Product Review – HTC Touch Cruise with “Footprints”
The HTC Touch Cruise is a quadband GSM mobile phone with 3G. Packed inside the sleek interior is where you’ll find GPS, WiFi, a 3.2 megapixel camera and a MicroSD memory card slot.
The Touch Cruise runs on Windows Mobile 6.1, the most up to date version of the Microsoft smartphone operating system available at the moment.
The outside of the phone is quite a treat – the phone marks a real departure from boring Windows powered phones, and it is obvious that quite a bit of effort went into making the phone look this good.
On the front is where you’ll find the dual-function D-Pad/scroll wheel, call pickup/hangup buttons and 2 dedicated buttons for GPS navigation and the Footprints application.
The phone is a little over 4″ x 2″ and a tad over half an inch thick. At 3.6 ounces it is one of the lightest smartphones on the market at the moment.
In the photo above, you can see the Touch cruise next to the HTC Touch Pro (the Touch Pro has a sliding keyboard, making it thicker).
Included with the Touch Cruise is a very complete set of accessories – a home charger, stereo headset, a 2GB microSD memory card (containing the maps required for the navigation package), a car charger cord and car windshield mounting cradle.
These accessories make it clear that HTC is serious when it comes to selling this device as a navigation system as well as a smartphone.
Now on to the software – all the basics you’d expect from Windows Mobile are there. You get a media player, Office Mobile and various other Windows applications. In addition to this, HTC has included some of their own apps, including their fantastic TouchFlo interface.
TouchFlo places itself on top of the often clunky Windows interface, and provides a very nice touch enabled tab based home screen for all the various portions of the device. HTC also added Footprints (which I’ll describe in a moment), as well as full navigation package (Copilot), several games and a couple of additional control panel options.
Footprints is designed to capture your trips. It combines the GPS and camera portions of the phone, into a nice and easy to use interface. Essentially, it allows you to make GPS enabled “breadcrumbs” of where you have been.
Once you snap a photo, it is automatically tagged with your location, and you are free to store it in the correct category and add written or voice notes. The concept is great – you travel, and your footprints can be traced back with photos and notes.
There is however one fatal flaw with Footprints – despite the very easy to use interface, and the great amount of thought that went into designing the application, nobody at HTC realized you’d probably want to do a little more with your memories than just leave them on your phone. That’s right – there is no export feature, or any way to move your “Footprints” to your computer, upload them to Google Maps or anything else.
You can save your file and import it on a different HTC device with Footprints, but that is the limit of its usability.
This is, in my opinion, something that makes Footprints about as useful as a fart in a spacesuit. What good are all these memories and photos, if you can’t do anything decent with them? At the very least I’d like to be able to import them into Google maps or Earth, and share them with the world.
It gets worse – the Footprints application saves the geotagging information in a separate file, so even when you copy the photos off the device, your GPS information is not embedded in the photo. To make matters even worse – Footprint photos are only saved as small thumbnails, so despite having a 3.2 megapixel camera, the only photos linked to your “Footprints” are tiny thumbnail images.
Despite this monumental flaw, the phone itself is a real pleasure to use – I would have personally preferred to see a VGA resolution screen, but its small size makes it a very worthwhile smartphone.
The CoPilot navigation software is quite good – not perfect, but not bad either. It has some quirks when it tries to navigate you through town, and its routing skills are not always perfect.
CoPilot is normally a $100 purchase, so receiving it for free with the Touch Cruise is a very nice bonus.
One navigation feature I’d like to point out is the smart car cradle – when you insert the Touch Cruise in its car mount, it automatically switches to a menu called “Navpanel”, allowing you to instantly start the navigation software.
GPS reception is fantastic, and I had no problems getting a very quick fix on the satellites, even indoors.
There are one or two other issues I need to point out. The 3G support in the Touch Cruise does not include the oddball frequency used by T-Mobile in the US. This means that only customers with AT&T will be able to get 3G speeds, T-Mobile users will be stuck on the slower EDGE system.
The Touch Cruise is currently not available from any US mobile operator, which means you will have to purchase it from an HTC dealer, and pay the full unsubsidized price.
True mobile phone fans won’t find this too hard to do, but anyone who is used to paying no more than $10 for their phone will be slightly disappointed to learn that the Touch Cruise will cost them about $515, which is still cheaper than many other contract free smartphones.
One final word of warning – there are 2 different versions of the Touch Cruise out there at the moment; one version released last year, and the newest version I reviewed here today, I’m not entirely sure why HTC decided to release an upgraded version without changing the name.
All in all an impressive little device, not completely without its quirks, but since those are mainly software related, I’m going to go easy on it and wholeheartedly recommend it for anyone looking for a compact 3G enabled Windows smartphone with GPS, Bluetooth and WiFi, especially if you like your smartphone unlocked and without any contractual obligations.
Product review – HTC Touch Dual smartphone
Today’s product review will take a brief look at one of the more advanced Windows Mobile powered smartphones on the market. The HTC Touch Dual is a GSM/3G/HSDPA smartphone with a touch screen and sliding numeric keypad. It is powered by Windows Mobile 6.1.
Not everyone will have ever heard of HTC, but it’s not unlikely that many of you either own a device made by them, or know of someone who does. HTC have at least one smartphone with each of the major US operators.
On T-mobile there is the Dash and the Wing, on AT&T there is the Tilt, on Verizon there is the XV6800 and the XV6900, and on Sprint you’ll find the Touch and the Mogul.
