Windows Phone Thoughts: No Job for Amateurs - HTC's Touch Pro2 Reviewed

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Thursday, August 20, 2009

No Job for Amateurs - HTC's Touch Pro2 Reviewed

Posted by Doug Raeburn in "Pocket PC Hardware" @ 07:00 AM

Viewing From All Angles

Figure 1: The front of the Touch Pro2, simple and elegant.

There's quite the assortment of items on the front panel. From left to right across the top, you'll find the notification LED, the earpiece, the light sensor and the lens for the second camera. (The latter would be used for video calls, a feature that as I understand won't be included in the NA version.) Just under the screen, you have the Zoom bar, which takes the place of the "run your finger around the edge of the directional pad" zoom method from the Touch Pro1.

The control keys are located, in typical fashion, near the bottom of the front side of the unit. If industry scuttlebutt is correct, the layout of the keys conforms to Microsoft's specification for WinMo 6.5 and later units. Starting from the left, that layout includes the Talk/Send key, the Start key, the Back key and the End key. The layout features 4 keys, the same number as on the Touch Pro1, but the Start key is new to the Touch Pro2. It displaces the Home key, the functionality of which is moved to the End key, which works as the End key when you're on a call and as the Home key when you're not. The keys are backlit in bright white and they can be identified even when they're not lit (a beef I had with the latter being missing on the Acer F900).

Figure 2: The top is another simple view.

The only control on the top of the Touch Pro2 is the Power button.

Figure 3: One control on the left side as well.

The Volume Up/Down control is the only one that appears on the left side.

Figure 4: No controls on the right side at all.

On the right side, you'll find one of the microphones and the stylus. The stylus is longer and easier to use than the very short stylus featured on the Touch Pro1. Unlike the Touch Pro1, there's no magnetic assist to pull the stylus into the unit when it's partially inserted. Like the Touch Pro1, the backlight automatically comes on when you remove the stylus.

Figure 5: On the bottom, you find the "jack of all trades" mini-USB port.

The bottom features the other microphone and a "semi-proprietary" connector for syncing, charging, connecting earphones and connecting an optional composite video/audio cable. I call it "semi-proprietary" because it looks like a standard mini-USB port but has a slightly different shape. This port will accept a standard mini-USB cable, but the cables included with the Touch Pro2 that feature the unique connector design won't fit in a standard mini-USB jack.

Some of the carrier specific designs of the Touch Pro2 feature a standard 3.5 mm earphone jack, but not the version reviewed. Most people prefer having the standard jack because it doesn't require carrying a dongle to allow earphones with standard jacks to be used. Also, that design makes it easy to charge the phone while using the earphones. The rumor mill claims that HTC designs moving forward will all feature the standard jack. It also claims that this is based on an updated design specification from Microsoft.

Figure 6: The back has all of the components of a top notch speakerphone.

The back of the Touch Pro2 has more going on than most WinMo Pro phones. The lens for the 3.2 MP autofocus camera appears here. A new feature is the dual speaker with noise cancellation on the back of the phone, designed to improve the Touch Pro2's performance as a conference room speaker phone. Since the phone would be face down to use those speakers to their best advantage, HTC have provided a mute button to use when the phone is used in that mode.

Figure 7: That's quite the massive battery!

The battery is very large and thin, covering almost the entire back of the unit when in place. In some other reviews that I've read for other variants of the Touch Pro2 (the T-Mobile version), reviewers complained that the SIM card was hard to remove. The version reviewed here has a slightly different design than the T-Mobile unit, with a small notch at the rear of the card slot where you can insert the stylus tip and push the card out. So I didn't have any problems removing the SIM card. The slot for the microSD card is just to the right of the light colored square that you can see in Figure 7 on the right side of the unit. One downside is that you must remove the rear cover to access the card.

Figure 8: And here we have the Touch Pro2's pièce de résistance, the QWERTY keyboard.

Here's the Touch Pro2 with its keyboard extended. It's a very nice keyboard, with large, well spaced keys and good travel and feel. I rarely hit the wrong key, which resulted in fast input, though just a bit faster than the speed I'm able to attain with a good onscreen keyboard. The tilt of the screen is also adjustable when the keyboard is opened. The bottom line is if hardware keyboards are your preference, I'm sure you'll like the one provided with the Touch Pro2.

One negative, however... HTC made few concessions to controlling things from the keyboard when they added it to their top-of-the-line touch enabled phone. There are no keyboard mnemonics available to access commands or access to the Start Menu from the keyboard. To do what you want to do, you frequently have to touch the screen, which can disrupt your input process. Better integration of the keyboard into more than just text entry would have been welcome, since the keyboard is such a prominent feature of this phone.


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