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HTC Touch Cell Phone Review

Alfredo Padilla Published on November 07, 2007 Comment on this

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Intro Making/Receiving Calls Software Other Features

Tour & Design Messaging Battery Life Value & Comparisons

Audio Quality Organizer Connectivity Conclusion

Imaging Multimedia Hardware Ratings & Specs

The HTC Touch is a touch screen Windows Mobile Professional device that's positioned to compete with the iPhone. We found the TouchFLO interface, which is designed to improve the experience of using the touch screen, succeeds strongly in some areas (like the new album software) but fails in other areas, like text entry. The Touch is definitely a small and attractive device, but its reliance on the touch screen, which just isn't up to the standard set by the iPhone, is its Achilles heel. The Touch has some solid multimedia support for video and music playback, but we were annoyed that we had to use Sprint's software to purchase and listen to music from its store, and we were not impressed with the 2-megapixel camera. On the organizer and messaging front, Windows Mobile Professional does its typical solid job, but heavy e-mail or SMS users will find the on-screen text entry systems to be frustrating. We also weren't happy with the Touch's battery performance, which was subpar across the board. The Touch is definitely a cool device, but we just don't think TouchFlo is ready to be the main interface for most users. This is probably why the successor to the Touch adds a slide-out keypad, and we wish Sprint had picked up that version.

Sprint is currently the exclusive carrier for the Touch in the U.S., although you can purchase unlocked GSM versions that work on T-Mobile and AT&T. Sprint is selling the Touch for $249.99 with a two-year contract or $499.99 without.

Tour & Design - The Touch is a small, sleek, and sexy device that feels well put together, although you should protect that large screen as soon as you can.

Audio Quality - The Touch was a middling performer in our audio tests. Minor issues may annoy some, but there's nothing glaringly wrong.

Imaging - The Touch's 2-megapixel camera did not impress us, but we loved HTC's new iPhone-esque album software.

Making/Receiving Calls - The Touch provides solid calling features, but we found the on-screen keypad a little annoying.

Messaging - The Touch has a very good e-mail client, but we wonder why MMS was left off the device.

Organizer - As we've come to expect from Windows Mobile devices, the Touch has powerful organizational software and can easily fill the role of a PDA.

Multimedia - The Touch does a solid job of music and video playback, but we were annoyed that you have to use a whole different piece of software to buy and listen to Sprint Music Store content.

Software - Windows Mobile Professional is a solid operating system, while HTC's TouchFLO enhancement ranged from helpful to inconsistent.

Battery Life - There's no other way to say it. The HTC Touch has pretty bad battery life.

Connectivity - We like EVDO data and the solid Bluetooth support, but are missing Wi-Fi.

Hardware - The Touch requires you do almost everything via the touch screen, and this can be very annoying at times, especially for text entry.

Other Features - The Touch can be used as a modem for your laptop, but lacks GPS functionality.

Value & Comparisons - At $249.99 with a two-year contract and twice that without, the Touch is priced a little too high for our taste.

[page title="Tour & Design"]

Front
From the front the Touch is dominated by a 2.8 QVGA touch screen. As the device's name indicated, the touch screen is supposed to be the primary form of interaction with the device, thus there are a limited number of buttons. In contrast to the HTC Mogul, which has a plethora of buttons to control the interface, the Touch only has a simple D-Pad flanked by send and end buttons sitting below the screen. Above the screen is the speaker for the phone with a small LED light built in.

Left
On the left side of the HTC Touch is a slider switch near the top to control volume. Near the bottom you see a lanyard loop.

Top
The top of the HTC Touch houses the power/standby button on the right, and on the left you can see the top of the stylus.

Bottom
The bottom of the Touch houses a Mini USB port for data and power connections. You also see the lanyard loop again on the left, as well as a small pinhole for the microphone and another that resets the device when you insert the tip of the stylus into it.

Right
The right side of the Touch houses a button near the bottom that launches voice control. Near the top of the left side you again see the top of the stylus.

Back
The back of the Touch has some logos, the housing for the 2-megapixel camera, and a loud speaker.

Battery Out
The back of the touch comes off in its entirety, just like the HTC Mogul or the AT&T Tilt. When you remove the back you reveal an 1100 mAh battery. Since Sprint's version of the Touch is a CDMA handset, there's no slot for a SIM card. What is curious is the placement of the Micro SD card slot. To get at it you first need to remove the back and then pry open a long panel that runs along the right side of the phone. This seems ridiculously annoying, and reminds us of the similar mess we had to deal with to get at the Centro's Micro SD slot. Look for more on that in the hardware section.

In the Box (7.5)
The Touch ships with a CD that includes Microsoft's ActiveSync synchronizations software and a trial version of Outlook 2007. There is also a wall charger, USB cable, stereo headset and 512 MB MicroSD card. For some reason the Touch also ships with two separate splitters for your Mini USB port, an extra stylus, screen protector, and a small pouch for the phone. All in all a very complete set of accessories.

Handling (8.0)
The Touch is a small and thin device that fits comfortably in the palm of your hand. At only four ounces it won't be difficult to hold up to your ear for long phone calls, and its rounded edges and soft touch finish on the back makes it easy to grip. The only issue is that it may be a little wide for some.