In just a few short years, HTC have grown from a fairly small manufacturer of mobile phones for companies like Palm and HP, into one of the largest smartphone manufacturers in the world with their own lineup of devices. I have been carrying (at least one) HTC made phone with me for the past 5 years.
This product review will take a look at a device that has been out for several months, which in the world of mobile phones is quite long. But that does not mean it is less advanced. Inside the HTC Touch Dual is a 400MHz processor, 256MB of storage memory, a MicroSD card slot, a 2 Megapixel camera, a sliding numeric keypad and the HTC TouchFlo interface.
The phone features quadband GSM (850/900/1800/1900) and dualband 3G (850/1900), which means you’ll be able to use it anywhere in the world with a GSM network, and on the AT&T 3G network in the US.
The phone is well designed, and is a real treat to look at; the screen is flush with the front of the phone, and the body is surrounded by a sleek chrome finish. The Touch Dual has 2 cameras; one 2 Megapixel camera on the back, and one lower resolution VGA camera on the front (for making video calls).
The HTC Touch Dual was one of the first Windows powered smartphones to come delivered with the newest version of Windows Mobile Professional; version 6.1.
The Touch Dual has just a couple of buttons; 2 call buttons and a D-pad on the front, a camera and power button on the right, and a volume rocker on the left. Thanks to the TouchFlo interface, this really is all you need. The interface has some pretty nifty animations, but it is also a simple way of accessing things like the weather, your speed dial entries and some frequently used applications like email and the web browser. To access TouchFlo, you simply drag your finger from the bottom to the top of the screen.
The sliding keypad on the Touch Dual offers a quicker way to dial numbers, but the keypad also functions as a regular text entry pad, thanks to the dual-letter entry method, not unlike the system found on the Blackberry Pearl. It takes a little getting used to, but once you master it, you’ll be able to enter stuff quicker than with the on-screen keyboard.
Because many of you are frequent travelers, I’ll focus the rest of this review on how the HTC Touch Dual can help you when you are on the road. To me, as a “roadwarrior”, there are 5 things that make this phone travel friendly:
- Long battery life
- Worldwide compatibility
- Lightweight
- Applications and connectivity
- Multimedia
Long battery life
The battery powering the HTC Touch Dual has enough power to keep the phone on standby for up to 361 hours (manufacturer rating), which is quite amazing in such a small package. The phone also has a regular Mini-USB charging port, so recharging the device is a breeze, and if you lose your charger, finding a compatible charger abroad won’t be too hard.
Worldwide compatibility
The HTC Touch Dual is equipped with a Quadband GSM radio and a dualband HSDPA 3G radio. This means it will work almost anywhere you can find a GSM or 3G network. The speed of the HSDPA service is amazing, on the AT&T 3G network in my neighborhood, I regularly reach speeds in excess of 1750kbps, which is faster than many people have at home.
Lightweight
At just 4.7oz (133 grams), the HTC Touch Dual is one of the lightest Windows powered smartphones on the market. It is small enough to fit in the tightest of carryon luggage.
Applications and connectivity
Windows Mobile devices have one of the largest assortments of mobile applications in the world. There are thousands of high quality applications for the platform, including some really powerful applications for travelers like: Worldmate, SPB Traveler and Fizz traveller. You’ll also find various translation applications, city guides, navigation packages and public transit guides.
Multimedia
To many people, their first introduction to a smartphone was probably with an iPhone or Blackberry. It may come as a surprise though, that the iPhone was not the first device to offer decent multimedia features. In fact, current Windows Mobile powered phones have even more multimedia power than an iPhone.
In addition to a far greater file format support, Windows Phones can be turned into pocket TV’s using remote viewing hardware like a Slingbox or Hava. Most Windows phones can also be expanded beyond their initial memory with cheap memory cards (current memory prices are around $40 for 8GB of storage).
Another advantage of Windows Mobile devices is that you are not tied down to just one method of getting your music on the device, and that you are free to use any MP3 file as a ringtone without having to pay extra.
Final thoughts…
All in all, I’m a great fan of Windows Mobile smartphones and the HTC Touch Dual. I’ve been using it for several weeks now with me on the road, and it has not let me down yet. Along with my Blackberry Curve, it has been a great travel companion.
There are a couple of slightly annoying things that I can’t help comment on; the charging/headset port is covered by a rubber flap, which can be quite a hassle to open. The phone also lacks a regular 3.5mm headset jack, so you will have to use the (included) HTC headphones.And finally; the phone does not have Wi-Fi or GPS. The lack of Wi-Fi hasn’t bothered me as much as I had expected; the speeds on 3G are so fast, that I have not had the need for Wi-Fi yet, but if you find yourself in an area without 3G coverage, you will drop back to the slow EDGE or GPRS speeds.
The HTC Touch Dual is not available directly from any operator in the US, which means you’ll have to pick it up “unconnected” from an online retailer like Best Buy, where it sells for $549 or on Amazon.com for $555.99. The advantage to buying an unconnected phone is of course that you do not commit to any long term contract. In closing, I’d like to point out that the 3G in the Touch Dual will not work on the slowly expanding T-mobile 3G network. Only a handful of phones currently work on their “flavor” of 3G.
As with all mobile devices, a new one is always on the horizon, and things are no different with the HTC Touch Dual. Even though this device has only been on the market for a couple of months, newer versions will be here soon.