The HTC Touch's claim to fame is its heavily modified WM (Windows Mobile) interface which makes it more convenient to get basic tasks done. The original Touch has been a hit so far, thanks to its great design and low price, and we won't be surprised if HTC replicates that success in the Touch Dual as well. The third and latest of the series is the Touch Cruise, a handheld which doesn't leave out any connectivity features--a niggling complaint we had when reviewing the first two in the range.

Design

The design of the Touch Cruise isn't quite the same as the others in the Touch series. You could probably liken the HTC Touch and Touch Dual to flattened pebbles because of the generous use of curves around their edges, but this is not the case for the Cruise. In fact, it looks more like the Dopod P800W (also known as the HTC P3300), one of the company's earlier GPS-enabled devices. Given the resemblance, we wouldn't be surprised if the Cruise was meant to be a follow-up to that model but modified to fit into the Touch line of products.

The glow inside the scroll wheel when in use.

This isn't a negative point, though. Admittedly, the designs of the Touch and Touch Dual PDA-phones are prettier than the Touch Cruise's, but this handheld does have its appeal. The black finish gives it a sophisticated look. The front of the device has a shiny finish around the LCD, while the rest of it comes in a soft touch finish, which makes it feel pretty good in the hands. The Cruise weighs 130g and has dimensions of 110 x 58 x 15.5mm. For comparison's sake, the HTC P3600i weighs more at 150g, has almost the same footprint and is thicker at 18.4mm.

Under the display are your regular Call and Hang up keys as well as two extra shortcut buttons. The directional pad is like a regular one that you can press it to move up, down, left and right and select using the center button. The difference is it's shaped like a wheel and rotates, too. Rotating clockwise is similar to pressing either right or down, and anti-clockwise to left or up. We found using it like a regular D-pad more effective most of the time, but the wheel also came in handy when browsing long Web pages and for zooming in and out of images and maps. When in use, a ring lights up around the selector button inside the wheel.

One more shortcut button and a volume control rocker are found on the left side of the device. On the right are a camera shutter button and the microSD card slot. The single speaker for the Cruise is found on the back. As usual, we would have preferred this to be front facing for better speakerphone/video call quality, but that looks like a design issue not many manufacturers are willing to take up.

Like most of HTC's current crop of devices, the Cruise has only a single mini-USB connector for charging, syncing and connecting a wired headset. While this isn't ideal for situations where you need to charge and use a headset at the same time (a likely scenario in a car using a cigarette lighter charger), it looks like HTC will be sticking with this formula.

Features

As mentioned earlier, the biggest draw of the Touch Cruise is possibly its range of connectivity features. It comes with triband UMTS and quadband GSM, making it good for roaming almost anywhere. Along with that are the usual Wi-Fi and Bluetooth wireless options, common for most mid- to high-end PDA-phones. HSDPA is also enabled in the Cruise, with a maximum theoretical speed of 3.6Mbps.

On the modified Home screen is a handy weather update feature--for those who hate to look out of the window.

GPS is also a standard feature on the Cruise. This further supports our notion that it's a successor to the Dopod P800W or HTC P3300. We tried out the GPS feature using Google Maps and MapKing. Though it doesn't use the SiRFstar III GPS chipset (one of the most popular chips well-known for its capabilities), the Cruise did well to locate our position and track changes. It also helped that HTC provided an application, QuickGPS, which downloads latest satellite data using an active Internet connection to help the GPS get an initial lock faster. Aside from using the internal antenna, there is also a connector behind the Cruise which allows you to plug in an external GPS antenna.

Another wireless feature HTC has included in the Cruise is an FM tuner. As with FM tuners on mobile phones, you need to plug in a wired headset which acts as an antenna. That means you can't use a regular set of headphones as the only connector on the Cruise is a mini-USB one. We tried out the radio with the provided wired headset and found the FM reception to be acceptable but not crystal-clear.

As with the Touch Dual, the Cruise comes with HTC's latest revision of the TouchFLO application. This includes the modified Home screen suited for finger tapping, a quick scroll feature for long lists and large buttons for the Start menu. The virtual cube feature has also been implemented, a graphical interface which makes it possible to get to some commonly used items from any screen you happen to be at. In line with all the finger swiping you have to do across and along the screen, the Touch Cruise does not have a raised bezel like most PDA-phones. It is instead flat across the entire front surface.

Other applications included with the Cruise are WorldCard Mobile for scanning namecards, CE-Star for Chinese text input and a custom Task Manager software for quick access to programs running in the background. We do have to say that the inclusion of too many text input methods including two custom HTC ones, Touch Keyboard and Touch Keypad makes the pop-up menu to select the input method you want a little sluggish.

A 3-megapixel camera graces the rear of the Cruise. This comes with autofocus and a preview mirror for self-portraits, but no LED light for night shots. A smaller VGA camera is located above the LCD for video calls.

Performance

The Qualcomm MSM7200 processor is starting to become a familiar name around here. This 400MHz chip powers the Touch Cruise just like it does the TyTN II and Touch Dual. Internally, it has 128MB of RAM and 256MB ROM. Take note that more than half the ROM is used, out of the box, with just a total of 117MB storage space and much less free on our review set. We found the device to be generally responsive even with many applications opened in the background.

There is an issue going on now with users claiming that HTC devices using the Qualcomm MSM7200 processor are underperforming when it comes to graphically intensive applications like video playback due to missing drivers. We have yet to verify this as we need to see a device with a slower processor outperforming the Cruise before any conclusion can be made. We'll update this area of the Cruise's performance as we receive more information.

Battery life was exceptional with almost three days' use on a single charge. These included normal phone use and about an hour of Wi-Fi surfing. The rated talktime for the Cruise is 4 hours on UMTS and 7 hours on GSM.

Conclusion

You can almost call the Touch Cruise a TyTN II without the keypad. They have nearly similar features and that makes it great for those who want a smaller device and can do without a QWERTY keypad. It makes a great alternative to the HTC P3600i and O2 Xda Atom Life because of its size and similar set of features. On the flipside, those who value video playback as an important feature may want to wait for the response from HTC regarding the supposed driver issues.

HTC is providing a pretty good bundle with the Touch Cruise, including a car kit (holder and charger), a 1GB microSD card and a free map for GPS navigation. That will set you back S$1,198 at retail and is available from early February.