Portability (8.5)
The Touch measures 3.98 x 2.34 x 0.54 inches. This is about as wide as an iPhone and slightly thicker, but also much shorter. Although it's not as thin as a Razr, it should fit comfortably into most pants pockets or bags, and it's light weight means it won't weigh you down.

Aesthetics (6.5)
The Touch is styled primarily in black with a silver stripe running along the side of the device. Professional good looks might be the best way to describe the Touch, but those looking for a flashy handset might want to look elsewhere.

Durability (7.0)
The Touch feels like a fairly solid device, although we did detect some creaks we believe are primarily caused by the back piece that comes off to reveal the battery. There are no moving parts to worry about, but we are concerned about the large touch screen. We recommend you slap a screen protector on that as soon as you can. Overall, the Touch is up to HTC's usually good standards for durability, and it should deal well with everyday use.

[page title="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.

Cell Phone	HTC Touch	Helio Ocean (on Helio)	BlackBerry Curve 8320 (on T-Mobile)
Score	7.44	7.88	8.30
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Cell Phone	HTC Mogul (on Sprint)	Palm Centro (on Sprint)	Apple iPhone (on AT&T)
Score	7.33	6.24	6.78
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

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.

Cell Phone	HTC Touch	Helio Ocean (on Helio)	BlackBerry Curve 8320 (on T-Mobile)
Score	6.56	6.45	7.51
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Cell Phone	HTC Mogul (on Sprint)	Palm Centro (on Sprint)	Apple iPhone (on Sprint)
Score	7.68	7.82	7.58
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

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.

Cell Phone	Sidetone Measurement	Score
HTC Touch	20.36	7.64
Helio Ocean	22.95	5.50
BlackBerry Curve 8320	17.88	9.88
HTC Mogul	17.12	9.12
Palm Centro	17.86	9.86
Apple iPhone	8.8	0.80

[page title="Imaging"]

Resolution (3.56)
To test the resolution of the HTC Touch's camera we took a series of photos of an industry standard resolution chart under precisely controlled lighting conditions. We ran these photos through the Imatest software, which produces a score called line widths per pixel height (lw/ph), a measure of how many alternating black and white lines the camera can capture and reproduce before they begin blurring together.
The HTC Touch scored 895 lw/ph horizontal and 1082 lw/ph vertical. This is about average for a 2-megapixel camera, and falls right about in the middle of the range set by our comparison phones. The HTC Touch won't take the best resolution photos, but it also won't take the worst.

Cell Phone	HTC Touch	Helio Ocean	BlackBerry Curve 8320
Score	3.56	2.18	5.25
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	895 / 1082	701 / 476.6	1087 / 933
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	HTC Mogul	Palm Centro	Apple iPhone
Score	3.57	1.41	4.18
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	913.9 / 864.1	581 / 596	970 / 879
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Color (2.23)
To test the quality of color captured by the Touch's camera we took photos of an industry standard GretagMacbeth color chart. This chart displays 24 different colors, and the captured photos are compared to the original colors by the Imatest software.
Above is the chart we take photos of after it has been processed by Imatest. The original color is in the small rectangle, while the Touch's captured color is in the outer square. Imbetween is the captured color adjusted for luminance. Imatest also produces the chart below. This chart shows you the ideal color with a square and the captured color with a circle. The longer the line between the two, the more inaccurate the captured colors.
You can see that the Touch had some significant trouble with color fidelity, as there is error across colors. It seems these issues are caused by some major problems with white balance; the camera seems to be misjudging the light that it detects. This is the sort of thing that turns people's faces green or makes indoor photos look orangey; the camera fails to adjust for the color of the light source.  We saw the same thing on the Mogul, also produced by HTC (although the Mogul did worse on this test than the Touch). This means if you want to capture decent photos with the Touch you may end up having to adjust white balance using your photo editing software.

Cell Phone	HTC Touch	Helio Ocean	BlackBerry Curve 8320
Score	2.23	6.66	4.92
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	HTC Mogul	Palm Centro	Apple iPhone
Score	1.82	8.08	5.22
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Noise (1.14)
To see how much noise is produced by the Touch's camera we took photos of the GretagMacbeth color chart at four different lighting levels. We then used Imatest to calculate how much noise is produced at each level. For our final score we looked at overall noise at each lighting level and consistency across lighting levels. The HTC Touch produced fairly low noise at the three highest lighting levels, but this shot up quite a bit in low light situations. Overall, its score is fairly middling, as you can see below. You'll also note that none of our phones put up a particularly good score; cell phone cameras produce noisier images than dedicated digital cameras.

