HTC Touch Cell Phone Review - Audio Quality
Perhaps the most important feature of any phone is the quality of the audio you send and receive. If no one can understand what you're saying, or you can't understand what others are saying, it doesn't matter what other features the phone might have. To test audio quality of cell phones we use the same professional equipment and software many handset makers use. To simulate the human head and ear we use a HATS (Head and Torso Simulator), and to analyze the audio we use Listen Inc.'s
SoundCheck software. For more information on how we test see
this article.
Sound Receive Frequency Response (7.44)
This test measures the quality of sound received by the HTC Touch, so this is how others on the call will sound to you. The chart above indicates the performance of the Touch in a blue line, with the limits against which we test in red. You can see the Touch has a couple of issues, mostly at the higher frequency range, where it first rises up outside our limits, then quickly falls off. This means those with higher voices may sound alternately exaggerated and clipped. It shouldn't cause too much trouble, however, as the problems are isolated in a narrow band of frequencies.
Sound Send Frequency Response (6.56)
This test measures the quality of sound you send to others, so this is how you will sound to those on the other end of the call. Once again, the Touch's performance is marked in blue in the chart above, with the limits against which we test in red. The Touch did not perform particularly well in this test. You can see in the chart that it is exaggerated across almost all frequencies and falls off very quickly at higher frequency ranges. This means you may get people sounding too loud, and then when their voice gets higher they'll be clipped. As you can see from the table below, the Touch scored at the lower end of our comparison phones.
Handset Side Tone (7.64)
Side tone is the small amount of your own voice that a phone pipes back into your ear so you can hear yourself. The HTC Touch's side tone measured -20.36 decibels, which is a little lower than the -18 decibel measurement that we look for. This means your voice might sound a little low, leading you to speak louder than you'd like, but only by a small amount. It's nowhere near as bad as the Helio Ocean or the iPhone, as you can see below.
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