In our HTC Touch Pro review for Verizon Wireless, we decide whether The Network has the best Touch Pro of the bunch.
Review summary of the HTC Touch Pro (Verizon Wireless):
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_it00.jpg) The HTC Touch Pro on Verizon Wireless is targeting productivity users to a greater extent than the other Touch Pro versions we've tested recently. Still, the phone makes some weird choices that we can't get behind. The keyboard layout is seriously flawed, like someone made a typo in the design process. The phone also lacks some necessary software, like an instant messaging client and perhaps a suite of third-party productivity apps. In stead, this version of the HTC Touch Pro becomes an example of why Windows Mobile is lagging behind. With a few more hardware and software tweaks, this could have been a very good productivity smartphone or a very good all-around smartphone, but especially due to the lack of a clearly defined concept either way, it falls short on both. Release: December 2008. Price: $350.
Pros: TouchFLO 3D runs smoothly when loaded on this phone. Loads of advanced features, including VGA screen, fast networking and Wi-Fi.
Cons: Navigation options are limited. Lacks some necessary software.
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Full HTC Touch Pro (Verizon Wireless) Review:
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Design - Good
When this phone first arrived, we were confused as to why Verizon Wireless wouldn't use HTC's TouchFLO 3D interface on their version of the HTC Touch Pro. What's going on? It turned out that Verizon Wireless is selling this phone as a productivity smartphone with a few random extras, hence it starts every new HTC Touch Pro user on a standard, Windows Mobile 6.1 Today screen, and recommends using the "Start" menu for most tasks.
However, some digging through the "Today" settings menu led us to the "Items" sub-tab, where we could enable TouchFLO 3D as a menu option. We had to scroll down to find this option, and it isn't mentioned anywhere in the user manuals. Once loaded, TouchFLO 3D is a slick, finger-driven design that looks fantastic on this phone's VGA screen.
The keyboard also makes some unusual decisions. The "M" key is broken off from the rest of its row, displaced by the "Up" arrow key. It looks like a design error. There is room to move the arrow keys over one space, and leave the "M" right next to the "N," where it belongs. Also, the keyboard could use more dedicated keys, though we like the addition of a user-assignable favorites key, marked by a large star.
The phone is a fingerprint magnet all around. We've started to really miss the soft-touch finish on the back of Sprint's HTC Touch Pro, as every other version we've seen has relied on the glossy piano black finish, and it picks up prints like a CSI. The navigation key on this phone was as wonky as we've seen on other versions. Sometimes, pressing right would cause the "End" button to fire. Sometimes, we pressed the "Home" button, only to watch the phone think we had pressed left on the direction button. In some rare apps, the button can act as a scroll wheel, but this isn't consistent. We wish this function were enabled everywhere.
Calling - Good
Call quality on the HTC Touch Pro was pretty good, but we still got some static and noise problems, especially when reception took a dive. Usually, the phone held onto a medium-strength signal at about 3 bars, though this did get lower as our walls got thicker. Battery life was pretty good, as long as we kept the extra radios, like Wi-Fi, GPS and Bluetooth, turned off. We got about 5.5 hours out of a single call under these ideal conditions. After a full day's use, the phone could have gone through another morning or so without being charged overnight.
We had some trouble with the onscreen keyboard during calls. A few times the keypad would remain active, and when we pressed the phone to our cheek we heard dial tones. At other times, the onscreen keys would lock up altogether, and this happened once while we were checking our voice mail. We had to restart the dialer app and make the call from scratch. Good thing we weren't on hold with customer service.
The calling screens were nice and clean looking, with large, easy buttons to touch to enable various in-call features. The phone wasn't very clear about conference calls, leaving us guessing as to who was on hold, or whether we had joined the call properly. We'd like the buttons to adapt to this situation.
The My Favorites tab on the TouchFLO 3D homescreen looks nice, but we just don't have pictures of all of our favorite contacts, so it wasn't the best choice for us. Instead, we like to simply pull out the keyboard and start typing. This jumps directly to the contact lists and searches as you type, a nice smartphone feature.
Messaging - Good
The HTC Touch Pro on Verizon Wireless seriously lags behind the competition, and even other Touch Pros, when it comes to messaging features. You basically get the standard Windows Mobile kit. TouchFLO 3D offers little for messaging from the home screen, just the ability to read a portion of recent messages. No browsing messages or writing from the tabbed interface. The lack of an instant messaging app is especially disappointing, as we expect IM to come standard on any smartphone.
The keyboard, as we've mentioned, is odd. We just can't get over that dangling "M," and even if we could get used to it, we're not sure we want to. Otherwise, Verizon Wireless keeps things simple. The keyboard has a nice, solid feel to it, with soft keys that each have their own rounded tops. You get quick access to the messaging app via a key on the keyboard, and it's the only real dedicated hardware key on the device. Still, that "M" is just standing there all by itself, staring at us.