Cell Phone	Score
HTC Touch	1.14
Helio Ocean	1.14
BlackBerry Curve 8320	1.41
HTC Mogul	1.45
Palm Centro	0.91
Apple iPhone	1.20

Live Preview (7.0)
The HTC Touch's live preview does a fairly good job. The entire screen is used, giving you a nice big viewfinder, and we saw very little pixellation or noise in the preview. Colors seemed accurate and refresh rate was good, allowing you to pan without causing your preview to go fuzzy. The live preview was also an accurate predictor of the final photo captured. Overall, we were quite happy with the Touch's live preview.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (7.41)
This test measures how long it will take you to whip out your phone and take a quick photo. We time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have a captured photo. We repeat this test until we get a consistent result. The HTC Touch took 2.7 seconds to capture a photo when starting from the home screen, which is decent. Of course, 2.7 seconds is still a long time, and any cell phone camera is generally slower than a dedicated point and shoot camera.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
HTC Touch	2.7	7.41
Helio Ocean	4.1	4.88
BlackBerry Curve 8320	2.9	6.90
HTC Mogul	3.3	6.06
Palm Centro	3.8	5.26
Apple iPhone	2.43	8.23

Shot to Shot Time (5.0)
Shot to shot time is a measure of how quickly you can capture a series of photos. When possible we try to use a camera's Burst mode, which the HTC Touch does have, although we should note that photos captured with Burst mode are at a much lower resolution (640 x 480) than photos captured normally. With the Touch's Burst mode we were able to capture five photos in three seconds, which works out to 1.67 frames per second (fps). This is pretty good, scoring better than most of our comparison phones. The Burst mode, and a similar Sport mode, allow you to take quick series of photos so you can capture action shots better, albeit at a much lower resolution.

Cell Phone	FPS	Score
HTC Touch	1.67	5.00
Helio Ocean	1.25	3.75
BlackBerry Curve 8320	0.35	1.05
HTC Mogul	1.90	5.70
Palm Centro	0.28	0.84
Apple iPhone	0.40	1.20

Shutter to Shot Time (7.69)
Shutter to shot time is a measure of how long it takes the camera to actually capture a photo once you've pressed the shutter button. We do this test repeatedly until we get a consistent result. The HTC Touch took 0.26 seconds from shutter to shot. This is a pretty good time; only the HTC Mogul did better on this test. The Touch is helped by the fact that it has a fixed focus camera, so you don't have to wait for the lens to focus.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
HTC Touch	0.26	7.69
Helio Ocean	0.60	3.33
BlackBerry Curve 8320	0.43	4.65
HTC Mogul	0.21	9.52
Palm Centro	0.88	2.27
Apple iPhone	0.40	5.00

Interface (7.5)


The interface of the HTC Touch is somewhat similar to what we've seen from other HTC Windows Mobile Professional devices, but with a few tweaks. The entire screen is used as a viewfinder. Tapping on the screen brings up an unobtrusive overlay that shows you how many photos you can still take, the current zoom level, and Camera mode. At the bottom is an arrow that brings up a half-screen menu to adjust common items like white balance, while at the bottom left is a button that brings up more advanced settings. Overall, we found the interface to be clean and easy to use. We've been fans of HTC's camera interface in the past, and we only think they've improved with the Touch.

Photo Album Software Internal (8.0)
The Touch is different from most Windows Mobile Professional devices in that it has two separate photo album programs. The first is the standard Windows Mobile album software, which is fairly decent. It lays out photos in a thumbnail grid, allows you to create simple slide shows, and has good editing functions. HTC has added a new piece of album software as part of its TouchFLO interface, however, and although it may not be more advanced than the standard album software, it certainly makes up for it by being pretty.
HTC's new album software provides an iPhone-esque experience on the Touch. Photo are again laid out in a grid, but this time in a landscape orientation that takes up the whole screen. There are two soft buttons at the bottom of the screen; one launches a slide show while the other brings up a menu. The selected photo is "raised" above the surrounding photos to make it stand out more.
When you open a photo it takes up the whole screen. You can move to the next or previous photo using left and right on the d-pad, or you can simply swipe your finger across the photo. You can bring up a menu of options by tapping on the photo, but you can also access some common functions using finger gestures.
Circling an item in the photo in a clock-wise direction zooms in on that part of the photo. Drawing a circle counter-clockwise zooms back out. Drawing a L shape rotates the photo, and you can reverse the L to rotate in the other direction. You can also double tap the screen to fit the photo into the real estate or press and hold to enter a Pan mode so you can move the photo around. Although some may argue that these features are a little gimmicky, we feel it shows real innovation and applaud HTC for improving what was already a strong point on Windows Mobile devices, making it one of the best photo album programs we've seen on any phone.

Manual Control (0.0)
The HTC Touch lacks any manual controls.

Zoom (0.0)
The HTC Touch has a 2x digital zoom, however this zoom isn't available at the highest resolution setting. Given that all digital zoom does is crop and enlarge what you're seeing, you'd want to use it on the largest setting, and the fact you can't removes 99 percent of its utility. As such we are not awarding any points for it.

Focus (0.0)
The HTC Touch's camera uses a fixed focus lens, which means what you see is what you get. We're starting to see some higher-end phones, like the HTC Tilt, come out with autofocus lenses that produce better photos. We don't award points for fixed focus lenses.

Flash (0.0)
The HTC Touch does not have a flash.

