Windows Phone Thoughts - Daily News, Views, Rants and Raves

"Alright T-Mobile, seriously, how can you charge $299.99 for a Wing on contract with a straight face (do carriers have faces?) while every single one of your competitors is rocking a device that's essentially two generations fresher for the same price? Alltel becomes the latest to add HTC's quintessential WinMo QWERTY smartphone to its stable, charging $279.99 for the privilege of adding a Touch Pro to your account on contract after $100 rebate."

If Alltel is available in your area, you might want to check out the HTC Touch Pro as it's now an option for a pretty reasonable $279.99. You can check out more at Alltel's website, which for the record can be a bit of a pain to use. In order to see any of Alltel's phone options, you have to plug in your zip code and Alltel doesn't have a presence in my area. So, after trying a random zip code for Atlanta and even New York, I ended up using a Little Rock, AR zip code (Alltel's home city) just to see the phone. Why can't they at least offer some basic information without making it a hassle? Do tell, Alltel. OK, rant off. Enjoy the HTC Touch Pro or consider ordering it unlocked from our affiliate site.

"I had an opportunity to check out the HTC Touch Pro aka Raphael smartphone at an informal meet up with HTC earlier today. According to HTC, the Touch Pro is the company’s Touch Diamond (but more) and by more it is beefier in thickness due to a slide up 5-row QWERTY keyboard. To an untrained eye, the HTC Touch Pro may look just like the Touch Diamond. Other than the more rounded edges, they’re nearly identical. I found that the keys on the Touch Pro are smaller than those on other HTC QWERTY smartphones like the T-Mobile Wing or the Tilt for AT&T, but they’re still usable and have a good feel to them."



Vincent Nguyen from Slashgear got to spend some hands-on time with the HTC Touch Pro, and has collected some photos and thoughts on it. I'm a bit surprised at how thick it looks - measurement wise, it's basically the same thickness as the HTC TyTn II, but in the photos it looks bigger. Perhaps because it's all black and looks like one thick slab instead of two joined pieces? The HTC Touch Pro is a powerful device, but I have a hard time with the thickness of slider devices like this. I wonder how it feels in the hand? Check out the video after the break. Read more...

If you looked at the HTC Diamond and thought "Nah, I need a keyboard", heads up: this might be the phone for you. Featuring much of the same look and feel of the HTC Diamond, the HTC Touch Pro boasts HSDPA and HSUPA connectivity (up to 7.2 mbps - glorious!), the same 2.8 inch VGA screen as the Diamond, a 1350 mAh battery, 512 MB of flash ROM storage, 288 MB of RAM (what a curious number - why not 256 MB?), microSD expansion, GPS capabilities (no real GPS, only AGPS? Really?), built-in TV-out functionality, and a 3.2 megapixel camera. The full press release is below, followed by a bunch of images of this beautiful device. So what are your impressions? Is this your next device, or does it fall short in some way?

"Taipei, Taiwan — June 4, 2008 — HTC Corp., a global leader in mobile phone innovation and design, today unveiled its advanced next generation business phone, the HTC Touch Pro™. Bringing a beautiful new angle to mobile business productivity, the HTC Touch Pro utilizes similar styling and functionality of the highly anticipated Touch Diamond™ and introduces a variety of business-focused enhancements that make getting work done on the go quick and easy.

“The HTC Touch Pro and Touch Diamond have created a new generation of HTC touch devices that make the promise of the one-hand, one-touch mobile Internet a reality,” said Peter Chou, president and CEO, HTC Corp. “HTC Touch Pro is for those customers that demand the ease of use and enjoyment of TouchFLO™ 3D and want the styling of the Touch Diamond but also need the powerful mobile business experience that HTC delivers.” Read more...