4. Hardware

A phone is more than just the software, and the iPhone has shown that design is as important to a phone’s success as its software. That’s also true for the Touch, where HTC has chosen a rather tasteful silver and dark grey UI skin. It’s designed to complement the phone’s charcoal soft grip casing (an olive-green variant is also available), which is highlighted in silver.

As well as the standard charcoal, an olive-green version is available.

Smaller than most Windows Mobile Professional devices, the Touch makes some awkward compromises. If you want to change memory cards, you’ll need to slide open the back cover; only then can you flip down the silver memory card cover before popping out the MicroSD card you’ll find next to SIM card slot. (At least you don’t have to remove the battery.) The phone is surprisingly small, and fits neatly and comfortably in your hand.

Another compromise comes with the Touch’s lack of hardware buttons. If you’ve used Windows Mobile, you’ll have become used to its plethora of short cut buttons, but pick up a Touch and you’ll find that they’ve nearly all gone away. The Touch isn’t reduced to the iPhone’s single hardware button, but it’s cut the usual 12 or so down to five (not counting the 4-way joypad). Instead you’re left with just the standard action button, two soft buttons, a camera button, and scroll slider on the side of the device. We found the lack of an OK button a strange omission, as it’s needed for many Windows Mobile one hand operations.

Despite HTC’s advertising, the Touch isn’t a compelling device. The TouchFlo user interface is an interesting gimmick, but that’s all it amounts to. The phone itself is decidedly average, with just tri-band GPRS/EDGE data support and 64 MB of RAM. An adequate 2 Mpixel camera is included, but no flash.

The processor is a little lacking in horsepower too, with only a 201 MHz TI OMAP 850, unlike some of HTC’s more powerful phones. You can add extra memory with MicroSD cards, which should offer 8 GB of storage by the middle of 2008. Battery life is surprisingly good, even using push email, though WiFi and Bluetooth will reduce it considerably. I got just over 4.5 hours of talk-time, close to HTC’s quoted 5 hours.