Metering (6.0)
HTC has become one of the first phone manufacturers to put metering controls on its phone cameras, and they are available on the Touch. Metering allows you to control from which point or points light in the scene is judged. The Touch offers you a choice between center area and averaged metering, which is rare on cell phone cameras. Brightness controls, which are more common, are also available on the Touch.

White Balance (2.0)
The Touch offers presets for white balance, including Incandescent and Tungsten. There is no support for more advanced white balance options like Evaluative white balance mode.

Image Handling (6.0)
As we discussed in the album section, there are two programs on the Touch that allow you to do some image manipulation. HTC's new album software only provides very basic image handling options, including the ability to rotate photos. In contrast, the standard Windows Mobile Professional album software allows you to do some more advanced editing, like crop a photo and auto correct color. These features are good for a cell phone, although not as good as the plethora of advanced editing functions we see on Symbian Series 60 devices like the Nokia N95.

Video

Overall Video Score (2.0)
The videos captured by the HTC Touch are really only good for sending via MMS. At only 176 x 144 resolution, they look terrible at even their standard size on a computer monitor, so forget about putting them into full screen or watching them on a television. If you're looking for a phone with good video capture, this isn't it.

Video Resolution (4.51)
To test the resolution of videos produced by the HTC Touch we took video of the same industry standard resolution chart we use for stills testing. We then ran frames from that video through Imatest, which again produced a line widths per pixel height (lw/ph) score. This score is a measure of how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together. The HTC Touch's video scored about average in this test at 204 lw/ph horizontal and 221 lw/ph vertical. This falls in about the middle of the range of our comparison phones. We were actually impressed at how well the HTC Touch did in this test considering the resolution; the videos are small, but they have a decent level of detail.

Cell Phone	lw/ph horizontal/vertical	Score
HTC Touch	204 / 221	4.51
Helio Ocean	283.2 / 160.1	4.53
BlackBerry Curve 8320	n/a - no video recording	0.00
HTC Mogul	230.5 / 140.9	3.04
Palm Centro	249 / 274	6.82
Apple iPhone	n/a - no video recording	0.00

Video Compression (3.0)
The HTC Touch captures video in a variant of MPEG-4 using a 3GP container. This might not mean a lot to you, but it helps us address a potential issue. Although the files produced have a .mp4 extension, some video players may have trouble with them unless you change the extension to 0.3gp. You can also create vanilla 3GP video files and H263 encoded ones, but these are just variants of 3GP.

Interface (7.0)


The video camera interface is the same you find in the stills camera, except for the black bars on the left and right since the whole screen isn't used for the viewfinder and there are less functions available. We still thought that it was clean and easy to use.

Manual Control (0.0)
The HTC Touch doesn't have any manual controls for video capture.

Zoom (1.0)
The HTC Touch offers a 2x digital zoom when recording video. Of course, all this does is crop and enlarge your video, reducing the quality of the video so much it's almost unwatchable.

Editing (0.0)
There are no video editing functions on the HTC Touch.

Modes (4.0)
The HTC Touch offers the same metering options you see on the stills camera, allowing you to control from which point or points in the scene light is judged. Manual brightness controls are also available, as are some white balance presets.

[page title="Making/Receiving Calls"]

Dialing Speed (2.87)
To see how easy it is to dial a number on the HTC Touch we timed how long it took to go from the home screen unlocked until we dialed each of five different test numbers. We took the average time for our score. The Touch took an average of 6.98 seconds to dial a number. This is a pretty poor time, but is typical of what we've seen from Windows Mobile devices that use touch screens to dial numbers. The HTC Mogul also put up a pretty poor time in this test. The iPhone, however, which is probably the phone the Touch is most compared to, did significantly better on this test despite also using a touch screen, which is a testament to how well Apple has implemented its touch screen technology.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
HTC Touch	6.98	2.87
Helio Ocean	3.10	6.45
BlackBerry Curve 8320	3.16	6.33
HTC Mogul	6.16	3.25
Palm Centro	3.62	5.52
Apple iPhone	3.96	5.05

Talk and End Buttons (7.0)
The talk and end buttons on the Touch are small rectangular buttons located to the left and right of the d-pad. Since the Touch lacks many buttons, its send and end buttons are adequately spaced away from other controls. This means that despite their relatively small size you won't be making any mistakes when going for them. They are also easy to find by feel, as they are raised above the surrounding plastic and provide decent travel and tactile feedback.

Call Management (7.0)
The call history features on the Touch are no different than any Windows Mobile device. You get a chronological list of phone calls that show the number called and the time of the call. When you activate an item you are taken to a screen with details like duration of the call. You can filter the call history by incoming, outgoing, or missed calls. There are no counters for total calls made or data sent/received.

During a call you get a different interface than the standard Windows Mobile phone, but only cosmetically. The left soft key opens the keypad while the right soft key opens a menu where you can access functions like creating a note, speed dial, and mute. On screen are six large buttons that mostly replicate what you get in the menu – speaker, mute, note, and contacts, as well as call and end buttons, which simply replicate the functions of the real buttons that fulfill those functions. As a multi-tasking operating system, Windows Mobile on the Touch also allows you to access just about any other program you need, although anything that requires a data connection won't work during a call.

