HTC TyTN II Review

Back in 2005, the first information on the HTC Wizard leaked, shaking the world of (Windows Mobile-powered) smartphones. The revolutionary HTC offered large for that time display (2.8 inches QVGA) and small enough body, but still big QWERTY keyboard thanks to the fact it was sliding from the side, instead of vertically as a normal slider. This form-factor became popular quickly and many other manufacturers started using it, now being a common thing. We’ve seen it in various WM phones (ETEN, Toshiba, Asus) and in other devices like the Helio Ocean and the Samsung F700. It proved to be a success; it is not a key feature anymore.

What we have here is the HTC TyTN II, or the Kaiser as it was known before the official announcement. This is the successor of the TyTN (which replaces the Wizard) bringing resemblance in the design, but moving the form-factor to the next level. After the upper part slides and the keyboard is revealed, the Display tweaks at an angle and gives a laptop-like view, which makes it more comfortable to use.

As functionality, the TyTN II is very similar to the first TyTN with all the bells and whistles of the WM6 Professional OS, but it adds GPS chip for Navigation – the only thing that the predecessor lacked. The TYTN II is the first phone to offer TouchFlo, after the original HTC Touch. This shows that the software will be offered in more than one model in the HTC family of devices.

As design, the TyTN II resembles the first TyTN but also brings a whole bunch of changes. It is normally sized WM Professional phone, neither small nor ultra-slim. As our unit was not with retail box it didn’t have case with it, but when it hits the market, the phone will be offered with leather one for attaching to the belt where it is comfortably worn (we used another case).

The TYTN II feels very well in the hand with its rubber-non-slippery back and rounded edges. Sliding it open is done extremely easily, thanks to the robust spring-assisted mechanism. You can push it from anywhere - even from the display . This is a big improvement over the first TyTN which lacks one and has to be slid-open manually. Unfortunately sometimes when you get the phone in your hand the slider slightly opens but fortunately goes back to its normal position because of the spring. Otherwise, the construction is very solid and well made, giving the feeling of a high-end device.

Model	Dimension (Inches)	Dimension (mm)	Weight (oz)	Weight (Gramms)
HTC TyTN II	4.40" x 2.32" x 0.74"	112 x 59 x 19	6.70	190
HTC TyTN	4.42" x 2.28" x 0.86"	112.5 x 58 x 22	6.20	176
Eten M700	4.62" x 2.32" x 0.77"	117.5 x 59 x 19.8	5.82	165
Nokia E90	5.19" x 2.24" x 0.78"	132 x 57 x 20	7.40	210

As we’ve mentioned earlier, the TyTN II comes with unique form factor, reminding of the HTC Shift (UMPC device). After you slide the display and reveal the keyboard, the upper part can be rotated at an angle of about 120-180 degrees, which means that when put at 120 degrees position the display will face towards you, even with the phone left on a table for example.

The rest of the design is very standard, PocketPC-style, with a few navigation keys and large display on the front. It is 2.8” with QVGA and 65k colors resolution which is typical for HTC WM Professional phones and its performance is also typical, with realistic colors. The big improvement we see here is that it is much brighter than the one of the TyTN, but this isn’t really of use outdoors where even at maximum brightness it easily dims and gets unreadable as other touch-screens. Another drawback in such situation is that it reflects almost as a mirror, additionally decreasing the chance to see what is on it. Honestly, we would have preferred to see a VGA (480x640) display with sensor for controlling of the backlight level. Eten (another Taiwanese manufacturer of WM phones) already announced a few PPCs with VGA displays (X800, X500+) and rumors claim that other are in development. As major manufacturer, HTC shouldn’t be late with announcing of such device.

