HTC Touch Dual review
Can the HTC Touch Dual improve of the massive selling Touch?
INTRODUCTION
The Touch range really made HTC a big name is phone manufacturers. Despite the original Touch being severely limited both in spec and usability, it sold by the bucket load. Now HTC have released a new group of PDAs using the Touch brand. Today we are looking at the 16 key HTC Touch Dual. This device has a normal phone keypad, which slides out from under the screen.
What’s in the Box?
Another great package from HTC, wrapped well, with the phone itself fitting snugly in some soft foam. Once again, it looks like you are buying an expensive phone, and the style and design of the box and packaging is all part of the deal. Take a look at Matt’s HTC Touch Dual unboxing video for more detail.
Inside you’ll find:
HTC Touch Dual specification:
GENERAL
The sliding aspect of the new HTC Touch Dual does not seen to have added much to the ‘thickness’ factor. It’s not exactly chunky then, but its other dimensions do, as you might expect, make it feel fairly cumbersome in your pocket.
On the front we have a similar setup to the original touch, large touch screen, with a silver surround. To the bottom we have the Send and End keys placed either side of a direction pad, with middle action button.
Sliding the phone open with a firm sounding click, the phone pad is visible. The keys aren’t exactly large, but the clear plastic keys looks and feel the part, and it’s very, very easy to type out a text quickly. The number keys are flanked on either side by 3 application shortcut buttons, and an extremely useful back button to the upper right.
On the left hand side, there is a volume control rocker, and rather oddly, the mini-USB port for data and charging. I’ve no idea why it’s been moved here as it was on the bottom of the original Touch.
The right hand side is home to just the camera button.
The bottom of the phone is completely empty of anything interesting – no buttons, connections or anything.
The top is home to the power button… and not a lot else.
On the back of the phone we see the camera and mirror combo, and a speaker grill.
Highlights:
Lowlights:
REVIEW
This is the area HTC are really pushing at the moment. In terms of software bundles, HTC have never really bothered. This has started to change recently, especially with the Touch range, and as you might expect the headline software is of course TouchFlo.
I’m in two minds really about whether TouchFlo is any good or not. The cube is good to show off with, but is it really that useful? I’d say not – especially now the boys from PointUi have released their flashy menu system as well.
However, the lesser known features of TouchFlo are genuinely quite useful. The scrolling with touch is miles easier than trying to find the scroll bar, or using the stylus. The contacts system is also improved with TouchFlo, and the device is a lot easier to use without a stylus now. Finally, a feature I’m not sure is part of TouchFlo, or just a nice HTC add-on – tapping the small title bar (for example to select the volume control), launches a larger version of the taskbar icons, to make it easier to select the correct item! This is something which has been a pain in the bum for many PDA owners, and it is a truly great add-on.
Obviously the big improvement over the original Touch is the sliding keypad. It comes in 20 or 16 key versions, but we’ve got the 16 key here – with a standard phonepad. Interestingly HTC have decided not to bring the 20 key version of the Dual to these shores, instead you’ll have to import one. Our review Touch Dual, therefore, has an xT9 system on it. In the past these xT9 input methods have been poorly implemented on Professional version of Windows Mobile. HTC’s version isn’t perfect – and still does odd things which don’t happen on the Standard version of the O/S. It’s a good effort though, and very usable. Type in a word, and the options appear horizontally along the bottom of the screen.
As well as the nice hardware keyboard, you also get a choice of touchscreen keypads as well. I’ve also found these really hard to use, and much prefer the feel of a true button. However, if you like on screen SIP keypads then you’ll be happy with both the phone pad and a 20 key pad version.
The HTC home application is here, as you might expect, and you can show up to 5 different tabs. It’s not changed much from previous HTC PDAs, but its still another of those features you’d assume is part of the O/S.
However surely the nicest and most impressive “new” feature is the slide detection. On opening the slide, a lovely skinned menu appears, with common activities associated with keypad use. For example, you can select to write an email, or SMS. Maybe add a contact or a new note. It really works well and looks even better. It also closes again after a few seconds if no selection is made. Great stuff from HTC.
Also new to the HTC Touch Dual is the HTC replacement photos app. Gone is the slightly clunky, and extremely boring Photos and Videos, and instead we have a TouchFlo enabled ‘Camera Album’. It’s a great application which, on launch, shows a tile set of all your photos. Touching a photo gently will zoom in slightly, and another tap will make the selected image go full screen with an awesomely smooth fade. In full screen mode ‘gestures’ become available, allowing quick zooms, rotations and navigation options. Again – it works well.
The HTC Audio Manager has been mentioned before, but just as a recap, it’s a nice app which you can use instead or as well as Windows Media Player. Audio Manager appears to support more codecs – both audio and video, and includes an equalizer, and many more options than Windows Media.
The camera application has pretty much the same functionality, but has been given a facelift and now looks similar to the many other TouchFlo/HTC applications with a cool black skin too. The camera itself is a bog standard 2mp sensor, which takes acceptable photos, but nothing special or awe-inspiring.
The HTC Touch Dual also has some 3rd party software in the form of Flash Lite Player. Downloaded YouTube videos work well, which is pretty neat, and you also get Office Mobile and Adobe PDF Reader thrown in if you fancy using it as a work phone. There are also little extras like Bluetooth Explorer to further expand usability. Finally Messenger is also present (and should apparently remain free on Windows Mobile devices for the foreseeable future).
The device seems pretty quick really, despite not exactly being high spec. The processor manages well though, and with HSDPA onboard as well, the interweb fires up and navigators very swiftly, depending on your coverage.
CONCLUSION
As usual for an HTC device nowadays, the HTC Touch Dual is a very polished device, but unlike the original Touch – this phone is actually useful. The new bits and peices of software and utilities that HTC keep adding and improving set this apart from both its older brothers, and other manufacturers.
An excellent phone in its own right, and a massive and welcome improvement over the original HTC Touch.
Review by: Mark
[Post tag(s): smartphone blog, Pocket PC blog, Tracy & Matt, HTC Touch Dual, HTC, HTC P5500]
About the Author: Matt
More than 20 years in the IT industry. Blogging with a passion and thirst for new technology since 2005.Subscribe
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