HTC Touch Dual is an elegant, very useful black mobile phone that drawn attention on every business meeting we attended. We tested it for you.
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We spent the last few days in a fine company of HTC Touch Dual, a smart phone based on Windows Mobile 6 Professional operating system that we got for a review. We had it on a test for just four days and we felt a bit unhappy, but there is a good side to it, too. Being forced to make a relatively quick, we concentrated on a real-life tests that discovered how intuitive and easy to use a device is, a thing that we consider very important. Having not much experience with Windows Mobile cell phones, we compared HTC with faithful, Symbian-based Sony Ericsson P1 for which we that it is the best mobile phone we ever had.
As is usual when we write about electronic devices, let us first said something about technical specifications. HTC Touch Dual has the front panel that slides up, showing the standard keyboard with 12 keys (plus four function keys), fast processor Qualcomm MSM 7200 that beats at 400MHz, two megapixel camera, 128MB of memory, a 2.6-inch colour touch-sensitive screen. HTC Touch Dual is a Tri-band device with GSM/GPRS/EDGE, HSDPA and UMTS, Bluetooth 2.0, and HTC ExtUSB (that is 11-pin mini-USB and audio jack in one). The mobile phone weights 120 g with 1,120 mAH battery, its dimensions are 107 mm x 55 mm x 15.8 mm (for our friends across the Atlantic: 4.2 x 2.2 x 0.6 inches, and 4.2 oz). The HTC is relatively well balanced although we feel that too much weight is located around the upper part of the phone. But, take that as our preference, not a scientific fact.
The specifications tells us that battery will last up to 180 hours for GSM. We didn't look at our watch but after four days we forgot where we put the charger. And we like such devices.
That's briefly about hardware. Talking about software, there are few interesting things. The first thing that should be mentioned it the TouchFLO interface. If you ever used a graphic tablet you know what I'm talking about, and if not, the explanation is simple: You use TouchFLO to use your device with finger gestures. You can scroll through menus, browse through e-mails and messages, view pictures with a slide of a finger. In one word: When you try TouchFLO and gestures, you'll wonder why your old phone don't have that.
As it is the case with Windows Mobile device, you can install any software you want, you just make sure that there is enough memory. If there's not enough, you can expand it via microSD memory card. Since HTC Touch Dual is a combination of mobile phone and PDA, and "Positions and Promotion" is the website for managers, we didn't look at multimedia capabilities, there are better phones for that, we rather used if as a productivity tool.
If you have Windows Mobile, you have mobile versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer, Word, Excel and PowerPoint, and when you add a PDF Reader you get small, but very useful mobile working station. Talking about productivity, we must say that applications worked reasonably fast, while the menus should open a bit faster. If we can work on a Word document with no problems, why must we wait for a menu to open? The other thing that bothers a little is that you need to press screen hard. Should I press my P1 that hard the stylus would go through it. But that is just our opinion, maybe we are too gentle by nature. One thing that should be noticed is lack of Wi-Fi connectivity. We think that every smart phone must have, so that is the only big minus for HTC Touch Dual.
We'll stop here and leave the rest for you to discover, from virtual keyboards to handwrite letter recognition to Live! Messenger to 3D touch cube interface. HTC Touch Dual is an elegant black device that drawn attention on every business meeting we attended. If you need a smart phone take it into serious consideration. ■