Windows Phone Thoughts: The Professional Touch...a Review of HTC's Touch Pro (aka AT&T Fuze)

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Wednesday, January 14, 2009

The Professional Touch...a Review of HTC's Touch Pro (aka AT&T Fuze)

Posted by Don Tolson in "Pocket PC Hardware" @ 09:00 AM

Figure 21: Another indoor shot, taken at the gym of my son's school concert. There's not as much of a yellow cast here, probably because the fluorescent lights here are more on the cool side.

Figure 22: Here's an outdoor shot, taken on a sunny day with the subject in light shadow. Note the overexposure in the background as it tries to compensate for the front subject.

Figure 23: Here's a shot on the same day, but with the subject in direct, bright sunlight.

Generally, the camera does an OK job. It certainly can't compete with a DSLR, but it would be fine to capture those spontaneous moments.

There is an LED flash is available, but it just turns on, it doesn't really flash, and it's only marginally useable.

My unit had a front-mounted VGA camera for video calling and taking 'contact' photos, but it's probably been removed on the North American models, or been disabled.

The video portion of the camera worked remarkably well, considering the low light conditions I was testing it in. I tried it indoors, with a slowly moving crowd saw a little bit of jumpiness in the playback, but it wasn't unbearable. I certainly wouldn't use this to capture high-speed sporting events though.

The Camera application itself uses a lot of icons on its screen which aren't altogether that intuitive. I found it tough to figure out exactly how to get the camera into full resolution picture taking mode.

Figure 24: The main interface of the camera. The slider on the left is for zoom. I'm not exactly sure what the number in the top right is (# of exposures left?) and the icons along the bottom are a bit confusing. I figured them out by trying them, but I guess I should have read the manual first...:-)

Audio

As seen by the pictures of the 'naked' Touch Pro, the speaker in the back of the unit is used for almost all of the sound output from the unit. It does a pretty good job of definition and projection -- sounding a lot less 'tinny' than many of the other phones I've used. It's not high fidelity, but it has good volume and reasonable tone so that ringtones, music and prompts sound quite pleasant. When the phone is put in speakerphone mode, sound seems to be routed to both the front earpiece and the rear speaker, since the caller was still quite audible when the phone was placed on a table. As I mentioned in the FM radio section of the review, headphones are plugged into the USB port in the base using HTC's proprietary audio connection. However, I've found that any USB-to-3.5mm adapter will work just fine and allow you to connect your favourite set of headphones.

Conclusion

I have to admit, working with the HTC Touch Pro did little to quell my ardour for the unit. This is one cool phone -- very smooth, sleek and professional -- both in look and operation. It's a little on the expensive side, but for the power professional, this is definitely the Windows Mobile state of the art. HTC has done an amazing job of marrying the hardware technology and the TouchFlo interface to provide the new standard for Windows Mobile.

Don is an Associate Director with Fujitsu Canada and the lead for the Enterprise Mobility practice. He is ably assisted in reviews of new phones by his wonderful, gadget-suffering wife and teenage sons, who are helping with assessment of the 'cool' factor...

Do you enjoy using new hardware, software and accessories, then sharing your experience with others? Then join us on the Thoughts Media Review Team! We're looking for individuals who find it fun to test new gear and give their honest opinions about the experience. It's a volunteer role with some great perks. Interested? Then click here for more information.


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