Updated 11 Feb, 2012, 4:06 pm IST

REVIEWS / SMARTPHONES / HTC INDIA PVT. LTD.

HTC Touch 2 Mobile Phone

06 Nov, 2009, 11:58 am IST | Shayne Rana | Smartphones

HTC’s Touch enjoyed quite a flight of fancy for a long time. It was a popular handset in its day, so much so that HTC designed a slew handsets in its like. The latest to come our way is simply called the Touch 2, which can easily be deemed as a rather direct descendant of the original. or not, depends on your perspective. It’s the first handset in India that comes with the new Windows 6.5 Professional mobile OS. Take a quick look at the OS here and read on for my opinion on the Touch 2.

Form Factor
I like the look and feel of the HTC Touch 2. It has a very comfortable and simplistic form. The chrome rim around the brown handset gives it a touch of class. However, even though it looks good the design does have a few flaws. Those include the 2.8-inch resistive touchscreen display not being scratch resistant and the microSD card slot, although clearly marked and visible is only accessible by removing the rear panel. If the handset is dropped it’s going to wind up separating into three pieces as the battery and rear panel will pop open. Unfortunately, I found this out the hard way.

The touch zoom slider under the display is quite handy while web browsing. The buttons below that make accessing the menus a little easier as well. A couple of other plus points for the design are the inclusion of a 3.5mm handsfree port and the mini (although it may not seem like it) USB port located at the top and bottom respectively. I believe they should have included a camera shutter release on one side and I’ll explain why in a bit.

Features and Performance
Interface
First off the 240 x 320 pixel resolution display is clear but should have been a little higher resolution to really make the colors on the screen pop. That said, HTC’s TouchFLO UI can be loaded onto the Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional OS. This version of TouchFLO doesn’t bring anything new to the table in terms of features but it’s a lot more colorful as compared to the earlier. It’s easy to use and extremely finger friendly. The Touch equipped with a Qualcomm MSM7225 528 MHz processor gets the job done quite easily.

Windows Mobile 6.5 goes quite well with the TouchFLO UI element as the icons and colors in this new avatar blend very well together. The most annoying aspect is the fact that you’ll still need the stylus for quite a lot of the functions underlying the otherwise finger friendly system. The lack of an accelerometer makes quite a difference especially when you take into the account the price tag on this baby. Flick control is available for viewing images but you’ll have to manually adjust the orientation if it’s a landscape shot in the Windows Image Viewer. The keypad is quite average and easy to use if you have slim fingers. Of course it has no landscape mode so that's an issue as well.

I also found that the system didn’t allow me to make multiple selections for moving data from one place to another. There’s a ‘Select All’ option of course but that’s not always usable.

TouchFLO works out quite well but if you’re looking at a totally touch handset... this ain’t it.

Media
The Touch 2’s media capabilities work quite well. HTC has included an Audio Booster application with EQ presets and 10 band customizable EQ. It adds a lot to the overall tone of the handset’s audio. The bundled handsfree is comfortable enough to use but for a truly enjoyable audio experience, I’d suggest getting a better set of earphones. The mobile version of Windows Media Player is also available in addition to the TouchFLO player.

Tags: Windows Mobile 6.5 , Touchscreen , Windows Mobile , HTC Touch

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