When my contract was due an upgrade last year, I spent ages looking around for the best touchscreen phone. I had never had a touchscreen phone before, so had spend a considerable amount of time, to find the best phone I could get at the time. It was a toss up between the HTC Touch HD and the iPhone, however, back then, the iPhone was only available on O2 and I cant stand O2, (Orange all the way) so I plumped for the Touch HD.

The Design and layout of the phone. 4/5

The Touch HD is made of black plastic, which results in it not looking or feeling as smart and sophisticated as the iPhone, which lets face it is the phone to beat these days. It has four buttons on the bottom which are, make a call, home, back and end call. These allow you to make calls, go back and go to the home screen quickly. There is a stylus hidden away in the left side of the phone, it's held there by a little magnet and it really needs a good pull to get it out. Which means that it's harder to lose, though the phone does come with a spare. There is a little button at the top left of the phone, which allows you to turn the screen off and there is a 3.5mm headphone jack, which means you can plug any headphones in, unlike other phones where you have to use their rubbish own headphones. There is also a volume button on the right side of the phone, which allows you to adjust the ringer and call volume. The only criticism I have about the layout of the phone is the volume button. When the phone is locked you can still adjust the volume, so when you get your phone out of your pocket, naturally you hold it by the sides, which can turn the ringer volume up or down!

The screen. 3/5

The screen is a large at 3.8 inch wide and has 480 X 800 pixels. Which really does look brilliant! I don't think it's quite as crisp and colourful as the iPhone screen, however the difference is so tiny that you can't really notice! The HTC Touch uses a pressure sensitive screen, which means that it detects where the majority of the pressure is and presumes that this is where you are clicking. This means that the Touch does not support two finger clicking, like the iPhone, although it doesn't make that much difference in all honesty, as to zoom you just double tap.
However this does affect the sensitivity of the screen. The overall sensitivity is good, you can use a tap of your finger for the vast majority of the time, but if you need to do some fiddle little taps, such as highlight text to copy, you will need the stylus. Comparing the screen's, between the HTC touch and the iPhone, the iPhone wins hands down every time.

The camera 4/5

The camera is a 5mp with auto focus and while it's not the best camera on the market, it's by no means the worst! The pictures look very good while on the screen, however does suffer a bit when put onto a computer and enlarged. The zoom works ok, but as you zoom more and more the picture quality does decrease. There is also no flash, which means that the picture suffers if there isn't enough light. And, if like me, you used to use the flash to light the stairs up on a Saturday night, as you crawl back from the pub, you will really miss it. I also couldn't find a zoom option when viewing pictures that I'd taken or pictures that I had put onto my phone, not sure if it's just me not being able to find it thought.

Usability 3/5

The HTC Touch operates on Windows 6.1 and HTC have installed their own interface called TouchFLO. While it's not the easiest phone in the world to use, due to it using Windows, it does offer you the option to change almost everything and that's something I like about this phone! Most of the day to day operations are within a tap or two and if you uses something more often than something else you can move it so it's easier to access. Typing on the screen is very easy, maybe not quite as easy as the iPhone, but not far off at all. The load time when turning it on is horrific, it takes well over minute in order to be ready to go, however loading pictures or contacts is fairly quick, as quick if not faster than the iPhone 3g. The battery life is ok, I have to charge it every other day, which beats the iPhone, however playing music and using the GPS does seriously drain the battery! The Touch is charged via a USB2 connector socket at the bottom of the phone, which means that as long as you have a cable, and most cameras uses USB2 cables I found, you could charge it almost anywhere. Which is brilliant as it means that you don't have just the one charger and if you loose that then you're in serious trouble as you can't charge the phone.

Sound quality. 4/5

Overall the sound quality when on a call is very good, there is very little background noise and the signal holds well. The speaker on the phone is fairly rubbish for playing music out loud, but when listening using headphones it was very good.

Overall. 3.5/5

Ok, it was never going to be an iPhone killer, Windows just isn't on the same level of user friendliness as the iPhone. But other than that and a few little bugs, this is a very good phone. I like the size of the screen, even though it's sensitivity let's it down it's still a good screen. The ability to change almost every aspect of windows for me is a big plus, however it's not enough to beat the brilliance of the iPhone. Don't get me wrong the iPhone has its flaws, like being unable to run multiple programs, which the Touch does brilliantly. However the iPhone is just on the next level and while the Touch isn't a bad phone it's not on the same level, if they can improve the screens sensitivity, lock the volume button when the phone is locked and improve the usability of windows, then this would be the much sort after iPhone killer.