You might have seen the sexy images of HTC Touch we posted earlier. Now, for your viewing pleasure we have found two videos of HTC Touch in action.
The first video is showing HTC’s own application that works as a recognition tools for contact between the screen and the user’s pointing device (either finger or stylus). The second video shows Contacts and Internet Explorer navigations.
http://www.theunwired.net/media/video/htc_touchflo1.flv2nd video after the jump
http://www.theunwired.net/media/video/htc_touchflo2.flv
[via unwired]
Wow. That looks pretty lame. A far cry better than my experience with Mobile 2003, but still… dump the interface. They are trying to have the UI of the iPhone without actually changing the UI to adapt to a finger-type touchscreen.
This is such a joke. When I saw the demo on their website I was impressed (although I think they had some early traffic related problems), but the more I look at it, the more it looks like someone’s high school senior project. The “flicking” of Internet Explorer was just sad (the finger laboriously trying over and over, inconsistantly having virtual “traction”). The contact list, the did not *actually* move, but simply changed the entries to “simulate” movement was especially irksome. Compare THIS video of the REAL usage, to the demo. The demo simulates REAL scrolling, while in reality, the static positions of the contacts each change to simulate “scrolling” behavior.
When useability it noticeably absent, all the UI abilities in the iPhone begin looking extremely gimmicky. I would take Windows Mobile as it is before I’d take it with a weirdass frontend on it. I was expecting the person to tap on a number, and initiate a call, but I’m thinking the useability similarities with the iPhone might “break” the moment that occurs.
The ultimate test. Take an HTC “Touch”, and perform the exact same actions from the iPhone commercials. Order some Calamari. Play some music? Let’s see it go. Prediction… HORROR SHOW. Its a shame there’s such an effort being made by people to overlook the most basic shortcomings.
I’m still curious as to how you do text entry. Is there a virtual qwerty keyboard similar to the iphone? Just hang tight guys, we’ll know more tomorrow when I get the review unit in.
It looks pretty cool probably the best windows phone yet. but notice the sceen kept missing commands. It doesnt look much different than any other win mobile. Lets hope the iphone works as good as apple claims it does.
This is so unbelievably lame.The UI looks like some sort of strange franken-OS. It’s windows mobile with me-too iphone features duct taped on it. But they couldn’t even get those features to work well. The annimation is clumsy, the touch screen doesn’t appear to be very responsive (think supermarket payment touch screens), and it’s still obviously designed for stylus use first. Look at the silly scroll bars that move up and down when you flick the screen. Those are regular scroll bars that have to be thick enough to hit with a stylus. They are always there. Take a look at the iphone commercials released by apple. There is a thin line on the right that lets you know where on the page you are as you are scrolling, but as soon as you stop scrolling it fades away beatifully. The difference in fit and finish is incredible
It’s really hard to pass judgment on a new device until you really get hands-on time with it. Just a few more short hours before the Touch arrives – then I’ll be able to go to town with it. However, I will say this, it’s open season on any mobile devices sporting the “same look and feel” of the iPhone. i will not show any mercy in my review. I sure hope HTC didn’t slap this bad boy together as an after thought.
The response of the device that I saw from the user on the video is akin to me using my Dell Axim with my finger, the scrolling features notwithstanding. Exactly the same. Notice the the tiny buttons. The tiny X at the top. Just like the Mobile 2003. He has to really get his fingernail on that X to get it to work. It’s really made for a stylus. On these devices, you can trigger calls by gestures on the screen. You can choose what you want to happen by these gestures. My guess is that they created a trigger that will scroll based on one of these gestures. I’ll reserve final judgement based on actual experience, but from this, I’d say same old same old, with a twist. They added finger scrolling as an afterthought.