HTC touch pro

HTC Touch Pro, also known as the Raphael. The Touch Pro is basically an HTC Touch Diamond with a new 5 row, slide-out QWERTY keyboard. It comes equipped with high end features like a 2.8" VGA touchscreen display, HSDPA/HSUPA high-speed data, and a 3.2 megapixel AF-capable camera

Introduction
Following on from the release of the HTC Diamond, the HTC Touch Pro (Raphael) is as much high end as you are going to find at the moment. The price tag does match its status and to prove itself as value for money it has to be near perfect......

Like the Touch Diamond the Touch Pro sports HTC's shiny new TouchFLO 3D user interface extensions and home screen. TouchFLO 3D provides users with a high-gloss 3D animated user experience that is backed up with across the board tweaks to make regular applications more finger friendly, so that the Touch Pro should be easily usable with either one hand or two.


The Touch Pro runs version 6.1 of Microsoft's Windows Mobile Professional operating system, and comes equipped with over 256MB of application RAM and a respectable 512MB of internal flash storage space. A SD 2.0 compatible microSD card slot means that users can add even more storage capacity with 8GB or, in the future, 16GB microSD cards. other features of note on the Touch Pro include GPS and WiFi support

The HTC user interface is also easy to use and covers all the practical applications that are used regularly. With quick access to menus such as People, Messages, Email, Internet etc. tap the bottom scroll bar and drag your finger sideways to access all the other application such as Photos, Music, Weather, Settings and finally a customisable Programs. For me it would be nice to be able to customise the scroll bar itself for a more personal touch.


The animated weather screen adds a nice touch, and there is also a dedicated You Tube icon as well.The Touch Pro is Windows 6.1 professional as standard, and as such is fairly standard, programs wise there is not a great deal out of the ordinary, there is Google maps preloaded,the screen was easier to see being clear, even in bright sunlight. Google maps of course worked equally well.
There is a Jetcet Print program allowing you to send and print documents, images, files etc. direct to a wireless network or Bluetooth enabled printer.
An MP3 trimmer application, which allows you to shorten songs and then save your work, as a new file or assign as a ringtone.

Opera 9.5 also installed as standard is a joy on the screen as well with added ability to automatically rotate screen from landscape to portrait, a quick double tap on the screen zooms in to the selected area in a clear and precise way.

Physical design
The HTC Touch Pro has a nice design. Its glossy surface will immediately catch eyes around, but fortunately this is not a readability issue. When you hold it in your hands, it feels a little heavy but its volume is comparable to a Nokia N73 or N96. The stylus is hidden at the lower-right of the phone. It seems to have a nice magnetic retention mechanism that works very well. The EXTUSB at the bottom is the only accessible port (the MicroSD card is near the battery). EXTUSB is compatible with the standard mini-USB port for connecting to a PC, or charging the battery.
This mobile phone is positioned as a business device, thanks to its Outlook Exchange access and Powerpoint video-out capabilities (requires a separate cable) and that's good news because at Ubergizmo we're on an Exchange server. The first good news is: the initial sync to my mailbox was really fast - the fastest of all the Windows Mobile phones that I have tried. I suspect that this is due to Sprint's EVDO network more than to the phone itself, but hey, it's a package, right?

QWERTY keyboard
For heavy texters, having a physical keyboard is a must. However, not all keyboards are not created equal. In order to fit the sliding design, HTC had to make the keys really flat (we noticed that during an initial hands-on). This makes the keyboard harder to use than, let's say, a Blackberry 8800 or 83xx. It is still way better than the integrated virtual keyboard, but I'm under the impression that we're getting only slightly better typing speeds than an iPhone virtual keyboard

All in all, you won't break any typing records while typing on the HTC Touch Pro, at least not without traning. I'm not sure how much better you can get, but I suspect that the physical limits mentioned above are hard to overcome, even with practice.



Touch Display
The display is certainly the strong point of this phone. The 640x480 resolution on a 2.8" display is incredibly crisp and I was able to remove the font smoothing without seeing any artifacts. If you like reading text using small fonts, it's just fantastic (great for long emails!). It has a high contrast and overall is a real asset



Touch Interface

Using a touch interface on a small display is tricky. HTC knows that the default Windows Mobile wasn't built for being used with fingers, so they went on and built a touch-friendly interface called TouchFLO. The result looks good: Big icons and clean design. However, this is no iPhone: slide and scroll with the finger doesn't work very well in some situations because you might press the "menu" button or hit a link in a page or email. There are also user-interface inconsistencies: sometimes, scrolling has a momentum (email, web), sometimes it doesn't. Even if HTC made things a lot better, they cover only the first user interface layer. As soon as you're in Outlook or the settings, the old good stylus-happy Windows Mobile is back.

That explains why using the stylus makes things so much better. All the touch features work normally because the stylus can accurately move around without touching anything that you did not intend to. Typing on the new virtual keyboard is accurate enough to not have to correct your text every other word. If you plan to use this phone heavily, you mgiht have to use the stylus more than you think

Photo quality
The HTC Touch Pro has a 3.2 Megapixel camera. It is a good number, but Megapixels are not really a measure of image quality and you should not expect too much of this phone. The photos are OK on a sunny day, but they tend to be a blurry indoors. It's not unexpected, but this is far from what you can get on a Nokia equipped with a Carl Zeiss phone like the N73

Battery life

The battery life is actually pretty good. This phone did last almost two days before requiring a charge. I set it up to receive push-email and I read/reply fairly often. Plus, WIFI was on although I did not browse a whole lot. That basically means that you can forget to charge it once in the evening and get away with it.

What's in the Box?

• The HTC Touch Pro handset
• 1350mAh battery USB Sync/charge cable
• Mains charger (USB style)
• Application CD and user guide CD
• Spare stylus
• Leather flip case
• Wired headset
• Printed user guide and warranty information

Conclusion
Can HTC Touch Pro live up to the hype? I think it can, it is by far the best phone I have tested; I think it is a great size, not too big or too small. It has all the functionality and speed that I need day to day.
The price tag? Well, anything worth buying is invariably not cheap, and this is no exception, it is relatively expensive in the PDA world, but it is probably the best on the market at this time.
Is it the Ultimate device? It is very close, I am sure they could get it a little thinner in time, the camera and rear speaker could do with an upgrade, in my opinion, that apart it is very impressive.
it has to be said this IS a very nice device, the screen is a pleasure at 480x640 the VGA is sharp and clear and a vast improvement to the usual 240x320. It is touch sensitive and is very responsive, I found that I had to resort to the stylus very little which is a great plus for me. Remember to tap and then drag, it works much better than drag alone.