HTC Touch: Saturating the iPhone Hype

Contrary to what everyone else says, Apple was beaten by HTC to come up with the very first smartphone with innovative touch features. With the iPhone set to launch last week, HTC beat Apple only by a few hours (in Asia that is). I was able to extensively try the TouchFLO interface which basically allows you to flick a proprietary menu up and down from the bottom of the screen.

One thing you will notice about the device is that the screen extends to the very edge of the real estate, unlike all other Windows Mobile devices that has its screen boxed into the metal finish. The Touch’s borders are still part of the screen which allows you to flick your thumb up, down, left and right to access special menus.




At any point in using the device, you can flick up a special menu (drag your thumb from the logo up towards the top of the screen). From here you can flick your thumb to the left or to the right to unveil different menu sets including quick applications selection, speed dialing, as well as MP3 and multimedia capabilities.

Another notable difference is that HTC completely removed the boring Today screen typical to all Windows Mobile devices. Instead, it has replaced it with its own proprietary home screen that displays several huge widgets such as time, date, and the weather. The new home screen is much more intuitive and easier to use.

HTC Touch Fact Sheet

• Windows Mobile 6 Professional


• 2.8”, 240×320 dots resolution with 65,536 colours, LCD touch screen with backlight


• TI’s OMAPTM 850 Processor


• GSM/GPRS/EDGE Tri band: 900/1800/1900 MHz



• 2.0 mega-pixels CMOS image sensor


• HTC TouchFLOTM, 5-way navigation control


• ROM 128MB / SDRAM 64MB DDR


• Bluetooth 2.0; WiFi IEEE 802.11g; HTC ExtUSBTM 11-pin mini USB/audio jack-in-one


• microSD memory card, SD 2.0 compatible


• 112g (with battery) 99.9mm (L) x 58mm (W) x 13.9mm (T)


• 1100 mAh battery


• Built in microphone; 3-in-1 speaker; Windows Media Player supported formats: AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, MP3, WMA, WAV, QCELP, MPEG4, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, MIDI


• Standby time: Up to 200 hours; Talk time: Up to 5 hours



• Bundled Applications Outlook Mobile, mobile email with Direct Push mail, Internet Explorer Mobile, Office Mobile (Word, Excel, Powerpoint), Windows Media Player 10 Mobile, Windows Live, Adobe Reader LE, ZIP, SIM Manager, Comm Manager, Audio Manager, Network Wizard, Cyberon Vice Commander, Sprite Backup (CD), GPRS Monitor (CD), Chinese support through CE-star (in CD for SEAsia and HK English sets only)