If you prefer to use the phone with one hand, the navigation keys below the display will come to help. They are very similar in design to the ones of the first TyTN but are rearranged. Like Wizard, TyTN had 2 keys above the display and the TyTN II moves them next to the others below it. This results in smaller buttons and it is harder to distinguish one from the other. In pretty tiny area, HTC has fit total of 8 buttons and a D-pad, which isn’t really wise in our opinion but is a compromise, keeping in mind that the display is the main navigation tool. Other keys that help for the one handed usage are on the left side – a wheel and OK key. Above them is a Voice Commands button which is customizable. The right side has the Power key in its upper part and the camera below. The latter has relief, feels easy and presses so, acting as shortcut to the camera and as a two-stepped shutter button. The power key is totally different: it hides in the side and is impossible to feel it by touch. Even when you know its location, pressing must be done with the tip of a finger, otherwise it will not move. We find it very unpleasant as this is the key which turns on/off the display and is very often used. We don’t remember worse power button on any other WM Professional (ex PocketPC) phone.



The full QWERTY keyboard is almost the same as on the predecessor – big keys (as big as the E90’s), tightly fit next to each other. They are slightly raised in the middle but still the relief is just minor and is not easy to distinguish one from the other; as the button’s movement is also minor, the finger easily touches the surface under the key which results in “hard press” feeling, which is tiring after long usage. The Nokia E90 has longer movement of the keys and compared to the TYTN II it feels as a standard computer keyboard.


The whole keyboard is illuminated in white but the alternative characters are in Blue, to differentiate more easily. This backlight is controlled (on or off) by a sensor, depending on the surround light. We would have liked to see similar solution for the display (controlling the level of the brightness) as it will make it more readable in bright light and will help for increasing the battery life, but it seems that we’d have to wait for future model.

On the bottom is the miniUSB connector which is the only one for the phone used for charging, computer synchronization or the connecting headphones. Next to it are the slot for wrist/neck –string, the reset “button” and the microSD slot above, covered by rubber piece. The reset is pressed by the stylus which is in the bottom-right corner, easily felt thanks to the big and relief end. Untypically, it is not telescopic and is one-piece that doesn’t extend which is a plus. On the back are the 3-megapixel camera lens with the speaker next to it (no flash or mirror) and above is the connector for external GPS antenna, covered by easy-to-remove rubber cap.


Similar to the S710 Vox, the SIM card slot is moved to the back of the slider that has the display. A locking mechanism makes sure it will stay securely closed and will open easily when you want to switch the card. We guess it is moved here to reduce the opening of the battery cover to minimum, this way making it way more solid without the typical unpleasant wobbling known from most phones.

TyTN II User Interface

Interface:

HTC Kaiser TYTN II is Windows Mobile 6 Professional device and as a whole, its software and possibilities are almost entirely identical to the other phones using the same operating system. If you know it, then the possibilities offered by the phone including phone book, organizer, messages, media player, etc. won’t surprise you and will be familiar to you. Therefore you should bear in mind that certain problems and positive features of theirs are valid not only for the phone or make’s models, but for the models using this operating system (WM6 Professional), too.

The interface and user-experience are personalized with the TouchFlo technology, which was announced together with the HTC Touch, being the first phone to offer it. The TouchFlo allows scrolling over the screen by drawing a finger over the screen in a diagonal line. It also brings personalized home screen with large icons shortcuts to dedicated menus for faster access to some information or applications. The upper part of the Home Screen houses 5 tabs (in the Touch they were 3) housing information on: 1) Big Clock with new events, 2) Favorite People (9 icons), 3) Weather App, 4) Launcher (9 shotcuts) and 5) Profile Shortcuts.

The other half houses more standard WM6 Interface, with the information shown there being customizable. The Touch opened another dedicated menu when you scroll the finger from the bottom to the top, but is not so with the TyTN. HTC has left this attracting attention feature to the fun-targeted Touch to compete with iPhone and haven’t put it in the TYTN which is supposed to do work.

Phone Book:

The phone book of WM6 is not much different from the phone book of WM5. It has no restriction on the amount of contact that can be added, depends only on the memory available. When you open the phonebook all contacts are displayed as a list; each field consists of the name and the number of the contact, while a letter placed beside them indicates what the type of the number is (w – work; m – mobile, etc.). Pictures are not displayed even if there is one attached to the contact.

