomes less painful for those who consider design a big part of the decision.

Unfortunately, we have to go back to this one sticking point--no Wi-Fi. For all its great features, this PDA-phone will unfortunately be passed up by a significant number of users because it cannot connect to free wireless hotspots. Unlimited HSDPA data plans are still quite expensive in our region and not everyone may be inclined to get one. This is the one thing that's stopping us from awarding the Touch Dual our Editors' Choice award.

But if you are one who can do without Wi-Fi, we highly recommend the Touch Dual--especially if you are new to Windows Mobile (WM). But even if you are not and have been using another WM device, there's something different in the Touch Dual that's definitely worth an upgrade.