News Flash 6/6/2007: HTC Touch Unboxing Video and a couple of yummy pics
I won’t know the level of yummyness or sex appeal of the HTC Touch until it arrives tomorrow. For now, I hope the images below will satisfy your hunger, until I can get you the unboxing video, hands-on review and more pictures than you’d care to see.
The HTC Touch was previously known as the Elf, which is the next generation of Windows Mobile aimed at taking on the Apple iPhone. It’s an iPhone-like device that uses a gestural touchscreen. Think of the Touch as a combination of the iPhone and the Prada in one device running Windows Mobile, except instead of just using a stylus you can now also use your finger.
Click for more details and images of the HTC Touch!
HTC layered TouchFLO, their very own touchscreen application, on top of Windows Mobile 6. It detects whether you’re using your stylus or your finger, and if you’re using your finger, you can activate a “three-dimensional interface” with “three screens” made up of your contacts, your media, and your applications. I can’t wait to get my “finger” on the Touch and figure out what this 3D-like menu system is all about.
Similar to the iPhone, the Touch is nearly all screen, except the Touch does have three buttons below its large touchscreen. Executing commands by poking at the 2.8-inch, 320-by-240, 65K-color screen with a finger or sweeping your finger in different directions. This means you can use your finger to scroll through web pages, messages, documents, and contact lists. HTC provides a newly customized home screen that replaces the Today screen, which lets you access your text messages, email, calendar, contacts, and weather.
The HTC Touch sports a 201-Mhz processor, 128MB ROM, 64MB RAM, comes with a 1GB microSD card, 2-megapixel camera, Windows Mobile 6, tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 2.0, and dimensions of 99.9mm x 58mm x 13.9mm (3.9in x 2.2in x 0.5mm) weighing 3.95-oz. HTC rates the battery as supporting up to 5 hours of talk time and 200 hours of standby time. It's available in two colors, green and soft black.
Major differences between the Touch and iPhone: Touch runs Windows Mobile and works best on T-Mobile, since it’s a tri-band European phone missing the 850-Mhz band that AT&T uses in some metro areas; while the iPhone will run OS X on AT&T’s network.
The Touch is expected to be available in the US in the second half of 2007, but the folks in UK can rush out and buy it today. Since the UK version is an unlocked GSM phone, I expect my buddy at Dynamism.com start importing it stateside in a few weeks. The phone will cost €449 or $605 unlocked in the UK.
Make sure to check back tomorrow for an unboxing ceremony as well as a first look of the HTC Touch.
I have the HTC 8125 and the thing I dislike about it most is all the buttons (side, front) it has.
It seems that every time I go to answer the phone I hit a button by mistake (just by picking it up). The new phone is nice from a touch point of view but I see buttons on it so I would imagine it would be easy to accidently hit one.
The HTC product website may simply have been hit too hard, but it performed like garbage. When I was able to demo it however (and navigate through its clumsey presentation), the phone appeared to be almost a carbon-copy of the iPhone’s functionality! And I have to say, I was impressed! From using a thumb to move around a page in Internet Explorer, to flicking contacts quickly… they even added a 3-D edge to it as well, with different sections.
Reading the Crave posting about it however, really set my head back on straight however. It’s most a “launcher” and “skin” for Windows mobile. The UI does not really carry over through the different apps you use, and the memory on the phone and capabilities are surprisingly low, considering HTC has many more feature-packed phones than what the iPhone is limited to.
–Which leads me to thinking that Apple has really figured out a lot to its positioning that other manufacturers see, that we do not. The Meizu miniOne seems to be one of the only iCompetitors that have chosen to EXCEED the iPhone specification to any degee while aping its UI and interface paradigms, and on that count, the jury is still out on whether they will succeed. LG Prada while costing more, is apparently a clear loser to the iPhone.
After contemplating the 6 months of waiting, I was expecting much more of a response than this… at least so far. We’ll see what happens right before and right after the launch. Should be very telling (from real reviews) how Jobs claim of a 5 year lead will hold up. It’s still incomprehensible… but as analysts have begun to note…. the pedigree of a FULL OS X will be a huge differentiator in the months to follow. Many of the things Steve Jobs highlighted about how OS X will benefit the iPhone have barely been hinted at. I’m very interested to understand the advantages of a VPN enabled phone (amongst the host of other things). I get the impression that the beginning of 2008 will see some important differentiators come out of Apple regarding the power of the OSX platform with iPhone.
Can you say, “ghetto”?
ghetto?…Why you say that?
Mo’ Ali. ‘Cause its ghetto. This is the broken down, back of the truck, no refunds, version of the iPhone. Ghet-TO.
[quote comment="3274"]Mo’ Ali. ‘Cause its ghetto. This is the broken down, back of the truck, no refunds, version of the iPhone. Ghet-TO.[/quote]
Yes, that’s why. Just because its ‘touch’ doesn’t mean its going to be great. There are lots of types of convertibles, but not all of them are “sexy”.
Thank you, Cleverboy.
can you say apple fanboi??!!
ur all idiots, all an iphone is, is a 4gb ipod with very basic phone capabilities. the touch is different… it is a smartphone with wm6 and touchFLO - i.e. it is a phone + extras. iphone is an ipod + a phone lumped on it. its amazing how apple have created such hype over nothing
agree with d.peters
iphone really sucks apart from ipod + phone LUMPED on it. have you seen the asian version of ipod? not sure where that is leading to. I thnk they will be losing position soon if they don’t get the OS X together…
go for the HTC Touch… it is really the next good thing….