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| HTC Touch Pro (Sprint) |
| Full review » Video » Scoreboard » Specs » Gallery » |
_it00.jpg) Our Sprint contract is up soon, and we were thinking about buying the HTC Touch Pro as an upgrade to our Palm Treo 755p, but after using the phone for a little while, we're going to hold off. HTC has some great design ideas, and a week ago we would have claimed that a QWERTY keyboard is all the HTC Touch Diamond needs to be a killer phone. That would have been true, if this phone performed as well as the Touch Diamond we reviewed. Instead, it was unresponsive, felt buggy at times, and needed some serious polish. We've seen this from HTC before, and the company has a history of releasing updates that dramatically improve their device performance. But until we're sure this will be the case with the HTC Touch Pro on Sprint, we would recommend that buyers know what they are getting into. Without these usability issues, the phone still has the highest-resolution screen on the U.S. market, and a snazzy, useful interface that manages to bring most of our favorite features to the surface so we don't have to submerge ourselves in the Windows Mobile pool. If HTC and Sprint could just iron out the kinks, we would be ready to take the plunge. Release: October 2008. Price: $400.
Pros: Large keyboard. Fast networking. Interface looks dazzling on VGA screen. Opera browser one of the best for phones. Good camera. Great productivity apps built-in.
Cons: Phone felt unresponsive. Interface lagged, system sometimes didn't respond to buttons, overall disappointing performance. Needs more messaging, media options.
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| Samsung Rant |
| Full review » Video » Scoreboard » Specs » Gallery » |
 We're sure that Sprint and Samsung will forgive us for thinking this phone was a rip-off of the older LG Rumor, because after some time using the Samsung Rant we're ready to recommend it to anyone looking for a fun, easy-to-use QWERTY phone with some surprisingly robust messaging options. This isn't a complex, corporate smartphone, it's still very much a consumer-level device, but if you'd like to be able to check your work e-mail on your little personal phone, it packs all those features at the best price. Sprint's One Touch interface, with all its shortcuts and included apps, makes this phone much smarter than the average bear. We think the combination of improved hardware and interface design, the nice selection of messaging features, the great price, plus a few multimedia functions thrown in at the end for good measure, makes this an easy phones to recommend. There's plenty of room for improvement, but for only $50, we wouldn't want this phone to get too smart, would we? Release: October 2008. Price: $50.
Pros: Nice, advanced feature set at a great price. Great improvement over similar predecessor, thanks to improved hardware and interface design. Corporate e-mail app.
Cons: Web browser sluggish and unreliable. Lacks all the tiles of other Sprint One Touch phones. Multimedia options are very basic, not compelling.
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68%
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| Samsung Highnote |
| Full review » Video » Scoreboard » Specs » Gallery » |
 The Samsung Highnote would be a much better music phone if the musical features were truly something special. The music player needs a serious upgrade, and considering this is the only slide-out speakerphone on the U.S. market, the speaker should have been something truly impressive, a replacement for our mini speakers and travel alarm clocks. Instead, the phone gets the same music apps as every other Sprint Power Vision phone, and the speaker is comparable to, and not better than, many other music phones on the market. Kudos to Samsung for finally adopting a standard microUSB port, 3.5mm headphone jack and packing in a gigabyte of memory, but competitors, including arch-nemesis Nokia, has been doing this for years. We also think Samsung should have followed Nokia's lead with some real playback controls, since this is a music phone, after all. Still, besides these shortcomings, Sprint's One Touch menus make this phone competitive, with great shortcuts and a modern look to the interface. But if you're looking for a phone with some music power, strangely that's one area where it just doesn't stand out. Release: October 2008. Price: $100.
Pros: Unique dual-slide speaker design. Great One Touch menu interface from Sprint. Scroll wheel worked well in every app. Suprisingly robust messaging features.
Cons: Music features are nothing special; even the speaker didn't impress us like it should have. Other multimedia features are a wash. Slow, mediocre Web browser.
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68%
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| LG Lotus |
| Full review » Video » Scoreboard » Specs » Gallery » |
 The LG Lotus is about as smart as a phone gets before we call it a smartphone, thanks mostly to Sprint's excellent new One Touch menu application. Despite its haunting resemblance to a compact makeup mirror, we even like the form factor, as it provides a nice, comfortable QWERTY keyboard and keeps a classy look. The external screen is unfortunately an afterthought, even with the dedicated music keys, and call quality could have been much better. But for dedicated messaging fans, even those with corporate e-mail to read, this phone provides an interesting alternative to the more complicated smartphone set. Plus, with access to Google Docs, a capable (though not desktop-grade) Web browser and tethered modem support, maybe this phone is even smarter than we thought. Knock $100 off the price, and we'll take two. Release: October 2008. Price: $150.
Pros: One Touch is great looking and convenient. Keyboard is tall and comfortable. Capable Web browser. Surprisingly good (and corporate) messaging options.
Cons: Call quality isn't great. Interface could react more quickly to navigation. Camera is lousy. Phone is pricey.
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69%
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| HTC Touch Diamond (Sprint) |
| Full review » Video » Scoreboard » Specs » Gallery » |
_it00.jpg) For whatever else we might say about the HTC Touch Diamond on Sprint, we can finally declare that HTC has gotten the responsive touch interface to feel right. It isn't perfect, no phone is, but the TouchFLO 3D interface that HTC has set atop Windows Mobile 6.1 is unique and delightful, and best of all it's a useful business interface. Multimedia is something of a letdown, a surprise on a phone with 4GB of internal memory and a VGA screen. The onscreen keyboard, too, needs some work on an evolutionary scale, much as the HTC Touch evolved into this Touch Diamond. Most important to us, though, is that HTC hasn't skimped on hardware, and the phone packs power where it counts, especially in the fast networking and Web browsing, the aforementioned dazzling display and the loads of features, including Wi-Fi, GPS navigation and everything we'd expect from a super-smartphone. Release: September 2008. Price: $350.
Pros: Sparkling, responsive interface with useful shortcut features. VGA screen. Fast networking helps the speedy Web browser. 4GB internal storage.
Cons: Keyboard is still a pain to use, which makes messaging and productivity apps more difficult. Reception problems hurt data-intensive services, like video streaming.
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76%
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