2. The Mogul's Personality

The Mogul has a pleasant interface, with more than enough options for any user. There are a total of three OK keys, a scroll wheel, a four-way toggle, the touch-screen and the keyboard. Any user can navigate the phone completely using any of those controls. Personally, I think the touch-screen is as decent as the ones one can find on a Palm device: it is easy to manipulate with either finger or stylus, the screen is large and bright, and colors are brilliant and crisp. The new Windows Mobile 6 Professional is a nice update to the graphical appearance on the screen. The keys are easy to use for typing, too - they feel good under the fingers and respond quickly. (I have used PDA phone keyboards that were hardly worthy of the name.)

Being able to switch the Wi-Fi on and off using the switch on the left is a nice touch: no more running through menus to switch it off. Having an external Connection Manager button makes turning Bluetooth, IrDA, data, phone, and ActiveSync on or off very simple: the old PPC 6700 was not anywhere near as easy. I found the Home screen easy to customize, and themes are available on the Web. Changing default programs that display on the Home screen is almost effortless.

The old PPC 6700 had a 417 MHz CPU inside and operated very slowly: opening and closing the phone was glitchy at best, because the screen wouldn’t rotate in sync with the open/close action. This is significantly improved in the Mogul, which has a 400 MHz dual core CPU in it. Applications seem to load fairly quickly, and are just as easy to switch between as they are on your PC.

Two thumbs up to HTC for a great job designing the interface on the Mogul.