HTC P3450 Touch - The First Windows Mobile “iPhone Killer”?
If you’re an aficionado of smart phones, that you’re aware that you pay for all those features by having something that’s as attractive as a Soviet-era cinder block apartment house. Form follows function, and design aesthetics get ditched for utilitarianism and features, and most of those features have to use a stylus.
The iPhone from Apple promised that there was a better way to do all this – a slick, touch based user interface, and gloriously high definition multimedia content. However, the price tag of £350, and the lack of a local carrier (or, worse yet, the lack of an unlocked version) means that the iPhone isn’t here yet.
Enter HTC to the rescue. Sort of. It has managed to make, in the HTC touch, one of the smartest designed (and smartest looking) Windows Mobile smartphones on the market. The Touch has a couple of clever user interface options that are optimized for moving through things with fingers, and the screen is large and bright, though not as stunningly high resolution as the iPhone. Unlike the iPhone, it does run the full gamut of Windows Mobile 6 applications – though to get at them, you have to leave the clever “rotate the cube” interface for switching windows around and go back to boring old menus poked at with a stylus.
Alas, also like the iPhone, the Touch lacks 3G compliance. If you’re on a data plan, that’s a serious show stopper. It’s got a decent 2 megapixel camera built in, and like most modern digital phones, it works perfectly well as an MP3 player and music storage and playback device. It has a pretty slick method of showing photos as well, making a good way to showcase pictures taken with it to your officemates.
It is almost impossible to NOT compare the Touch to its more heavily hyped competitor, and the Touch really does look and feel more like an iPhone than we’d thought it would. It’s smartly designed and attractive – and in our view, while it doesn’t exude the pure solidified fashion-sense of the iPhone, it is something you’ll show off to your friends. Overall, it seems to be more rugged – there was less concern, for example, about shoving it into your trousers pocket, or the back of your pants. The casing is that odd rubbery stuff that makes the phone feel like it’s shockproof, while the iPhone looks and feels like something that should be kept under glass.
Sound quality was superb, and reception quality was excellent, though in a couple of our standard “does it get the dead zone” tests, it wasn’t pulling in any miracles. The productivity applications that are part and parcel to smart phone usage were a bit muffled overall. They’re pretty much the standard Windows Mobile applications, and while the TouchFlo interface that lets you sort through the phone’s functions is a wonder, it stops when you deal with applications. That being said, if you need to work on an Excel or Word document on an iPhone, you’re out of luck.
Overall, our chief disappointment was the lack of HSDPA connectivity. It’s hard to imagine that a cell phone aimed at the premium market lacks this, but, yes, this one does. If you’re looking for a good mix of PDA, cell phone and camera, this one’s an excellent choice, but you may be happier with something a bit more high end, like the HTC TyTN II.
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