HTC Touch HD Review

Since we have extensive experience with all types of phones, we rarely see something that makes us gasp or eagerly wait for it to see the light of day. HTC’s Touch HD is one of those devices. When the world’s leading manufacturer announces its most feature-rich phone ever people stop and take note, and we were no different.   The Touch HD has the potential to become the best ever device running  WinMo, but can it live up to that potential?

Design:

Let’s analyze its name – Touch HD. The first word shows that the device belongs to the Touch series, known for its optimized interface in order to be finger-friendly. But what does HD stand for? HTC doesn’t explain it but we know it very well - High-definition, i.e. high resolution images/videos.

This is the key feature for the Taiwanese monster. The large 3.8” display has a WVGA resolution of 480x800 pixels. To give you a better idea we’ll tell you that this is 4 times larger than OMNIA’s (standard for widescreen) and 2.5 than iPhone’s resolution – impressive! This not only gives better DPI (dots per inch) ratio, but is handy for viewing text and Internet pages, visualizing more content. The color reproduction is at a good level when viewing pictures despite the OS limitation of 65,536 colors. We are impressed with its sensitivity;it’s resistive, meaning it reacts to pressure rather than touch like the iPhone. While it compares favorably in sensitivity, the iPhone is much better in direct sunlight.  The Touch HD turns into a 3.8” mirror.



You can compare the HTC Touch HD with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The first thought that comes to mind after seeing the device is “It is huge!”, but we think it’s actually small for what it offers. It’s not easy having a very small phone with a large display. HTC has done a great job and HD’s face is slightly bigger than its display. Nevertheless, the quality build is visible and the device feels solid. It’s not metal, but the rubber-coated back is very nice to the touch. The same material has been used for the side buttons (volume rocker on the left and power on top), аnd in combination with their shape (narrow but long rectangles) and relief they are simply excellent. Even though we’re not completely sold onthe touch sentive buttons on the front, they still perform OK.





The large display and the quality make definitely make a good impression but we are slightly disappointed from the package the phone comes in and its contents. It’s not that there’s something missing – we have a case, beautiful charger, cables, handsfree and even an 8GB card, but everything is jammed in the box, as if there was no attention to detail...

HTC Touch HD’s hardware is really impressive, but its software is not revolutionary at all as opposed to the G1. The high-definition model runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional with HTC’s TouchFLO 3D, we’ve seen in Touch Diamond and Touch Pro. We think that this is the best personalization of this OS, but we would’ve liked to see some substantial innovations here.


For those of you who are not familiar with TF3D we’ll say couple of words; the standard home screen is replaced by an interface with about 10 tabs, which give you direct access to specific functions – favorite contacts, messages, music, weather forecast, etc. There is additional personalization like keyboards for example. Please read Touch Diamond’s review for more information. There are small differences introduced with the HD – we now have a new tab “Stocks”, to help business people stay updated with stock index changes. In case that you don’t care about such a function, you can deactivate it or rearrange the tabs as you like – an option that should’ve been available from the very beginning. Another new thing is the incoming call screen – it is very reminiscent of the iPhone, with a slider used to accept or reject a call.


We were up for a surprise opening the phonebook. Starting from the CDMA variant of the first Touch, HTC has offered their Random Access bar with all the letters on the right, to assist you sort your contacts by name. In the HD, this option has disappeared, but thankfully there are no other negative changes. The type and number of the on-screen keyboards have remained the same but using them on a 3.8” screen is much easier, because they are bigger. We still think that the QWERTY found in the Pixon is much better. It visualizes when the phone is viewed in landscape mode, offers larger buttons and vibration upon pressing, which reduces the mistakes. HTC should take some notes.


As we’ve said in the beginning of the review, the large screen can be helpful for reading. We opened the browser (based on Opera Mobile 9.5) and loaded phoneArenа. Thanks to the screen and the excellent software it was a very pleasurable experience. This version comes with the option to change the zoom level, via a scroll in the bottom of the screen. This way is easier ( though not as easy as Safari’s multi-touch gestures) to set it up so you can view more contents.


While viewing pages is easy with other phones with Opera Mobile 9.5 as well, we can’t say that for the document viewing features (PDF or Microsoft Office). The resolution and the size of the display have a great influence; HD is simply a pocket book. Viewing a large file like the user manual in PDF is very convenient. We had no troubles with any Word documents either, but bear in mind that this is not a laptop and when we tried to open a 3.5 MB .DOC file of 550 pages, we waited a few minutes for the HD to load it.

Let’s not forget that high definition is mostly used for video playback, and we should take a look at the performance of this multifunctional phone. The YouTube player is cool like always but doesn’t offer quality video. Lately, the market has been flooded with models with great video support (including DivX and XviD) and with large screens. Unfortunately, straight out of the box the HD is not one of them. The only clips that plays (MP4 with H.264) have the potential for good quality but are choppy if they are in high resolution (over 640 pixels wide), needed for this screen. To say the least, we were disappointed but never lost hope. We installed Core Player, but nothing changed – we were able to play all types of files but they didn’t run smooth, and the image quality was bad, because of the many artifacts visible.  According to HTC, the cause was Core Player's lack of hardware acceleration. So basically you’ll have to rely solely on the built-in player, which has quite limited functionality. HTC still hasn't responded to our questions regarding the troubles we experienced with the few formats it supports. Any additional information we receive will be posted here.


We wonder if the rest of the applications will help the big guy?

The music player is not modified and is identical to the one seen in the other TouchFLO 3D phones, but we have nothing bad to say – it’s not an iPOD, but is very easy to use and beautiful. Usually, HTC scares the music fans away with the miniUSB headphones but this has been corrected in the Touch HD, which comes with a 3.5mm stereo jack on the top. This will allow the use of better headset and therefore improve the music sound level. Do not expect anything that nice from the speaker – it’s neither loud, nor can produce quality sound.


The phone really comes with a lot of functions but there’s nothing surprising besides the display. Since this is a top-shelf Windows Mobile smartphone, it naturally offers many business features. Usually though, such a phone wouldn’t come with a quality camera. Currently the OMNIA is the leader with its 5-megapixel sensor, good picture quality and a very user-friendly interface. When it was announced, the HD also sounded like a phone with great camera. Unfortunately this did not prove correct during our testing. The interface is minimalistic, and similar to the iPhone’s, with an icon for shooting only. HTC introduces a few extras but they could’ve done a better job with the menu. If at least the pictures were good that wouldn’t have been such a problem but alas, they are not. Even outdoor pictures taken during the day do not have good quality; incorrect exposure, unreal colors and a low detail level are the main issues. Since there’s no flash we won’t even talk about indoor pictures.

Conclusion:

We were excited when we started testing the phone, hoping that we’ll see something great and revolutionary. Sadly, the reality is different. Hardware-wise, the Touch HD is impressive with a large display and excellent build quality. As a phone, it offers many functions and a very good sound during a call, but the software is not innovative at all. TouchFLO 3D, which we’ve seen in Diamond and Pro is the best for a WM smartphone, but not for a multimedia device what we wanted to discover in the HD. The music player is good, we can live with the mediocre camera, but why the bad video capabilities and not the multiple codec/format support like seen in the rivals? This would have made it possible for the users to really enjoy HD clips. So far, the Touch HD is a good smartphone but doesn’t have what it takes to be a good multimedia phone. As we’ve said before, we hope this will be fixed by future software updates, making the HD the best Windows Mobile device available. What we would really love to see is Android on that beautiful screen, but that’s not expected officially.