Sprint Vogue/Touch Review

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Sprint recently announced that they would carry the Touch by HTC. The phone is a fully touchscreen-enabled device thats powered by Windows Mobile 6 Professional edition. Its actually the U.S. version of the HTC Touch. I had played with the HTC Touch when it first hit the streets back in June, and at the time was disappointed and left wondering what the device could have been had it been allowed a bit more time to bake in the oven. Well, Sprints version is said to be a nice crisp version, so I put it to the test. I should also mention that while I was underwhelmed by the HTC Touch, the company (HTC) sold more than 800,000 of them, so I guess it was good enough for most people.
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The Sprint Touch by HTC features the TouchFLO user interface, which places icons on a 3D cube, allowing users to quickly touch applications to launch them. It also includes a microSD card slot, a 2 megapixel camera, a 2.8″ display featuring 65k colors and 240×320 pixels. It runs a 400 MHz Qualcomm MSM7500 and includes 128MB RAM and 256MB ROM.

As for the TouchFLO user interface, one thing I found noticeably absent from the previous Touch was an optimized keyboard for both text input and true dialing capability. Sprints Touch by HTC includes an on-screen QWERTY, 20-key and 12-key input options. It also includes double the RAM and ROM of the previous version.

twotouchestoday.jpg
Notice the difference in the today screens?

Performance
Right off the bat I was in love. The Touch by HTC flies, especially compared to its predecessor. In addition, the touch sensitivity of the device seems to have improved greatly.

For my tests I tried to go without the stylus as long as possible, literally starting at the point that i first turned it on. Believe it or not, I lasted about two hours of use before having to grab one! The reason I finally had to grab the stylus was because I was inputing my password and since the keyboard doesnt work like the iPhone where you can see the letters that youre typing in, I kept typing the wrong password. Other than that, not much need for the stylus. On the previous Touch, I was grabbing the stylus moments after turning the device on.

Windows Mobile Enhancements

Sprint Fun
Sprint has managed to integrate itself beautifully into the new TouchFLO user interface and also the Today screen. You can see from the picture below that theres a quick icon for Sprint TV. That music icon (the headphones) actually launches Sprints Music Store. As for TouchFLO, after you swipe your thumb up screen, you are greeted with a Menu containing Sprint Music, Sprint TV, and On Demand. Nice integration!

todayscreen.png

touchflo2.png

Another swipe and you see icons for Sprints Software Store, IM, Internet Explorer, SMS, and more.

touchflo.jpg

Heres where I encountered my first problem. I clicked IM and was prompted to download an application. I did and then was dumped into the standard Windows Mobile status screen. I clicked OK, and then was told that there was an “error opening shortcut or locating the target filename”. Three problems with this situation. First, why wasnt this application pre-installed? Second, why not have some application pre-installed that looks for an update so I never have to see the Windows Mobile status screen? Third, what does that error mean to a previously non-Windows Mobile user? At any rate, IM doesnt launch from this icon, but does launch from the Today screenvery odd. I did uninstall and re-install but the problem persists. Im sure I can fix it, but the average user wont be able to.

Sprint TV
I launched it and it required an update. Again, it launched the Windows Mobile status stuff, including IE for downloading. Since the Sprint TV application is in landscape mode, when I finished installing, the entire device had been transformed to landscape instead of portrait. Im an experienced Windows Mobile user so I was able to switch it back but I bet thats going to frustrate a few newbies. Also, I selected a channel, waited for it to load and was then told it was unavailable. I did finally manage to have a pleasant experience on another channel, though.

On Demand
Same situation as above. It required an update, but when finally updated it worked great, and was very touch friendly.

Sprint Music
Sprint offers my favorite phone-based Music Store. Its an effortless interface and you can preview and buy pretty much any song with ease.

HTC Ehancements

Keyboards
There are a couple of new on-screen keyboards, courtesy of HTC. These were definitely missed on the previous version and have made the Touch by HTC my new favorite Windows Mobile device.

old and new Touch keyboards side-by-side
side-by-side comparison. Notice how finger-friendly the new one is compared to the old?

More new keyboards …

morekeyboard.jpg

morekeyboard2.jpg

elboriyorkerlose Buttons
The title says it all … well, the picture says it, too.

bigclosebuttons.png

How about launching an application the old-fashioned way?

large start menu

Much bigger Start Menu. Again, very finger friendly.

Want to make a call?

make a phone call

Camera Album
This is not your usual Windows Mobile offering, which is GREAT news! Its very intuitive, touch friendly, and also sports a built-in Slide Show. From inside the application you view a photo and then have one touch access to e-mailing it, saving it as a Contact, rotating it, and more. Very nice interface.

Sending a Text message
This one threw me for a loop. It defaults to the Touch Keypad but you can see the numbers. I tried everything I could think of and then realized if I held down the button on the screen, it would eventually switch to the number. Brilliant design but I hope they document it for new users. I guess most people would send a text to a stored Contact, so its not that big a deal.

The GMAIL test
The Touch by HTC has built-in JAVA. I figured Id download the latest GMAIL client, but was greeted with this error when I started it up.

no JAVA gmail

Im not sure if Sprint is actually blocking this since I could see the “loading inbox” message start up on the application. Ill be researching this one further since the GMAIL JAVA application is a must-have for any phone that will support it.

Overall
I really enjoyed the Touch by HTC, and if I wasnt an AT&T customer with the iPhone, this would be my first pick for a new Windows Mobile device. Since Windows Mobile has a tremendous 3rd party software base, any issues that you may find software-wise with the device are sure to be mitigated with some new 3rd party application once the Touch launches. So far, though, HTC listened to user feedback and definitely fixed 99 percent of the issues I had with the previous one.

Availability
Sprint begins offering the Touch by HTC on November 4. You can also sign up to be notified when it becomes available.