HTC Touch 3G review

HTC announced three new Touch devices a few months back, the Touch Viva which is a low end device, Touch HD which is a high end device and lastly the Touch 3G device which fits neatly in the middle. It is an updated version of the original ground breaking HTC Touch device that has been so popular over the last 12 months. The most notable updates are HSDPA, GPS and a 528Mhz processor, is it worth upgrading, read on to find out.

What’s in the box

HTC Touch 3G

Battery (1100mAh)

Power Adapter

Screen Protector

Wired Stereo Headset

USB Sync Cable

Quick Start Guide

Getting Started and Application discs

 

On the outside

As this is a Touch device physical buttons are in short supply, you do have a 5 way D-Pad and phone send and end keys on the front but that’s all, the 2.8″ QVGA screen is flush for ease of use with your finger.

The Top of the device has a small on / off button which with a single short press switches the display on and off and with a long press switches the device off completely.

The bottom has the ever familiar HTC Ext USB port which is your charging point and unfortunately the headset jack too, please HTC standardise on the 3.5mm jack it is what we all use. Left side has the volume up and down controls, right side is all clear and the rear is the 3.2 mpx fixed focus camera.

Taking the rear cover off we have the battery compartment, the sim card slot and Micro SD card slots are both at the top right hand side, the battery can stay in place when removing the Micro SD card. The soft reset button is also at the top right of the device under the cover and is the small red button that we are used too with recent HTC devices. The squiggly bit of black flexible plastic goes under the battery with the end sticking up to make removing the battery easy.

Size of the device is very impressive, its quite a bit smaller than the HTC Diamond and is very pocketable. It doesn’t have the Diamond’s good looks but does keep to the traditional looks of the original HTC Touch. If your after a small powerful device this does tick a lot of boxes.

Here is a video look around the device:-

 

Software

Not going to go into a lot of detail here as there is nothing new to report, the TouchFlo 3D has been given a nice dark blue theme and the rather funky flip over clock has been replaced with an analogue clock on this phone.

 

TouchFlo 3D works really well, no lag and very fluid movement between the icons, the more I use it the better the experience it becomes, the start menu has been enlarged too for easy finger navigation.

HTC have included various onscreen keyboard configurations, Phone Keypad, Compact QWERTY, Full QWERTY, and the usual Windows Mobile Transcriber, Block Recognisers etc. The full QWERTY was my favourite to use even with the smaller QVGA screen it was quite accurate to use but text error correction is better on other devices. Third party keyboards like SPB Keyboard 4 improves on the HTC keyboard experience.

The People, Messaging, Mail, Web, Camera, Music, Weather, Settings and Programs Tabs have all been seen on other devices but one new tab has appeared and that is the Maps Search. This tab gives you immediate access to Google Maps to search services etc, a nice new tab to use.

Apart from that there is nothing else to mention on the software side of things, as an upgrade to the original Touch it is definitely worth it for the 3G / HSDPA, integrated AGPS, up-rated processor and RAM which makes the device very easy to use and very fast.

One thing that is missing is a VGA screen, this device would have been fantastic with VGA instead of QVGA in this form factor, because of the QVGA I cannot see any reason why you would buy this instead of the HTC Diamond, at the time of writing there is a price difference of £48.00 with the Diamond being more expensive. For the extra cost you would gain 4 gigs of built in storage, auto focus camera and a VGA screen, the choice is yours.

 

Pros

Size

Performance

GPS

HSDPA

 

Cons

QVGA

Fixed Focus Camera

Price compared to HTC Diamond

 

Specs

Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional

Qualcomm MSM7225, 528 MHz

RAM – 192 MB

ROM – 256 MB

2.8-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with QVGA resolution

HSDPA/WCDMA – Europe/Asia: 900/2100 MHz Up to 384 kbps up-link and 7.2 Mbps down-link speeds

Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE – 850/900/1800/1900 MHz

Bluetooth 2.0 with Enhanced Data Rate and A2DP for stereo wireless headsets

Wi-Fi – IEEE 802.11 b/g

HTC ExtUSB (11-pin mini-USB 2.0 and audio jack in one)

microSD memory card (SD 2.0 compatible)

GPS and A-GPS ready

HTC TouchFLO

4-Way navigation control with Enter button

3.2 megapixel color camera with fixed focus

Rechargeable 1100mAh Lithium-ion battery

102 mm X 53.6 mm X 14.5 mm

96 grams with battery

Warranty 2 Years

Thanks to Superetrader for supplying the review device.