The line displayed at the top of the screen is a search field, which starts searching through the names and numbers on entering a symbol – the more symbols you type, the more accurate the match is – it’s quite useful! This one searches all names entered for the contact, but if you want to find by other field like “company” for example, you have to use the “Search” application. There are tabs with different letters (divided in groups of three) just below it. This way you can arrange the contacts so that only the ones beginning with a given letter are displayed. These two search features are quite handy and they make finding a particular contact in the phonebook very quick.

Too bad that’s not the case when adding a new name to the phonebook; the device offers way too many capabilities, including multiple work and home numbers, but there’s only one for mobile –something quite inconvenient as that’s exactly where we wanted to add multiple numbers to. The numerous address, e-mail and other address fields confuse you even further – it would have been a lot easier if the most frequently used fields are highlighted in some way. We would choose this to be done with the Name, Picture, Mobile number and e-mail fields and thus finding them would have been easy, eliminating the need to go through the long list.

Personal photos and ringtones can be assigned to each contact; there’s no restriction on the size of the pictures but they are visualized in very small size even on an incoming call – we think they are useless. You can also add a note to each contact.

The problem of WM5 because of which you couldn’t add an unknown number from the call history to an existing contact, is eliminated here.

Dialer:

You can dial a number not included in your contacts by inputting its numbers. If you don’t open the slider, the phone doesn’t have numeric keyboard and a virtual one is visualized when the Answer button is pressed. Here you can input the desired number. Information on the last dialed number will be displayed and you can call it by pressing the green receiver again.

Pressing the buttons you will start imputing the digits of a possible number, but at the same time you will search the phone book as if imputing a text by a predictive text input system. So, to call John you can press 5-6-4-6 and the matching contacts will be visualized in the list.

Organizer:

Alarms can be directly accessed through the home screen, by tapping on the clock. They are three, and they all can be configured to be active for certain days of the week, and you can also assign names and different sounds to each of them. All alarms can be active simultaneously, and overall they are easy to use and do what they are supposed to. We are rather disappointed that their number is limited to three, as it was in the previous version of the OS.

The next tab in this menu is the clock; there is a field called Visiting next to it which can be used as a World Clock – select another location and the phone starts using its local time. The clock has an option to be displayed on the title bar of all the menus, which is handy.

In the Programs menu you can find your electronic calendar where you can save your appointments. They have fields for subject, starting/ending time/all day event, location, notes. You can use options like: reminder (PRIOR NOTICE 1/5/10/15/30/45 minutes, 1/2/3/4/5/6 hour/day/week), recurrence (Once, Every (same-day-of-the-week), Day (same-date) of every month, Every (same date-and-month) for every year, sensitivity (normal, personal, private, confidential). You can also add attendees (required or optional) from your contacts where e-mail addresses have been added and where meeting requests will be sent.


Examining the calendar can be done by day/week/month and you can choose starting day for the week and the week duration (5-6-7-day week). The appointments for the day are clearly shown in their time limits, so you can see your free time at a glance. This is one of the new things of WM6 compared to WM5.

You have Tasks menu, where you can add to-do items. For a given Task you can set subject, priority (normal, low, high), start/due date, reminder (to be notified if it’s due), category (business, holiday, personal, seasonal) and note. The Task can have recurrence (Once, Every (same-day-of-the-week), Day (same-date) of every month, Every (same date-date-and-month) for every year and sensitivity (normal, personal, private, confidential). Examining the tasks in a list you can easily see which of them are finished and which are not. The tasks options can be: sort by (status, priority, subject, start date, due date) or filter (all, recent, no categories, active, completed).

The Calculator is simple but its buttons are relatively big and can easily be pressed with your fingers. Features like scientific calculator and unit converter are still missing.

‘Notes’ are simple notes in which you can input text by the keyboard or by hand as an image. They can be synchronized with outlook.

