HTC Touch HD challenges iPhone

29 March 2009 1 views No Comment

The HTC Touch HD was released in December 2008 here in Singapore. It was released as a multimedia phone and I think it is one of the serious challenger to iPhone. I received a loan/review set recently and fell in love with this device. Before that lets take a peek at the specifications.

Specifications

Qualcomm 528MHz processor
Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
microSD card expanded memory
3.8 in 480 x 800 WVGA screen
Bluetooth with A2DP
Wi-Fi b/g
HSDPA
5MP Main camera
FM Radio and G-Sensor

Aesthetics and Form Factor and the in-betweens

Look at the photo, both HTC Touch HD and iPhone 3G look similar in size.

The build is sturdy and feels comfortable in my big hands. Navigation buttons are neatly placed and the bottom. Namely: Call, Home, Back and End(Let to right). These are touch sensitive and give a nice feedback by a short vibration. All actions can be performed by one hand and flexing your thumb. But there are time you might want to use both hands, especially if you decided to use the stylus.

As always HTC’s TouchFlo3D interface looks cool and the response is surprisingly faster in this machine. I have a HTC Touch Diamond and it feels sluggish even though both share the same processor.

Easy accessible shortcuts or submenu give a short vibrating feedback each time it is pressed. Small little features but good one I would say.

With its 3.8inch screen surfing the net on the default Opera browser is a breeze.

Finally, a 3.5mm audio jack for my own headphones. Seriously the earphones that comes with these mobile devices really suck. Maybe I am used to listening on good quality earphones.

This device plays the common formats like MP3 and WMV with a simple Media player.

Since it is touting as a Multimedia phone it better come with good camera. Yes, it does and it is a 5 Megapixel autofocus one. Picture quality is ok but not that great. Sorry to say but I am not a fan of camera phones. I can do without them.

Removing the back cover you can see the battery occupying almost half the space and slots for your SIM and microSD card.

In my testing, a fully charged battery could last a full two days with average usage. I receive 5 to 6 calls, a little twitter via the wi-fi or HSDPA and bit of watching youtube clips.

To make optimum use battery I recommend making few rounds of charging and full discharge. This kind of makes the battery ’seasoned’ to give optimum power.

Conclusion

This phone is a serious challenge to the iPhone. To really put it, this fellow can do whatever or more that the iPhone does. Come on, iphone just added cut and paste to the latest update. Windows Mobile had it for ages.

At the price range of S$1.3k, it could have come with better earphones and with little bit more of internal storage. A 4GB would suffice. If a person wants to expand, he can use the microSD slot.

Having said all this, I feel that it is missing something. The oomph factor that iphone brought in was fantastic.