Startup to Call (1.42)
We do this test to see how long it will take to start the Touch and make a call if you need to in an emergency. We used the same five phone numbers we used in our dialing speed test, and again took the average time for our score. The Touch took 70.24 seconds to complete this process. As you can see below, this is a very poor score, even for a smart phone. The HTC Mogul, which also runs Windows Mobile Professional, took about 15 seconds less than the Touch. Point is, don't expect to whip this phone out and make a call quickly if you've turned it off.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
HTC Touch	70.24	1.42
Helio Ocean	9.50	10.53
BlackBerry Curve 8320	7.12	14.04
HTC Mogul	55.00	1.82
Palm Centro	42.66	2.34
Apple iPhone	26.12	3.83

Ring Volume (8.48)
To measure the volume of the ringer on the HTC Touch we turned the phone's volume to maximum. We then used a sound pressure meter to see how loud each of the phone's ring tones got. The Touch's ring tones got as loud as 84.8 decibels in our test. As you can see below this is right about the same as our comparison phones, each of which are within a decibel or two of the Touch's performance. This is pretty standard, as most phones are around 85 decibels in this test.

Cell Phone	Volume (decibels)	Score
HTC Touch	84.8	8.48
Helio Ocean	85.4	8.54
BlackBerry Curve 8320	85.6	8.56
HTC Mogul	85.7	8.57
Palm Centro	85.5	8.55
Apple iPhone	84.9	8.49

Ringtone Customizability (8.0)
Like other Windows Mobile phones we've reviewed, the HTC Touch provides you with excellent customization options for your ring tones, allowing you to drop any MP3, AAC, or WMA file into the ring tones folder to use for incoming calls. You can also use recordings you make using the voice recorder as a ring tone. What you can't do is create your own ring tone from a song on the device, as Sprint's version of the Touch lacks HTC's new music manager that supports this functionality.

Non-Audio Alerts (12.0)
As with other Windows Mobile devices, the Mogul gives you a notification on screen when a call comes in, with the option to dismiss or accept the call. The vibrate alert on the Touch was pretty decent – we were easily able to feel it in a pants pocket, and it might be sufficient in a jacket pocket, but if it's sitting in your bag you may miss it.

[page title="Messaging"]

Supported E-mail Services (8.0)
From an e-mail perspective, the HTC Touch is a fairly typical Windows Mobile device. It supports both POP3 and IMAP4 accounts and supports easy setup of popular e-mail services like Gmail, Yahoo!, and AOL. Windows Mobile devices are also some of the only cell phones that natively support Hotmail accounts, which is a plus for anyone that uses that service. We were quite pleased with the range of supported e-mail services on the HTC Touch.

Push E-mail (3.0)
As a Windows Mobile device, the HTC Touch natively supports push e-mail in conjunction with an Exchange Server. This will be a major boon for those working in corporate environments that have access to an Exchange Server. Support for other push e-mail services like BlackBerry or Good are not available on the device as shipped, but you should be able to download and install clients for these services if you need them.

Multiple E-mail Accounts (10.0)
The HTC Touch supports up to six different e-mail accounts. You should also note that you can only have one account that synchronizes with an Exchange server at a time.

HTML and Attachments (12.0)
One of the significant upgrades that came with Windows Mobile 6, which the Touch runs, is the ability to view properly formatted HTML e-mails, instead of the garble of text you got on older Windows Mobile devices and other smart phones. Windows Mobile also provides you with excellent support for attachments, with Word, Excel and PowerPoint files supported. ZIP and PDF files are also supported on the Touch via third-party software that comes pre-installed. We're very happy with the HTML and attachment support on the Touch; it should allow a business user to see document on the road and offer feedback without having to lug a laptop with them.

E-mail Customizations (2.5)
There haven't been any major changes to the e-mail customization options on the HTC Touch compared to other Windows Mobile devices. You still can't change the font size or type while viewing lists of e-mail, however when viewing an individual message you can make the text larger if you need to. There are no options to change the font size or type used to compose messages, however, nor can you change the default height of messages in the list view. Signatures are supported.

Time to a New Message (4.44)
To see how easy it is to compose a new e-mail message we timed how long it took to go from the home screen unlocked until we had a new e-mail dialogue on the screen. We repeated this test five times and took the average for our score. The HTC Touch took an average of 4.5 seconds to get to a new e-mail dialogue. This is pretty slow, with only the HTC Mogul taking longer than the Touch in this test. It should be noted, though, that we started from a clean start when launching the messaging program. Many users will keep the program running in the background, and if you do this you can cut this time in half or better.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
HTC Touch	4.50	4.44
Helio Ocean	2.10	9.52
BlackBerry Curve 8320	1.70	11.76
HTC Mogul	6.22	3.22
Palm Centro	1.86	10.75
Apple iPhone	1.90	10.53

