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There has been a little discussion of this great new phone in the "WM rant" thread, so I thought I would throw together a few musings on the HTC Touch Pro in case anyone's interested. It came out on Weds and I received mine Thursday morning...
HTC Touch Pro – Impressions from first day of use
I’ll spare you the unboxing, the box looks nice and has everything in it that you would expect in a mobile phone box. Onwards!
On turning it on for the first time, the standard Windows Mobile screen calibration, time zone setup and other fun settings happen first, and then the device automatically extracts and installs the 3D interface. The Quick Start guide claimed that straight away the phone would scan for a network and automatically get the necessary settings for voicemail/messaging/data. However, this didn’t happen – I thought nothing of it and decided to do it manually after I had played around with TouchFlo for a bit. After a couple of minutes I was spontaneously informed that the settings had materialised and been installed. There were a couple reboots to deal with at various points. What these did demonstrate to me is the need to set a device Pin or password as well as the sim card one – only turning the phone fully off (basically a soft reset) causes a sim pin prompt. Not that I turn my phones of much anyway, but it’s worth knowing about, especially for someone like me for whom the Touch Pro is a first foray into the world of Windows Mobile phones.
For the first few hours of use, I kept getting STK Service popups insisting that I had a voicemail message when I didn’t, however this may have been due to my Virgin Mobile sim. This seems to have resolved itself after a day of normal use.
The contacts tab of TouchFlo 3D would only let me add contacts to the favourites (visible without going into a full phonebook list) if they were stored on the device rather than the sim, so I had to copy them over. I usually use the sim’s storage because I tend to switch between phones.
The YouTube application is ace – worked like a dream over my home WiFi. This also showed how useful the keyboard was – can you imagine trying to enter a full-length random WPA key with just a touch screen *shudder*!
The images and video tab works nicely, although I’m finding the gestures for zooming and scrolling are taking a little getting used to. In fact, generally I have a tendency to make my “scrolling” swipes too short, and they get interpreted as taps instead. The camera is very nice and the LED flash is decent, but video is a bit of a letdown (that said, I’m hard to please coming from, successively an N93 and N95!)
Opera has crashed once, but otherwise the browsing experience has been great. It seems to do a very good job of knowing what you meant to do even if you jab a finger without much precision. The only major issue I got with the phone today was that while trying to change screen orientation while in Opera, the device locked up and sat, unresponsive for a good minute before sorting itself out. Also, text entry was a little sluggish in Opera when I was posting in the “WM rant” thread. Otherwise, the 3D interface is smooth and responsive and a joy to use, not to mention looking the business.
Finally, the Teeter ball rolling game uses the G-sensor to perfection, even having some levels with an uneven surface somewhat resembling the back of the Touch Diamond, and to a lesser extent the Pro.
Well, while that is far from comprehensive, it just gives a few ideas of how I’ve found the phone to use during the first day. It's probably easier to answer any queries anyone might have as they come than to try and do it in one post! No doubt I will come up with more to say about it, if anyone’s interested!
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