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HTC Touch Pro Review

Author Jonathan Bray
Published 26th Aug 2008
Manufacturer HTC
Supplier SuperGPS.co.uk
Price £499 inc VAT SIM Free. From Free on Contract
Latest Price Click here
Design Score 8 for Design
Features Score 10 for Features
Performance Score 8 for Performance
Value Score 7 for Value
Overall Score 8 for Overall
HTC Touch Pro
award recommended

Video Review click here
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When HTC's Touch Diamond launched just before the iPhone 3G, it felt rushed and was, frankly, more than a little disappointing. I can't help feeling that HTC should have played the waiting game. Because although problems with the original Touch's sluggish performance have now been fixed by a ROM update, it cannot but have tainted the firm's reputation. The Touch Pro, HTC's follow up to the excellent TyTN II, however, may well go some way to restoring its former position.


It's a similar phone to the Diamond in many ways. It has precisely the same dimensions face on - 51 x 102mm (W x H) - and it's equipped with HTC's TouchFlo 3D software to shield you against the worst of Windows' Mobile's stylus-focused ugliness. It has the same layout of buttons just below the screen, with home and back keys, supplemented by start and end call keys, plus a touch-sensitive five-way directional button. It has Opera Mobile 9.5 for browsing the web, and a beautifully crisp 2.8in 480 x 640 screen to take advantage of it, just as the Diamond has.

Look inside and you'll find more similarities: both phones share the same processor - a Qualcomm 528MHz unit, both phones have HSDPA of up to 7.2Mbps, GPRS, EDGE, quad-band GSM, GPS, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, an FM radio tuner, 3.2-megapixel camera (plus a VGA video phone camera) and WiFi. It has an accelerometer that flips the screen around automatically from landscape to portrait, too, though this doesn't work in all applications.


And again, as with the Diamond, underneath the fancy pants graphics of TouchFlo 3D, the Touch Pro runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional. It includes Office Mobile, a PDF viewer and a number of other useful apps, including an RSS feed reader, an MP3 editor, a ZIP utility and business card recognition software. It has the same YouTube viewer built-in so you can search for and watch video clips from the handset. Videos play back surprisingly smoothly, too.

All this works just as well as it did in the Diamond. The GPS picks up satellites quickly and is accurate. Browsing the web on it is a joy. Call quality is good, though the speakerphone does sound a touch thin and reedy.

 

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Latest 4 of 16 Comments

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comment Zeigler said on 2nd September 2008

Any word on which networks will carry this phone, and when? I've not come across anything concrete, and one article even stated that the Pro will be available to business use... more

comment Manni said on 5th September 2008

@John Griffin: I guess if you're all the time in the US you should buy the US version, otherwise Edge while in the US should be enough for the occasional trip? The good people... more

comment stratoscar said on 20th October 2008

Jonathan I think you have missed the point here, Iphone its gre8 design easy to use phone but its far behind as far as features and technology is concerned. I hope producers will n... more

comment Tim Sparling said on 10th March 2009

Have had this device given to me at work. We have been after push email/calendar for a while and to this end the touch pro is fantastic. Easy to setup and does'nt miss a beat ... more

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