E-mail Usability (11.5)
The e-mail interface is typical Windows Mobile except for one small improvement that comes with HTC's TouchFLO technology. This update is the ability to scroll through messages by moving your finger up and down the message list. This works relatively well with a short list, but you run into problems when you starting getting very long lists where you can "throw" the list so it will auto-scroll. You will have to spend a lot of time with the device before you figure out how to control it efficiently. This is in sharp contrast to the iPhone, which has much smoother finger scrolling that is easier to use right out of the box.
Aside from the TouchFLO enhancement, the e-mail program on the Touch is typical Windows Mobile fare. You move up and down messages using up and down on the d-pad. You can switch between accounts using left and right on the d-pad, which is a feature we've always appreciated. Accessing the folder list can be done by tapping on the icon in the top left of the interface, or through the menu. The menu is accessed using the left soft key, and gives you access to all the features you need. The left soft key is assigned to delete, which is a change from Windows Mobile 5 devices that had assigned "new" to this key. Overall, we found the interface logical and easy to use, and we feel that Windows Mobile provides one the best e-mail interfaces on a smart phone.

Supported IM Services (2.0)
The HTC Touch has two instant messaging applications. The first is provided by Sprint and gives you access to AIM, Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo! messenger. Like most carrier-provided IM services, using this program charges you for a text message for each instant message sent or received, and as such we won't be awarding points for it. Thankfully the Touch retains the standard Windows Mobile Windows Live Messenger, which just uses data. If you have an unlimited data plan you can instant message via the Windows Live service without having to worry about additional charges. If you want to access other instant messaging services via your data connection you can add a third-party instant messaging program like Agile Messenger.

MMS Support (0.0)
It looks like the iPhone may have started a trend by leaving out MMS support, as the HTC Touch also lacks support for this feature. This seems ridiculous, since multimedia messaging has become a standard feature on cell phones and is often used to send a photo or video to friends and family. Yes, we realize there are workarounds using e-mail, but this isn't as convenient as having MMS support on the device, and given that many other Windows Mobile devices support this feature we're unsure why it would have been left off the Touch.

SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (0.0)
Like most other Windows Mobile devices, the HTC Touch leaves smiley faces in text format instead of turning them into graphical representations like you find on Treo devices. There's also no support for easily adding smiley faces, so you have to type them out.

SMS/MMS Ease of Use (7.5)
Text messaging on the HTC Touch is integrated into the e-mail client, so it just acts as another e-mail account. Like e-mail, your messages are a simple list, so there's no support for threaded text messaging, as found on the iPhone or Treo devices. By default messages are organized with the newest on top, but you can change this to sort by message type, from, and subject. When you are typing a message you are shown a counter so you can see how many characters you've typed and how many messages it will take to send, which is a nice feature not found on the iPhone. Just like e-mail accounts you can scroll through your messages by "flicking" your finger up and down, or you can use the d-pad. We found the interface to be simple and easy to use, and the addition of finger scrolling will be a boon for some.

Time to a New SMS Message (2.51)
To see how easy it is to create a new text message we timed how long it took to go from the home screen unlocked until we had a new text message dialogue on the screen. We repeated the test five times and took the average for our score. The HTC Touch took an average of 3.98 seconds to complete this test. As you can see below, this is far slower than the Palm Centro's excellent score, but faster than the BlackBerry Curve 8320 or the HTC Mogul. We need to note again that for this test we did not leave the messaging program running in the background, instead shutting it down completely for each trial. If you are a frequent texter, you can leave the program running in the background to get to a new text message dialogue significantly faster.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
HTC Touch	3.98	2.51
Helio Ocean	3.10	3.23
BlackBerry Curve 8320	4.22	2.37
HTC Mogul	5.46	1.83
Palm Centro	0.86	11.63
Apple iPhone	2.62	3.82

[page title="Organizer"]

Synchronization (7.0)
The HTC Touch uses Windows Mobile Device Manager to synchronize with a Windows Vista computer, or ActiveSync if you are using an older Windows XP machine. There are some slight differences in support between the two pieces of software, but setup is equally easy for each. Just install the software, connect your device via USB cable, and follow the wizard to set up your synchronization. From that point forward synchronization starts automatically whenever you connect your device. Although there have been reported issues with both ActiveSync and Windows Mobile Device Manager, most users will find setup and use to be straightforward.

The HTC Touch can synchronize your contacts (including contact photos), tasks, calendar appointments, and notes with a Windows PC. Initial setup needs to be done via USB, but once that is complete you can set up your device to synchronize wirelessly via Bluetooth. Out of the box the Touch is only able to synchronize with Outlook or Windows Vista's PIM applications. If you want to synchronize with a Mac you will need to invest in third-party software, like Mark Space's The Missing Sync.

Alerts (8.0)
Alerts can be set on the HTC Touch for calendar appointments and tasks. We have been big fans of the Windows Mobile's alert capabilities, and this doesn't change with the Touch. You can set an alert to go off at any time before the appointment, and recurrence patterns are very customizable. When an alert sounds you get an on-screen indicator with information about the appointment. You can dismiss the alert, view the appointment, or choose to snooze it. We are particularly impressed by the ability to snooze the appointment for a variety of time periods, so if you don't want it to sound again until the next day you can do that, or you can snooze it for just a few minutes.

