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Home sweat home!!!

After wandering around with some BlackBerry and iPhone devices – I am finally back home – to the good old Windows Mobile!

And not just an average one – the BEST of them all – the best smartphone in the world (according to the readers votes).

So, as BlackBerry failed to excite me and iPhone failed as a… well… a phone – let’s see how the Touch Pro will do!

But before I start, here’s a question:

What is the difference between an iPhone and a WinMo phone?

Yes, I know: iPhone is for kids and WinMo is for men, but why?

They are both running a mobile platform where the phone is almost a side issue, but:

While the iPhone is some kind of a limited entertainment console – Windows Mobile brings the richness of windows into your pocket.

Hear that? Windows. PC.

A Pocket PC!

[Gee, what a great name, I should propose it to Microsoft...]

Outlook, Tasks, Notes, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, OneNote – All in one device! That’s what I’m looking for! That’s productivity baby! Now gimme some Lovin’!

And how many settings! the joy of configuration! Windows Mobile is so tweakable it’s addictive!

Ha ha ha ha! (evil laugh).

OK people, enough with the excitement, let’s get back to the Touch Pro:

Although a bit stocky (at least 2 times thicker than the Diamond) – this phone is still beautiful.

(Thick as it is, the Treo 750 is still thicker).

No doubt, the Touch Pro is Thick As A Brick, (Jethro Tull said it 35 years ago!).

Does it mean that it feels bad in the hand? absolutely not. The Pro feels great, especially when it is expanded, the sliding keyboard sits well in the hand and feels very comfortable. Impressive stuff HTC!

My only comment about the keyboard is about the size of the space bar key – I think it’s a bit too small.

Screen:

The screen rocks, with a beautiful 640×480 VGA display. (The size is not big though, so if you are looking for a big impressive screen – Touch HD might be a better option). Also, I’ve noticed that all the latest HTC device tend to have tough touch screens which require stronger finger pressure than other devices, it can be improved a bit by some registry tweaks but still… worth mentioning.

D-Pad:

Skipping some of the good things (and there’s a lot of them), I may have found the Pro’s Achilles’ heel, and it’s disturbing:

The front of the phone includes a 5-way D-Pad and 4 buttons: Home, Back, Send and End. All of them are covered with 1 wide surface that also reacts to finger touch (like the iPod).

Few problems with it:

1. Since all the buttons are made out of one piece – pressing left or right sometimes ends up pressing the ‘End’ or ‘Send’ buttons. It’s so inconvenient that it’s sometimes easier to slide out the keyboard and navigate using the arrows…

2. With this combination of buttons, there’s no easy way to click on the ‘OK‘ button – I’m really missing the OK hardware button. It doesn’t exist in the full keyboard as well (heard the Fuze has that), which is a shame.

Considering the screen sensitivity and the fact that WinMo’s ‘OK’ button is located somewhere at the top right corner – it makes it really hard to reach it with the thumb.

Besides, the device currently has 3 buttons that act almost the same: Back, Home, and End. Why do I need the 3 of them? I would have replaced the ‘Back’ with an ‘OK’ but it seems like HTC blocked the option to re-map the hardware buttons. I’m still looking for a way to tweak it all around (if you know how – please tell me!).

3. Scroll wheel: this is a great addition to the D-Pad – it gives you a way to circle the pad with your finger to scroll things. Cool.

Unfortunately HTC only implemented it on 2-3 applications  – but luckily for us there’s an application that can configure more applications to use it – which is great, so I guess this issue is solved.

Other than those points – I really think the Touch Pro is a… Pro.

The Touch Pro is also loaded with extensions and additions to Windows Mobile I will review them some other time but here are some important notes:

TouchFlo 3D – a very impressive shell application, probably the most comprehensive one of all UI wrappers for Windows Mobile. A lot of animations, great boost for fun and show off. Most people tend to love it.

At first I did not like it, then I got used to it as it does have some great concepts, but I still have some issues with it:

First – it is not customizable. I bet HTC are currently working on their second version which will include more features as well as more configuration points. In this respect it still feels like version 1.0. (HTC did include ways to tweak it around, so it adds some flexibility to the shell).

Second: I actually like my Today plug-ins. I worked hard to find the perfect set of plug-ins and it’s hard for me to let them go… I wish there was a way to combine the standard Today screen as one of the tabs. (Version 2 maybe?)

Third, it’s sooooo heavy! Not only it’s working too slow (even after some performance tweaks) – it makes the entire device heavy and slow, getting back to the home screen is slow, moving from portrait to landscape is slow, in fact, if you run some serious applications on the device – you better shut it down first.

So I did, and now my Touch Pro works like an animal, a cannibal!

The only problem is – that I kinda’ miss it now that it’s gone, I sure hope HTC will release some updates to the TouchFlo 3D soon, updates which will solve those problems.

RSS Hub – what a great application for reading feeds. I love it.

Scrollable lists – this one is actually a tweak HTC added to Windows Mobile, bringing finger gestures and scrollable lists. It feels good, and along with the (pre-configured) bigger menu items, it really makes it possible to use most of the applications without a stylus.

You see? What did I tell you about Windows Mobile? It’s the best, Jerry. The BEST!

You see a feature that doesn’t exists out of the box – and boom! You can count on HTC, XDA-Developers or any other developer to simply add it to this great platform.

That’s it for this week’s review. More to come in the next reviews of the Touch Pro. I’m off to play around with the best smartphone in the world.

More TouchFlo tweaks in here and here.

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Gil Bouhnick (59 Posts) - Website | Twitter | Facebook

Gil Bouhnick is a guest writer at MobilitySite and the owner of The Mobile Spoon. He is a Director of Mobile Solutions at ClickSoftware, running ClickSoftware's MobileFever, and constantly trying to examine new mobile trends and technologies.