HTC Touch HD Phone

So to answer Omo’s question, it was the HTC Touch HD that I bought instead of this. And after owning the phone for a little over 24 hours, I can easily say it was well worth the cost and 100x better than if I ever got the Macross Frontier Itiban-kuji Premium Full Complete Set!

Honestly I wanted to do a quick and dirty shaky cam review of the phone so everyone could see and hear it in action, but due to still not having a door, all the upstair noises would drown me out. Well google is your friend so if one does a quick search for reviews, you’ll get a better idea of the stats and can even see comparison videos to other HTC phones.

Instead I’ll just rant and rave about some of the features while folks can look at some photos to see how beautiful the screen is Starting with the screen, resolution is 480×800 although I was surprised to find all sample wallpapers/avatars made at higher resolutions. Wallpaper resolutions like 1200×2000 really made it difficult for me to find any decent scans/photos but as one can tell, I pulled through somehow ^^;;

On the first photo, that’s HTC’s TouchFlo 3D homescreen which shows time/date, wallpaper, and any upcoming calendar events you may have. And for folks that do not know, TouchFlo 3D is basically an application HTC put on top of the standard Windows Mobile OS to make it look slicker and easier to use. On the bottom of the screen are basically the sub sections you can access with a flick of your finger (or stylus if you would like); favorite contacts, messaging (SMS/MMS), mail (Internet/Exhange), Internet (Opera Browser), music, weather, favorite programs, and settings. There are also shortcuts for photos & videos and stocks but since I don’t use them took ‘em off the listings.

The above photo is of the favorite contacts section. Pretty straight forward as you can scroll through on the right (or on the avatars themselves in the main section) all your favorite contacts and simply click on their avatar to call/email/whatever. Already had avatars setup from my previous phones but due to the resolution increase, needed to make new ones; ended up doing 500×500 ones to be safe as even the sample sized ones I used as a template still looked grainy. Coming off from the Touch Pro Dual with an older version of the TouchFlo app, it wasn’t too hard to adjust although I do miss having the favorite contacts in the order you wish as the newer version list them in alphabetical order.

Moving on to mail (I would show messaging but they’re all personal BS with the guys that there’s no point), TouchFlo has a nice little interface where you can preview the messages as if they were real physical letters. Simply double click on them to bring up the Windows Mobile interface to read the full message, etc.

Once again, not too hard to switch from my old HTC phone but definitely taking some time to get used to how to “easily” access my emails as I’m used to going straight through via the actual Windows Mobile OS versus some “skin” app.

The music player which I can say without a doubt I’m very impressed with. Sound quality is great coming out from the speakerphone speaker (haven’t tried the 3.5mm headphone jack but reviews all say it’s fine) as at max volume, my brother can even head the music from upstairs!

It did, however, take a bit to get the music I wanted on correctly since I needed to find out how the album art is shown. In the actual Window Mobile Media player, it’s like the Zune where it reads a jpg image to show it while in the TouchFlo reads from the mp3 file itself. Thankfully some quick googling and a free app later, I was in business putting a 1GIG of music on the included 8GIG microSD for kicks and giggles. LOL ended being a lot of Nana Mizuki songs but nothing wrong with that right?

And while I doubt I’ll listen to mp3s from the phone much, it’s a nice option to have and I guess something to kill time with if I’m ever stuck somewhere? If anything else, at least it’s a fricking cool feature to have!

Always nice to get the weather at the touch of your finger if needed, right? Got to love the little graphics the TouchFlo uses as well. Currently have it to update manually since I don’t want to kill my phone data plan if I don’t need to ^^;;

… and yet I’ll load the built in Youtube app instead. If I remember correctly, I do not think Windows Mobile has built in flash compatibilities and thus sites like Youtube don’t work. Instead HTC decided to make their own little app which actually works pretty decent.

Above is a listing of Youtube videos I looked at to test how well the app works. I wonder what I was testing with huh? ^^;;

Since I’m not that into Youtube having the app isn’t a big deal although very nice for times I’m bored and want to watch a quick video or something. And I’ll have to admit, even though I’m limited to EDGE/G speeds on AT&T due to the HD being an UK import, the speeds and playback aren’t too bad.

I just had to test speed and playback with this video thanks to the recent popularity it has seen. Overall performance wasn’t too bad and if I connect the phone over wifi, plays really nice quality wise.

Internet browsing via Opera 9, which ironically I get random crash errors on even though I’m not using it. I guess it still has a few bugs to work out but since I don’t go online via my phone much, not a big deal to me.

I will admit, however, I’m liking Opera 9 a bit better than IE on the phone as pages seem to load a little faster. Also shown above as it searches my history is a look at one of several keyboard/input options for the HD. A lot better than Windows built in one, it’ll probably remind people of iPhone’s keyboard which it mimics a bit from what I read.

Some random site loading in Opera in mobile view.

The same random site in normal mode “full screen” when one tilts the phone sideways.

And probably the most important aspect, the actual phone features quality. Haven’t done much testing yet but out of the few calls I made everyone sounded great and no one complained of any issues hearing me. I can only assume speakerphone works well if the music playback is any indication.

On battery life, won’t know until this Monday when I start to actually use the phone for daily use. If it’s anything like my Pro Dual, I’m guessing 1-2 days of battery life at average use which is about right considering the size and quality of the phone.

Lastly and for people that know me, or at least my spending habits, the answer to the question “why?” I mean I just bought my old HTC Touch Pro Dual about four months ago and already I upgraded to a more expensive phone. To be honest, I blame the season as this month I’ve spent way too much due to random circumstances… well that plus once the Touch HD was released, I wanted it pretty bad so I figured I’d eventually buy it anyways and may as well now so… ^^;;