Home > Mobile and Wireless

Computerworld - Slowly, mobile phone vendors are responding to Apple Inc.'s iPhone by releasing smart phones with touch-based interfaces. One such phone, the HTC Touch, was released previously in Europe and Asia and is finally coming to the U.S. on Nov. 4, via Sprint Nextel Corp.

The Touch is a Windows Mobile 6.0 smart phone that employs an interface that HTC calls TouchFLO. The interface lets you use a single finger to do most of basic smart-phone tasks such as making calls, setting up e-mail accounts, reading e-mail, connecting to the Web and listening to music.

HTC claims that there won't be significant differences between the European/Asian versions, which we reviewed,

and the U.S. version other than the fact that the U.S. version will work over Sprint's EV-DO 3G (Evolution Data Optimized third-generation) service but won't support Wi-Fi. Of course, Sprint will also customize it slightly to support proprietary offerings such as its Sprint Music store but, overall, our European review unit is very similar to what will be available in the U.S.

If the iPhone did nothing else, it changed the game for mobile devices, particularly how we interact with them. So is HTC's Touch worthy to stand in the same company as the iPhone?

Out of the box

Out of the box, the HTC Touch is quite nice. It has a soft-touch finish, which, along with its rounded edges and compact size, snuggles up nicely in the hand. I love small, and the Touch is just that at 3.9 by 2.3 by .55 inches and weighing 4 ounces. I was also immediately struck by the generously large 2.8-in. display, which supports 65,536 colors at 240 by 320 pixels.

Other hardware features include a slot for microSD cards, which you'll need for music, picture and video storage. The Sprint Touch will come with a 512MB card, but the unit supports cards with capacities up to 4GB.

The standard software packaging includes what you'd expect from a Windows Mobile device: support for Bluetooth 2.0, Windows 6.0 Mobile Professional, Office Mobile and voice-activated dialing, as well as support for most Windows-based mobile applications.

When I turned the Touch on, I was immediately impressed by high-resolution screen. Knowing this was a touch interface, I dove right in.

TouchFLO 101

Most smart phones have navigation buttons at the bottom, programmable hardware buttons and "soft buttons" that let you customize the functions you need into a touch-button interface.

By contrast, perhaps reflecting the touch interface, the hard navigation buttons on the HTC Touch are relatively few. Most notably, on the front is the rocker navigation button and talk and end keys for the phone.