Harvsingh, reviewer at ApoTheTech did a HTC TOUCH HD review few months back (even before it was officially released in some countries). However, this time we are going to review it from a different perspective – AS A MOBILE INTERNET DEVICE. If you have been following the windows mobile scene from the past couple of years, you must have observed that the display size of the mobile phones has decreased in size over the years. Whether we all like it or not, but it was the iPhone that brought the big screen to attention to the mobile phone manufactures.
Specifications:
- 3.8-inch WVGA display
- 800 x 480 resolution
- 288MB RAM
- 512MB ROM
- Wifi, BT
- GPS
- HSDPA
- 5MP auto focus camera (no flash)
- Opera 9.5 for Internet Browsing
- Video calling
- Skype (no video calling)
- Windows Mobile 6.1 (can run Windows Mobile 6.5 although the upgrade is not official)
On the paper, the HTC TOUCH HD looks very impressive as a phone, but it the first device from HTC that can be seriously considered as a MID. You may argue that the HTC Advantage was the first MID. Well, I guess that was too big to be pocketable and I believe MIDs should be able to easily fit in pockets.
Alright, back to the topic: How is the Internet experience?
The Touch HD has a WVGA display and this is the same one that was used in the first generation of the ASUS EEE PCs (EEE 700 series). Imagine all that display squeezed into a 3.8-inch display. The display is very crisp and breathtaking to look at.
Just like the recent HTC devices, HTC has bundled Opera Mobile 9.5 which offers great Internet experience. The Opera Mobile works fine for rendering even complex webpages. Although the pages take somewhat longer to load than the Safari Mobile (found on iPhone/iPod Touch), but once loaded, everything works fine the way it should. I’ve been told that the upcoming versions of Opera will be able to play youtube and other streaming videos within the webpage.
Note that in iPod Touch/iPhone, you cannot view the videos in the webpage.
The back button on the front takes you to the previous page. All the buttons provide the user with haptic feedback. Haptic feedback produces little vibration to make the user feel that a button press was registered by the device.
Display Sensitivity
The display is very sensitive. It is equivalent to the sensitivity of the ASUS P565 (world’s fastest windows mobile phone). It may not be capacitive, but then you are not restricted to use only your fingers (not even finger nails). You can use the supplied stylus too, which is held by a magnet in its silo.
Music Quality
Since, it comes with 3.5mm headphone jack, you can plugin your high-quality earphones to listen to music. The music quality is great through the earphones.
There are dedicated volume buttons on the left side of the unit to turn the volume up and down.
Camera
It comes with a 5MP camera located at the back of the unit. It takes decent pictures although not as great as the ones taken by Nokia N95.
The camera software provides touch focus, which lets you focus on the desired area.
Here are couple of pictures taken by me at its full resolution:
The 3.8-inch display is huge and make the navigation very finger friendly. It is absolutely stunning to look at. It is 0.3-inch bigger than iPhone too!
Price: It costs $800-$900. I know it is a little too high for some of you but it is a great MID which also doubles as a great phone.
mobile shoppingt:
The benefits of the atom processor can be seen in most mobile phones.
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