Search is an application searching in all files in the phone. You can specify certain types of files (calendar/contacts/excel/messaging/notes/etc), but the best option is All Data which will rummage everything in your phone.

File Explorer is the mobile alternative of Explorer in Windows environment with computers. We use it to view the phone memory, including the system folders of the device which feels like working on a PC.



The voice recorder can record without limitations of duration but the microphone is not good enough for the purpose and even if you hold the phone next to your head you will not hear clearly. It is not of any particular use.

Like the Touch, the TyTN II doesn’t have a good voice commands system but only a possibility for voice dialing of contacts which you have to input in advance. This is quite an inconvenient, clumsy and old system and it’s a pity that the manufacturer has not used something better. The Eten and Nokia smartphones for instance, have a speaker-independent voice commands/dialing system.

Messaging:

Different message types are placed in a single menu - SMS, MMS and e-mails. There is nothing unexpected here. If you don’t want to use the hardware QWERTY, entering text is done by one of the following touch display methods:

• Block Recognizer
• Keyboard
• Letter Recognizer
• Transcriber
  

We always prefer the QWERTY, but otherwise we think that the on-screen keyboard is the fastest and most convenient way to do it, but if you train the other methods, they can also be quite handy! Combined with the T9 predictive system, entering text with the phone is really quick. Still, it must be done with the stylus, as the keys are very small in order to press them with fingers. We are disappointed that Touch doesn’t offers new way to enter text with fingers.

Just a few steps away is the option to add your e-mail account (POP3 or IMAP) and to use it on your mobile phone. Very nice extra is that the phone can try to get the email settings automatically from the internet, and so we configured our Gmail Account by entering only the username and password. Windows Mobile 6 already supports HTML formatted e-mails. The client is very similar to the Outlook on a computer, you can filter your inbox to see just some results, reply to message or forward it to other person.

The support for attachments allows you to download or send one, in addition to the text body. The phone can be set to synchronise with your company Exchange Server.

As standard, Windows Mobile comes preloaded with the mobile version of Live! Messenger (MSN). Windows Live account will be added in Messaging when you add your e-mail account. You can add third party application for other popular instant messengers like AIM, Yahoo! Chat and ICQ.

Connectivity:

If travel a lot, you will surely know how unpleasant it is when your phone doesn’t work in a different country and you have to use another one. For most GSM users, this is thing from the past, thanks to the wide availability of quad-band phones that work on all GSM networks on every continent. But nowadays, talking through the phone is not enough – Windows Mobile phones are pocket computers that are used for Internet, and as GPRS/EDGE are not fast enough, 3G modules are built-in. The sad thing is that like GSMs, 3G (UMTS/HSDPA) networks also use different bands on the different continents (2100 MHz for Europe and Asia and 850/1900 MHz for America/Australia, with 1700 MHz prepared for launch by T-Mobile) which means if the device is optimized for usage in one of the continents group won’t work in the other and vice verse. The Kaiser TyTN II has the same global-roaming features as the TyTN, featuring quad-band GSM and tri-band (850/1900/2100) UMTS/HSDPA which allows it to be 3G used in both Europe/Asia and in the US, over the AT&T’s 3G network. Here it is available as the AT&T Tilt. The Support of HSDPA (3.6MBps) will allow for even faster data than the UMTS. TyTN II will be usable in ANY GSM or UMTS network around the globe, but lacking 1700 MHz won’t work as 3G in T-Mobile US’ future network when it launches.

The TyTN II is based on a Qualcomm MSM7200 chip, which supports HSUPA, or high-speed data upload. Although the chip allows for up to 5.7Mbps (the maximum for HSUPA), the TyTN II doesn't take advantage of it by any means and the upload speed is limited to 384Kbps, standard for HSDPA device.

Standard for a smartphone, WiFi and Bluetooth are available. Bluetooth is mainly used for connecting to other nearby devices, as accessories (earpieces, car-kits, multimedia devices) and for data transfer (transfer of files to/from another phone/PC). Cable connection can also be used, via the miniUSB port.

