With a sharp eye for style and a snazzy designed touch UI, HTC’s Touch smartphone crew has single handedly taken the hard corporate edge off Windows Mobile po-faced rep and found favour with the mainstream. The sparkly Touch Diamond is leading the populist charge but its new ticklish buddy, the Touch Pro, hasn’t completely abandoned its business roots.
Clock the Touch Pro for the first time and you would struggle to find major design differences with the Diamond. It’s not until its rolls onto its side that you see it’s gained a fair few pounds on the waistline. A sliding QWERTY keyboard is the reason for the new bloated figure; a boon for messaging maniacs but harsh on your Armani suit’s inside pocket.
Like its stablemate, the Pro delivers a myriad of operation techniques from a mechanised keypad, to stylus pen action and its more prominent finger embracing TouchFLO UI. Unfortunately, the later, despite being lifted wholesale from the more user-friendly Diamond, is a willfully stubborn customer, proving unresponsive to our pinkie swipes, strokes and taps while also displaying exasperating lag time.
It’s difficult to overlook this operational bugbear but if you manage to tame the TouchFLO UI then the Pro has some cool features on offer. Its eye-popping laser beam sharp VGA-quality display is ideal for web surfing via the inimitable Opera 9.5 browser and with turbo HSDPA and Wi-Fi on board, web pages load whip smart. Throw in an improved 3.2-megapixel snapper and a capable GPS receiver for sat nav and the Touch Pro is well equipped outside business hours.
Verdict
The devil in disguise touch UI just rankles and sadly overshadows what is a chic and accomplished QWERTY-loaded WinMo smartie.
Best features
Stunning VGA-quality touch screen
Thumb friendly QWERTY keyboard
High speed connectivity options
Great for web browsing
Not so good
Heavy and portly
Tricksy touch UI
Closest rivals
Samsung F480 Tocco
A slinky, slimline and compact touch phone not only dazzles in the looks department but flaunts a five-megapixel snapper and cool widget homescreen tech.
LG KU990 Viewty
This touch phone is an expert in photography and video with a sharp autofocus five-megapixel snapper and the ability to shoot slo-mo vids.
Nokia N95
It not a member of the touchy feelie club but this Symbian smartphone rival has an awesome features set including a 5MP camera, HSDPA, Wi-Fi and GPS for sat nav.
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