Remember the term "iPod killer"? That moniker was given to many MP3 players over the last few years whenever someone felt they had found a portable media player capable of unseating the iPod's dominance. Well, Apple never did get bested in that category, and as we move into an age where the mobile phone is fast replacing the MP3 player, Cupertino still has its bases covered with the iPhone. Needless to say, the focus is on finding an "iPhone killer" and it doesn't take a genius to see that the HTC Touch HD has been made to compete with Apple's.

Design

The first thing you'll notice about the Touch HD is its screen. This is absolutely massive at 3.8 inches, larger even than the iPhone's 3.5-inch display. Its resolution is also very high, at 800 x 480, similar to the Sony Ericsson Xperia X1's. Since the LCD's aspect ratio is almost identical to 16:9, most videos originally formatted for widescreen TVs will display well on the Touch HD. We found the screen very sharp and bright, good for watching videos and browsing the Internet using the Opera Mobile 9.5 browser.

Even with the large screen, the handset itself is not very large. At 115 x 62.8 x 12mm and 146g, it's almost the same size and just slightly heavier than the iPhone 3G. The Touch HD may not be the smallest of devices but it sure is compact enough not to be a bother to most users. It comes in only black and, unlike the Touch Diamond and Touch Pro, doesn't sport a prism motif on its back though it has a simple soft-touch finish there.

Physical buttons are limited to just the power button on the top and volume control on the left edge. Below the screen, there are four touch-sensitive keys--Call and Hangup on the extreme left and right, a Home key for bringing you back to the default screen and a Back button for getting out of sub-menus. These work pretty well and vibrate slightly when pressed to let you know you have successfully made contact with the buttons.

The most surprising omission of all is the directional pad (D-pad). HTC decided to do away with that altogether, so making any selection will require you to tap on the screen with your finger or a stylus. Now, this works for the iPhone because Apple made the operating system (OS) on that device, so everything works assuming there's no D-pad. Unfortunately, because the Touch HD is based on Windows Mobile (WM), leaving out a D-pad is simply not going to cut it. For example, even though HTC made its own applications suitable for finger tapping with large icons and text, there are parts of the OS where it goes back to the default WM interface, like in the Settings page. These are areas where using the D-pad to move between fields is easier because of small tabs and drop-down menus. Also, third-party applications, especially games, may require a D-pad for proper use, something we found out while playing a racing simulator and ending up having to tap on the screen with a stylus to navigate a car.

HTC itself also realizes that the lack of a D-pad can be crippling in some areas, especially for text input. On its custom onscreen keyboards, the software comes with four directional buttons for you to move the cursor in case you need to edit parts of your text. This takes up screen estate and we felt a real D-pad would have worked better, and such a modification to the text input method would have been unnecessary.

Aside from the single mini-USB connector usually found on HTC devices, the Touch HD comes with a 3.5mm audio jack on the top. This is good news for those who will use the handset as a media player as you no longer need to use an adapter to connect a regular pair of headphones.

Features

With high-end HTC PDA-phones, you never have to worry about connectivity options. True to its pedigree, you'll find a slew of wireless features including HSDPA, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and GPS for satellite navigation. For those who still get their music over the airwaves, the HD also comes with an FM tuner which can be used once you plug in the wired headphones which double as an antenna.

Built into the Touch HD is 512MB of flash memory for installing third-party applications. Aside from that, it doesn't have a large amount of built-in storage for music and videos. This, we feel, affects its attractiveness as a media player compared to the iPhone which comes in 8GB and 16GB variants. On the bright side, the HD has a microSD card slot which will support high-capacity media. 8GB cards are common, while 16GB cards are starting to pop up in some stores. To access the slot, you'll need to remove the battery cover but not the battery itself, so the card can be withdrawn without having to turn off the device.

One of the main draws of using a Touch series handset is the modified interface, the TouchFLO 3D. This was first introduced in the Touch Diamond and later the Touch Pro. Because the HD's screen is longer than the standard VGA (640 x 480) ones on those two, the Home screen looks a little different, too. In the Weather tab, for example, instead of just showing the day's report, a row of icons display the next few days' weather outlook. HTC has also added in a Stock tab where you can define a portfolio of stocks to monitor with data extracted from Yahoo Finance.

Another significant enhancement is that you can now modify the tabs in TouchFLO 3D. Those that you do not use can be hidden and their positions rearranged by the user. The minimum number you can have is three as the Home, Settings and Programs tabs are not removable.

A motion sensor is built into the Touch HD. This changes the orientation of the screen from portrait to landscape mode and back depending on the way you hold the device. It doesn't work for all applications, only selected ones like the browser. It didn't even work in Google Maps, which is one of the programs where a landscape orientation would have been ideal.

As usual, HTC has included its own text input methods. These are the full QWERTY, compact QWERTY (two letters per key) and Phone keypad onscreen keyboards. We found the Phone keypad the most useful of the lot as it allows one-handed use. The default Windows Mobile text input methods are also available for use.

Being a Windows Mobile device, it can do whatever the OS is meant to, including built-in support for pushmail, Office documents and instant messaging using MSN. This also means there are thousands of third-party applications out there which can be installed. The developer support for Windows Mobile is strong, but admittedly, someone new to the platform can easily be overwhelmed by its complexity. The App Store on the iPhone is a much more elegant solution for downloading and using new programs, but this is something that Microsoft, not HTC, needs to sort out.

The camera on the Touch HD is a 5-megapixel one with autofocus but no LED for lighting up dark subjects. The camera interface allows you to pick a focus point by tapping on the preview image on the screen. From there, you can snap the picture by pressing the onscreen shutter button. Images appeared sharp with fairly accurate colors. A second VGA camera is found on the front for making video calls.

Performance

There's 288MB of RAM in the Touch HD, just like on the Touch Pro before it. With no applications running in the background, the HD has about 107MB free. Programs ran smoothly and we had no big issues with slowdowns in our tests.

Battery life isn't great, under two days of use on a single charge. Most users will probably have to charge their HD daily. Sound quality is good, though we did find the speakerphone's volume a little soft, so it's probably best to use this in a quiet place.

Final Thoughts

This handheld doesn't come cheap at S$1,388. Without heavy subsidies from operators, most will probably find it too expensive. Someone who likes the simplicity of Apple's OS probably won't find the HD a viable alternative. But if you are already a Windows Mobile user or don't mind the learning curve of Microsoft's mobile platform, the Touch HD might just win you over with its strong set of multimedia features.