Like all other Windows phones, you need to have ActiveSync installed on the computer to connect to it. The program will let you easily synchronize the phone (contacts, emails, organizer) with Outlook.

With WiFi you can connect to a wireless LAN network covering you, use it as an Internet source and view the shared documents (input \\name-of-computer in Internet Explorer and you will see what is shared).

Internet:

The mobile version of Internet Explorer is used for internet browsing; loading standard pages in full size is not a problem, because of the relatively high resolution (320x240 pixels) of such devices but you have to scroll horizontally as well as vertically almost all the time. If you want to read a text, it is almost sure you will not be able to fit the whole row in those 240 (or 320 if you put the phone in landscape mode) pixels. Full-screen usage is almost mandatory when the page has loaded.


There is also One Column View option which eliminates the need for horizontal scrolling but increases the need for vertical scrolling. The page is narrowed and thus it changes its initial look.

As it is a Pocket PC, you can always use third party software to replace the original one. We prefer using MicroSoft Deepfish browser instead of Internet Explorer but unfortunately it is still in beta mode.

Camera interface

Camera:

Nowadays it is rare to see a phone without built in camera. Most of the time this are either ultra-budget models, or Enterprise ones targeted to people who are not allowed to bring any kind of camera at their work place. In order to be more universal, the TyTN II series are developed in few versions, just as it was with the TyTN and with the Wizard: the one for European market has 3-megapixel camera and additional one on the front for video calling; the version that is rumored to be offered by AT&T as the 8925 will lack the front-facing camera and a third version will lack both cameras, for those who can’t use phone with any. Currently we are testing the one with two cameras, which most of you have noted by the images.

The interface starts for 3-4 sec. after pressing the shortcut on the right side. It has the same interface as the Touch which is optimized for be operated by finders (has section with large buttons), which is part of the TouchFlo idea. As the camera has auto-focus, in order to shoot the key must be half-pressed to lock the focus and then fully to capture. In bright outdoor light, the focus locks for less than a second which is excellent but in room with average light, the time goes to average of 4 seconds. If it is darker this time increases even more. After it has focused, press the shutter key and when the image is taken press it again to go back to the viewfinder. Saving of the image at maximum quality takes 3 seconds, which is also an excellent result for a phone. This means that in bright outdoor light the camera will take a photo on every 4 seconds. We were surprised by the sound that the camera produces while focusing – it sounds as old school camera lens moving in the phone’s body. Hopefully it can be turned off by the settings.

The images will not make you shake from excitement and are not those which would replace your camera. Although the resolution is very good (3 megapixels) it shows only the size of the photos and not their actual quality. Often the colors are slightly oversaturated in bright light and also most of the photos got burned areas, trying to remove dark ones. The quality isn’t the best one could expect but does the job – overall its quality is average. Indoors, decent images will be obtained in bright light but the darker it gets the lower the quality is.


A camcorder is also present, with option to record in either QVGA (320x240) or CIF (352x288) resolution. It is not as good as the VGA (4 times more than QVGA) of the E90 but will do the job for internet blogs for example. Typical for a phone, the compression is high but the overall quality is good.

HTC TyTN II sample video at 352x288 pixels resolution
* Note that due to codecs support, you may not be able to play the file.

Multimedia:

The second TyTN is equipped with the standard mobile version of Windows Media Player. It is a multimedia player for music and video files. MP3 format is supported, as well as WMA and WAV. After updating the library with files, all supported types are found, and they can be added to playlists. This function is not well implemented and organizing them is quite hard. Songs can be viewed by artist, album and genre, as these are taken from the ID3 tag of the files.


The supported video formats are MPEG4/H.263, WMV and 3GP, while the quality of the latter is pretty low. They can be viewed in fullscreen and the picture quality is quite good and looks very nice on the almost-three-inch display. Although the processor is not very fast, we are happy that no frames are skipped. Unforunately you cannot playback video in MPEG 4/H.264 format which gives the best results.