Over the Air PIM Sync (2.0)
Windows Mobile supports synchronization of your contacts, calendar appointments, and tasks over the air with an Exchange Server. Exchange support on Windows Mobile 6 has been significantly improved, giving you access to corporate address books and allowing you to browse e-mail folders on the Exchange server. Anyone working in an Exchange environment will greatly appreciate these features.

Address Book

Adding Contacts (3.40)
To see how easy it is to add contacts to the HTC Touch we timed how long it took to go from the home screen unlocked until we added five test contacts. Each contact had a first and last name, along with a phone number. We took the average time for our final score. The HTC Touch took an average of 29.42 seconds to add a new contact. This is the slowest time of any of our comparison phones. HTC has attempted to improve text entry on the Touch by including a specially-formatted QWERTY keyboard with two letters per button so that buttons are large enough to use with finger tips. Unfortunately, even with this improvement entering text on the Touch is very slow.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
HTC Touch	29.42	3.40
Helio Ocean	21.24	4.71
BlackBerry Curve 8320	14.10	7.09
HTC Mogul	14.70	6.80
Palm Centro	12.22	8.18
Apple iPhone	20.86	4.79

Looking/Sorting/Search (7.5)
Contacts is one area where HTC has provided upgrades to the typical interface. The most obvious involves finding contacts by letter. In the typical Windows Mobile Professional device you have a bar at the top with the alphabet that allows you to jump to a specific letter. Unfortunately the bar is small enough that you have to use a stylus with it. By contrast, on the Touch the alphabet bar has been moved to the right side of the screen, very similar to the alphabet you find in long lists on the iPhone. Just like the iPhone, you can run your finger up/down this bar and quickly jump to the currently selected letter. In practice it works almost as well as the iPhone's implementation and should make moving through your contacts easy. You can also use run your finger up and down the actual contact list to move it, just as you would in other areas where there are lists on the Touch.
Aside from these enhancements, the contacts are similar to those you'll find on any other Windows Mobile device. You can search for a contact name by just beginning to type the name out. You can sort your contacts by first, last, or business name and filter them by group. All of these features are very useful when you're dealing with a large number of contacts, although we are still annoyed by the fact that you can't search for a business when you're viewing your contacts by name or vice versa.

Fields (8.2)
When you create a new contact on the HTC Touch you are given the same extensive set of fields we've become accustomed to on Windows Mobile devices. There are 41 contact fields available, including notes, categories, and esoteric items like Government ID and Account. About the only thing we miss is the ability to create our own custom fields.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (4.67)
Like other Windows Mobile devices you can assign up to 99 contacts to speed dials. This should be sufficient for anyone, as we can't imagine someone who can remember more than 99 speed dials. The Touch also comes with preloaded voice tag software that allows you to train the phone to recognize contact names for voice dialing. This is different than true voice command where the phone tries to guess the name you speak without any training. Some people love voice command systems, but we've found they are rarely effective. This voice tag function should be sufficient for a few contacts you want to easily dial by voice.

Calendar

Adding Calendar Items (12.59)
To see how easy it is to add a calendar appointment we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have added a lunch appointment for the following day with a reminder 15 minutes beforehand. We repeated this test five times and take the average time for our score. The HTC Touch took an average of 7.94 seconds to add a new appointment. As you can see below this is a fairly good time, which may be a little confusing since many of our other timed tests have shown poorer performance. In this case we were helped out significantly by the fact that a 15-minute reminder for the appointment is added automatically, and all we had to type on the touch keyboard was the word "Lunch." Almost everything else could be handled via the d-pad, which sped things up tremendously. This is an example of how quick items on the Touch can be when you don't have to interact too much with the touch screen, which makes us wonder why things like the Start and OK buttons were left out.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
HTC Touch	7.94	12.59
Helio Ocean	24.20	4.13
BlackBerry Curve 8320	6.04	16.56
HTC Mogul	7.22	13.85
Palm Centro	4.80	20.83
Apple iPhone	18.92	5.29

Calendar Views (7.13)
The Touch provides the same set of calendar views found on other Windows Mobile devices. Probably the easiest to use is the agenda view, which provides a simple chronological list of appointments. An update with Windows Mobile 6 is the addition of a free/busy time bar to the top of this view, which is a nice touch that improves an already solid calendar view. The daily view shows you the current day in hour blocks, with appointments blocked out in the appropriate time slot.
The weekly view also saw an update in Windows Mobile 6. You still get a grid with days along the top and hours on the left, but left and right on the d-pad will now jump automatically to the next appointment, which means getting around this view is a lot easier. Information about the currently-selected appointment is shown at the bottom of the screen, which also improves this view's functionality.
The monthly view has, unfortunately, not been upgraded, so you still get six weeks with the current month highlighted. Days with appointments have a small triangle, while days with an all-day event have a hollow square. We wish an indicator showing you a list of that day's events were here, like on the weekly view. The yearly view just shows you the current year with no indicators, except that the current day is highlighted. In all views you can filter your appointments by category.
Overall we found the agenda and weekly view to be very usable, while the rest are much less so. Still, these two excellent views will be more than sufficient for most users, and if you decide you need a better calendar you can pick up third-party software to fulfill this function.

