Review: HTC Touch Pro

The Touch Pro is HTC’s  flagship handheld, bringing together the best bits of the successful TyTN II and the  consumer favourite Touch Diamond. With a near-unrivalled features list, this is a device for the serious power user.

Specs & info

Price: £464 – Buy now from DeviceWire
Operating system: Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
Processor: Qualcomm 528MHz
Memory: 288MB RAM, 512MB ROM
Dimensions: 102 x 51 x 18mm
Weight: 165g
Display size: 2.8 diagonal inches
Display resolution: 640 x 480 pixels
Expansion slot: 1 x microSD

From the front the Touch Pro is essentially the same as the Touch Diamond, maybe just a touch longer. This means all elements sit flush, apart from the centre of the d-pad. From the side it is a different story, with the Pro being significantly thicker. There are still minimal buttons around the edges (just volume and power), and the rear casing is now made from a matt plastic which should prove harder wearing than on the glossy Diamond.

The extra girth has been put to good use. The Pro adds pretty much every feature that was missing from the Diamond, most notably a bigger battery and a microSD. But the main reason for the added weight is the appearance of a keyboard. HTC invented the slide-out qwerty keyboard, and after a number of iterations appear to have finally mastered it. It has a fifth row, for number keys, but this doesn’t result in a compromise on their size. They are large enough, well spaced and have enough travel that they can be hit accurately and at decent speed. They are also loaded with shortcuts allowing to do things like turn wi-fi on. The only thing missing, in fact, is an OK key.

The specs are outstanding. Much of it is now pretty much standard on a mid-high end smartphone: GPS, wi-fi, HSPDA, 3MP camera. But HTC has gone a step further and equipped the Touch Pro with just about every feature you would hope to see, from extra RAM (288MB), to VGA screen to TV-out port (although you will need to buy an additional cable to make this work).

It certainly gives credence to the argument that we have pretty much reached the end of the road in terms of hardware, and that the user experience is now what will decide if a device is a winner or not.

In the case of the Touch Pro it is HTC’s TouchFLO 3D that enhances that experience beyond the norms of Windows Mobile. First seen on the Touch Diamond it has been refined and optimised in such a way that it is now highly responsive. It is the same version seen on the Diamond, a series of tabbed windows that enable you to access common functions of the phone without ever needing to use the Windows Mobile menu system. But it is a shame that it has not been tweaked for the more business-oriented market for the Pro. Ideally, of course, you would be able to adjust the tabs yourself, but since you can’t it might have been a good idea to add an extra tab for office functions, or replace the music tab altogether. Even better would have been to allow Today screen plugins to run simultaneously.

When you slide open the keyboard the screen snaps (instantly) into landscape format. There’s another TouchFLO screen here, this time with eight shortcuts to applications you are likely to use with the keyboard. It is effective, but again not perfect. Shortcuts to web search and bookmarks could have been combined, making room for a Word link. And again, it can’t be customised.

Nothing, though, gets in the way of the device’s performance. It is snappy and smooth in every task. The massive amount of RAM meant we never encountered slowdowns; the GPS got a fix in the pre-installed Google Maps quickly; Opera is a peerless mobile web browser; and the screen had superb clarity, and was responsive enough to the touch that we almost never needed to use the stylus. Only the camera is an obvious candidate for improvement.

The Touch Pro has established itself as one of the best business devices running the Windows Mobile OS. The price tag is pretty uncompromising, but the quality is undeniable.

Essential verdict:

Performance: 9/10
Fast and stable, even with the TouchFLO 3D interface

Design: 9/10
It’s chunky, but the keyboard is amongst the best we’ve seen

Features: 10/10
Only the camera is slightly under-par

Value for money: 8/10
Very expensive, but this is a top of the range handheld

Overall score: 9/10
A very powerful PDA. If you want the best, you can’t go wrong with this

Buy the HTC Touch Pro from DeviceWire

Review originally published in Smartphone & PDA Essentials magazine. Words by Andy Betts.

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