Scheduling and productivity - Very good
The phone gets the full complement of Windows Office Mobile apps, including OneNote, Word, Excel and PowerPoint. As a bonus, there's even a helpful printing utility and some other useful apps, like a business card reader. We found WorldCard to be useful for transcribing business cards on the phone. It wasn't perfect, but it saved us plenty of typing.
For scheduling, the HTC Touch Pro sees no improvements over the standard Windows Mobile calendar. Actually, that's a misstatement, as Windows Mobile Standard (the non-touchscreen version) has a better Today screen that brings up calendar appointments in a larger, more convenient bubble. In any case, synchronizing our appointments went smoothly, and the keyboard helped us enter new meeting times and dates. Surprisingly, we were stymied by the lousy navigation key. It is very difficult to switch fields with a poor navigation key, and this made scheduling appointments, which requires constant field-switching, more difficult. Often, we lost our progress by accidentally hitting, well, anything other than up or down. Every other selection is fatal to the task at hand.
Multimedia - Good
For multimedia apps, the HTC Touch Pro doesn't get access to the full complement of Verizon Wireless' V Cast services, so there is no music store and no streaming video clips. The phone has a VGA screen, but instead of offering DVD-quality content, Verizon Wireless and HTC leave it to the user to find video content that will work properly on the device, and that was no easy task. In our tests, we couldn't get any full-resolution VGA video files to play properly on the HTC Touch Pro's screen. We would have liked to see Verizon's V Cast Mobile video. Even real DivX support would be nice. Anything to finally show off that screen.
For music, the player itself is deceptively simple. Album artwork on the TouchFLO 3D home screen seems like it might work like Apple's CoverFlow, but it doesn't really respond to flicking. The player itself has an improved library screen, which makes browsing music much easier, and we were happy to see how responsive our long song lists were on this device. Still, without a 3.5mm headphone jack or any internal storage, it's clear that the HTC Touch Pro is not the great all-around smartphone it could have been.
Camera - Good
The camera on the HTC Touch Pro was surprisingly competent, capable of some nice looking images with good, accurate color and even a bit of detail. At 3.2-megapixels, it isn't the best on the market, and we saw a bit of noise and over-sharpening at full crop. Still, the auto focus certainly helped take better pictures, even if it did add some lag time in between shots. We also had trouble with the camera forgetting our settings. A few of our samples were accidentally taken on the Sunlight white balance setting, and a few almost went missing because the camera didn't remember that we like to save our pics on the memory card, not the internal storage.
NYC Mansion
Starbucks corner
It was sunny when we took these shots, but clearly the white balance has overdone it and cast these images as a bit yellow. The aging mansion is actually a dark grey, and not this yellowing color.
Self portrait
We couldn't get a sharp self portrait from any length, as the auto focus kept missing us. It was easy to take the picture, thanks to all the audio feedback that the camera gives during its processes.
Panorama
We're very disappointed by the panorama stitcher. Lining up the pics was easy, as the camera displays a ghosted third of the last image. But when we meticulously lined up our shot, waiting for cards to be stopped or out of the way, the in-camera stitching software couldn't line things up properly. Plus, the images were so small that they weren't of much use to us.
eBay shot
Close-up scene
On these two shots, taken in our studio light box, we see nice results in terms of color, but the white balance can't handle the strong light. These should be cool and bright, but they are murky and grey, especially on the white fabric around the objects. Still, the important details, like the asst. numbers on the Snake Eyes card, come through clean and legible.
GPS Navigation - Very good
The HTC Touch Pro uses VZ Navigator for turn-by-turn navigation, and we had no trouble with the GPS software. The phone found us quickly and held onto our position nicely on our commute home from New York City, even through the Holland tunnel. The mapping software looked great on the HTC Touch Pro's screen, and the program was reasonably responsive to our dragging and clicking.
Of course, we'd like to see more location-based services on these super-smartphones. The Apple iPhone and Google's T-Mobile G1 phone have really taken the lead in location-based apps, thanks to the open access developers have to the GPS information. We'd like to see Verizon help develop more GPS-based apps, especially as the competition in this market heats up.
Web browsing - Very good
The HTC Touch Pro benefits from the Opera browser, and Opera makes what could be the most serious competitor to Apple's excellent Safari browser on the Apple iPhone 3G. The Opera browser has gotten a nice facelift to match the HTC TouchFLO 3D interface, and we liked the full-screen view that it offered. We also liked being able to zoom in on a page by swirling our finger around the navigation button. We wish the zoom action were much smoother, but it was still a functional shortcut.
We ran the Opera browser head-to-head against our Apple iPhone 3G. Verizon Wireless service is a bit spotty in our hometown, so we used Wi-Fi on both devices. The iPhone's Safari browser beat the Verizon HTC Touch Pro hands-down every time. Loading our own home page, the Apple phone would usually finish 15-20 seconds faster than the HTC device.
Price and availability
The HTC Touch Pro is available now from Verizon Wireless for $350 with a contract agreement.
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