Product Name: HTC Touch Pro2
Price: £504.85
Supplied by: Clove
Reviewer: Shaun McGill

The Touch Pro2 now has a whole day’s usage under its belt so it is time to look a little deeper at the myriad of features sitting beneath that glorious sliding and tilting hood.

Camera

I wasn’t expecting too much from the 3.2MP camera onboard, but was pleasantly surprised by how well it focused on the smallest of objects. As you can see from the sample photos, the colour reproduction is excellent and I spent a fair while checking to ensure that the photo is a true reflection of the conditions at the time. I took over twenty photos in all and but two came out better than expected. Focusing is quite rapid and the camera controls are not too bad considering they are all held on the screen itself. It would have been nice to see a hardware camera button, but you have to click a large icon to take pictures on the Touch Pro2.

Video capture is a bit of a mixed bag. The sound quality is brilliant and it captured the low hum of a distant motorway when tested along with some twittering birds in the background. Motion tends to blur a little if the phone is moved, but it is adequate for capturing motion when held still. It is without doubt a worthwhile addition and this is certainly one of the best 3.2MP cameras I have used on a smartphone.

Screen

Ooooh! The screen is really special and worked extremely well outdoors on a bright sunny day. The colours are vibrant and the size is perfect for movie watching and displaying photos to friends, and the resolution helps a great deal in all aspects of use. The haptic feedback is welcome and provides moderate assurance when typing, but any serious data entry will of course be done with the hardware keyboard.

HTC has ensured that the Pro2 can be used as a touch screen device and the touch keyboard is present alongside a G-sensor and touch tweaks through the entire system. Of course TouchFLO is the ultimate example of this and so we end up with one of very few devices which caters for both markets.

The magnification strip is present below the screen and this works well for zooming in and out of web pages and also in many other applications. I have tested it in a few, such as Notes, and it seems to have compatibility with more applications than would be expected.

Connectivity

Of course you would expect a device like this to cover all of the bases and it does. 7.2 Mbps down-link and 2 Mbps is about the best you can expect at this time and I was surprised to find an HSDPA signal in most rooms in my house. My location is notorious for receiving a poor Vodafone signal and this is the first smartphone that managed to capture decent speeds most of the time.

Wi-Fi on Windows Mobile devices has also been a consistent problem with my router, but the Pro2 has managed to connect every time without issue so far and that is reassuring.

The good news connectivity story continues with the internal GPS antenna which has a signal while I am typing this, inside the house. My TomTom XL has no signal in the location…

There is little I can fault in this area so far and that is an unusual Windows Mobile experience for me.

Call Quality

Top marks here! The straight talk feature is more than just a sentence in the marketing literature. Call quality next to the ear is as good as a Nokia, maybe better, and the speakerphone is even more impressive. It could be slightly louder, but there is no disputing the quality of the output. The people on the other end of my first test call were impressed that I was making the call from my garden because they could only hear me. By the way, there is a novel touch in that placing the phone screen down on a surface during a call will automatically start the speakerphone. Sweet…

I need more time with the Pro2 before I write up my impressions of general performance and the included software, of which there is an awful lot to talk about, but will do so in the next part tomorrow.

Highlights

Qualcomm 528 MHz Processor
Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
Stylish design, with exceptional build quality.
Weighs just 175g with battery
Business and Personal User in mind
Conference call facility with Straight Talk Technology
3.6-inch TFT-LCD touch-sensitive screen with 480 X 800 WVGA resolution
Adjustable tilt screen
Slide-out 5-row QWERTY keyboard
3.2 megapixel camera with auto focus
MicroSD memory card (SD 2.0 compatible)
FM Radio and G-Sensor

Available from Clove for £504.85