A decent piece of hardware let down by poorly designed software (HTC Touch HD)

Member Name: agarciavalino

Product:	HTC Touch HD
Date:	28/10/09 (16 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Well designed and sturdy piece of hardware. touch flow interface improves Windows 6.1, Good specs

Disadvantages: Touch flow isnt able to make up for failing in Windows 6.1, often fiddly to navigate and type

Easily the best looking HTC phone to date with its glorious 3.8 inch screen. I have been using this since its release and it has proved to be reliable and generally a pleasure to use.

Build Quality: The phone was well packaged and on opening the device seemed to be sturdy and well built. The charger however was adaptive meaning it wasnt purpose built for the UK market, instead opting to have a standard charger with changeable connections depending on the country you are located in. The phone came with a little pouch where the phone can be placed for protection however I never found this useful as it made answering unexpected calls a bit of a faff. The phone also came with 2 stylus's, one located in the bottom right corner (held in using a mild magnet to avoid it dropping out). The second stylus was simply a spare. The phone felt weighty and solid. The front is in black gloss surrounding the TFT screen and the back is a matt black, textured finish. The setup within the phone for the sim card, battery and Micro SD card is uncluttered and easy to navigate.

Using the Phone: On turning the phone on the boot up takes a while, more comparable to PC's than the mobiles of 5 years ago. The user interface that HTC have created (Touch Flow) to tac over Windows 6.1 was a suprise and a pleasure to use. Windows however is still difficult to use when you enter the start menu with small buttons and even though the phone has one of the most responsive screens I used outside of the Iphone, its still not accurate enough to easily navigate the fiddly windows menus. Using the keypad can also be fiddly and still hasnt quite caught up with the seemingly untouchable Iphone on usability. Windows 6.1 also seems to suffer from an application drought with very few available. Whilst it is hard for me to fault the phone itself, I question whether this phone would be a lot better using as operating system like Google Android.

Overal I would say this was an amazing piece of hardware simply let down by poor software. Whilst this is the best Windows Mobile powered phone available it still trails behind other competitors when it comes to 3rd party software and usability.

Summary: A great effort from HTC though their choice of software is questionable

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