Fields (11.0)
Creating a new appointment on the HTC Touch is no different than any other Windows Mobile Professional device. All the basics are there, as are nice advanced features like an excellent recurrence option, status, attendees, and categories. You can also add a note to any appointment with any miscellaneous information you might need.

To Do/Tasks

Adding To Do/Task (5.19)
To find out how quickly we can add a new task to the HTC Touch we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have added a new task reminding us to get groceries. We repeat this test five times and take the average time for our score. The HTC Touch took an average of 19.28 seconds to complete this test. That's pretty slow, and once again we have to say it was the text input options on the Touch that slowed us down the most. You can see that the HTC Mogul, running the same software but with much better hardware controls and a real QWERTY keyboard, completed this test almost eight seconds faster.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
HTC Touch	19.28	5.19
Helio Ocean	n/a - no tasks	0.00
BlackBerry Curve 8320	14.80	6.76
HTC Mogul	16.02	6.24
Palm Centro	11.52	8.68
Apple iPhone	n/a - no tasks	0.00

ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (7.0)
The tasks program built into Windows Mobile Professional provides excellent options for sorting and prioritizing your tasks. Each task can be assigned one of three priority levels, and you can sort your tasks by priority as well as subject, start, or due date. You can also filter your tasks by category. This makes the tasks program on Windows Mobile Professional devices like the HTC Touch a powerful tool for those who use tasks a lot.

Fields (9.0)
When you create a new task on the HTC Touch you have a good set of fields to choose from. The basics like title, start/due date, and reminders are there. More advanced features are also supported, like recurrence, status, priority, and categories. Just like appointments, there's also a notes area where you can type any text you need.

Notes

Adding Notes (2.83)
We timed how long it took to go from the home screen unlocked until we had added a test note to see how easy it is to create notes on the HTC Touch. We did this timed test five times and took the average time for our score. The HTC Touch took an average of 17.64 seconds to add our test note. This time is not very good, and once again the primary blame lies with the input method. You can see all of our comparison phones performed better on this test than the Touch, and once again the Mogul, with its real keyboard and better hardware controls, did significantly better than the Touch.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
HTC Touch	17.64	2.83
Helio Ocean	16.06	3.11
BlackBerry Curve 8320	12.20	4.10
HTC Mogul	12.56	3.98
Palm Centro	8.46	5.91
Apple iPhone	12.66	3.95

Note Interface (3.0)
The notes interface on Windows Mobile Professional devices is fairly straightforward. You have a list of notes that can be sorted by name, date, size, or type. The left soft key takes you to a new note interface, while the right soft key opens a menu to access additional functions. There is no search functionality like on BlackBerry devices, nor can you categorize or filter notes. It's sufficient for jotting down quick notes, but if you want a more powerful notes program you'll need to get third-party software

Note Formatting (2.0)
There are few formatting options available for notes on the HTC Touch. You can't change font size or type, although you can set a zoom setting to make text larger or smaller. Thankfully hand drawn notes are supported and you can add voice notes within a text note, however you cannot add other media items, nor can you format text.

Voice Memo (6.0)


Voice memos on the HTC Touch are built into the standard notes application. The implementation is a little clunky, however. To create a voice note you will need to go into the left soft key menu and choose "view recording toolbar." This pops up a small bar at the bottom of the screen which controls recording functions. We've never been a big fan of this implementation, and thankfully it seems like either Sprint or HTC isn't, as well, since they also include a stand-alone voice recorder that does a significantly better job.

[page title="Multimedia"]

Accessing Music Software (2.56)
To see how easy it is to get music playing on the HTC Touch we timed how long it took to go from the home screen unlocked until we had a song playing. We repeated this test five times and took the average time for our score. The HTC Touch actually has two pieces of music playback software. Windows Media Player Mobile is the standard music playback software found on Windows Mobile Professional devices, and the Touch also has Sprint's music software loaded, which is Java-based and is the only way you can download and play back music from Sprint's music store. Sprint's music software is very slow to load because it's Java-based, and we found it took an average of 12.56 seconds to get a song playing.

The Sprint Music Store is more accessible than the Media Player, as it has a prominent button in the TouchFLO interface. By contrast, to launch Windows Media Player you have to go into the Start menu, then to Programs, and then scroll down to the bottom of the programs to get to the shortcut. We should note that the Start menu is customizable, so if you want faster access to the Media Player you can add it there. The TouchFLO shortcuts are not customizable, however, so you're stuck with what's there. Getting Media Player to start up and get a song playing is significantly faster than Sprint's music software, at 7.8 seconds on average. We decided to go with the faster time for our score here, but those who want to use Sprint's software need to be aware that it's terribly slow. Of course, better than terrible isn't necessarily good, and you can see below that the Media Player's 7.8-second time is still bad.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
HTC Touch	7.80	2.56
Helio Ocean	5.20	3.85
BlackBerry Curve 8320	7.62	2.62
HTC Mogul	6.06	3.30
Palm Centro	3.22	6.21