The options buttons (next/previous, Play/Pause, etc.) are small and inconvenient both during Music and Video playback. When audio files are played, the video visualization window is still displayed, which is a lapse as it only takes up place on your screen. You can have these problems solved by adding new skins for the Media Player or by using another music player.

Being a TouchFlo-capable phone, the Kaiser TyTN II comes with Audio Manager which has interface optimized for control with fingers. You can sort your music in play-lists, by artist, album, genre and composer. While listening to music, the interface has comparatively large and easy to press buttons.

Listening to music is not the strongest side of new HTC business phone – it has only one small play speaker which is weak even at maximum volume. This could be expected from a phone which is not designed for music in the first place, so we switched on the earpieces of the set with the hope of making things better.

Unfortunately we were disappointed – although looking well, the earpieces sounded with low quality for listening to music. They are more suitable as a wired handsfree only. If you want to listen with higher quality, a miniUSB to 3.5mm stereo jack must be obtained. A2DP can also be used to connect Stereo Bluetooth accessories.

Software:

128 MB RAM / 256 ROM Internal memory capacity can be expanded through the microSD card slot. It comes preinstalled with Task manager, which is located on the top right corner of your homescreen. Here you can tap and close the loaded applications in a second, in order to free RAM memory.

WM for PPC provides unlimited capabilities for installing software. The only restrictions are the memory available and the hardware of the phone. The first problem is easily solved by getting a memory card as there are microSD cards with capacity of up to several GB. Every WM6 Professional phone comes with programs that are modified, “pocket” versions known PC applications. Such programs are the mobile versions of (Microsoft) Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Explorer, Media Player, etc. The Office applications allow you to view and edit documents of the most-used types and the phone opens them without any error. Even a complicated Excel document with a few sheets is not a problem. TyTN II also has Adobe PDF Reader preloaded, which like the Office works flawless. We opened a big document (1.5MB) and scrolling through pages, when zoomed to 100% is almost immediate. Many more programs could be downloaded from third party sources.


There are numerous programs created for this platform, almost as much as the ones intended for PCs with Windows operating system. The most popular are the various utilities for personalizing the PPC, multimedia players, file explorers, Instant Messengers, etc. You can download third party applications to be used instead of the preloaded ones.

Performance:

We used Spb Benchmark to compare the TyTN II system performance with other PocketPC Phones. In real-life usage, it isn't noticeably faster than the first TyTN (with WM6) and acts just normally fast.

As our unit is not with final software it cannot conduct a continued call without blocking, so we will not test the actual battery times. Packed with 1350 mAh battery, HTC claim 6 hours of Talk time and 400 hours of Standby. Using a battery with the same capacity, the first TyTN is claimed for 5/250 hours which means that the newer one is more energy efficient, probably thanks to the new display.

We are rather disappointed by the reception of the phone, being at the average level (5 out of 10). Still it is usable in any area with normal signal and you may have troubles only at places with weak one.

We are pleasantly surprised by the TyTN II call quality – we have no complaints about it as it is excellent. The outgoing sound is very realistic and clear and with strong volume, while you hear with extremely high volume that is enough for very noisy environment. In this case, the voices are slightly muffled but clear and if you turn down the volume a few steps it will be strong enough for most situations but with excellent sound quality.

Conclusion:

The Second TyTN is a welcome addition to the HTC family, being the Kaiser of the brand. It is worth naming it TyTN as it adds just what the phone needed – GPS chip for navigation. We are happy to see that the voice quality has been improved, the construction is moved to the next level (tilt display design, spring assisted mechanism and rubber back) and the software is customized with the TouchFlo technology we’ve known from the Touch. The TyTN II is almost excellent phone for those searching for a WM6 Professional device, featuring global GSM and 3G roaming, WiFI, GPS and QWERTY in a well-size body, when compared to the E90 for example. The only thing we don’t like about the phone is its display which although brighter is still rather unusable in bright light, and remains with QVGA resolution which is now not enough for a high-end phone.