HTC Touch 3G - HTC Touch 3G

Unfortunately, the phone's camera isn't all that great. Despite having a respectable 3.2-megapixel resolution, the pictures it takes don't exactly have stunning amounts of detail and colours tend to look a little bit washed out. Under low light conditions it really struggles to produce acceptable results and things aren't helped by the fact that it lacks a flash. It's not the worst camera we've used on a phone, but it's certainly far from being the best.


There are a few other niggles too. There's no accelerometer, so you can't just tilt the phone to automatically switch it from portrait to landscape view when visiting web pages or viewing photos. And unlike the Touch HD, HTC hasn't kitted it out with a standard headphone adaptor. Instead, the supplied headphones connect to the miniUSB port at the bottom of the phone which is also used to sync and charge the handset. At least the supplied headphones have pretty decent sound quality and also include hands-free functionality and a volume control.


The call quality from the handset was good, but by no means perfect. The speaker sounds a little bit tinny at times which can make listening to calls in a noisy environment rather difficult - a packed pub for example. That said, it did have good reception and the battery life isn't bad either. We got around two days out of it with medium usage of features like the GPS receiver, HSDPA web browsing and general phone calls.

Verdict

There's a lot to like about the Touch 3G, as despite being small and slim, it still manages to pack in a decent range of features. It feels pretty speedy, too, and the battery life is decent. However, because of the lack of full integration between TouchFlo and Windows Mobile, coupled with the small screen, it's still a long way from providing the silky smooth user experience of the iPhone; the handset that is probably its nearest competitor in terms of price.