HTC Touch Cell Phone Review - Messaging
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Alfredo Padilla Published on November 07, 2007 Comment on this |
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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)
| 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.
Supported IM Services (2.0)
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)
| 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 |
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