Windows Mobile phone maker HTC launched a shot directly at Apple's bow with today's release of the HTC Touch, an iPhone-like Windows Mobile device that uses a gestural touch screen.
June 5, 2007 (Press Release) --
Like the iPhone, the Touch is almost all screen—though HTC's device does have three buttons below its large touch screen. You execute commands by poking at the 2.8-inch, 320-by-240, 65K-color screen with a finger or sweeping your finger in various directions. (HTC calls the finger-sweep technology "TouchFLO.")
Sweeping your finger up on the home screen reveals an entirely new interface that doesn't look much like Windows Mobile, with big, finger-friendly buttons giving you access to contacts, media and applications. You can also use your finger to scroll through documents or drag yourself around Web pages. Like the iPhone, the Touch lacks physical number buttons or a letter keypad.
The iPhone will run OS X on AT&T's network; the Touch runs Windows Mobile and works best on T-Mobile, as it's a tri-band European phone lacking the 850-Mhz band that AT&T relies on in some metro areas.
As a Windows Mobile 6 phone, the Touch synchronizes with Windows Media Player on XP and Vista systems to play music and video that you either rip yourself or that you've purchased from stores like Napster, Rhapsody, URGE, and Yahoo! Music. (The iPhone will run iTunes, of course.) The Touch's Internet Explorer Mobile browser is set against the iPhone's Safari.
One thing the Touch does that the iPhone won't do (at least, that we know so far) is connect to Microsoft Exchange servers to download business e-mail and synchronize contacts and calendars over the air.
The 3.93- by 2.28- by 0.55-inch, 3.95-oz Touch has a 201-Mhz processor, 64MB of RAM, and comes with a 1GB MicroSD storage card. It has a built-in 2-megapixel camera and makes calls over tri-band EDGE networks; it can also connect to PCs or the Internet via Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g. It comes in green and black.
The HTC Touch is available right now in the UK. A North American version will be coming this fall. As the UK version is an unlocked GSM phone, though, we expect to see the UK version brought here by importers such as Dynamism.com and Mobileplanet.com within a matter of weeks. The phone will cost €449 ($605) unlocked in the UK.
Author: Sascha Segan
Source: http://www.pcmag.com/
Sweeping your finger up on the home screen reveals an entirely new interface that doesn't look much like Windows Mobile, with big, finger-friendly buttons giving you access to contacts, media and applications. You can also use your finger to scroll through documents or drag yourself around Web pages. Like the iPhone, the Touch lacks physical number buttons or a letter keypad.
The iPhone will run OS X on AT&T's network; the Touch runs Windows Mobile and works best on T-Mobile, as it's a tri-band European phone lacking the 850-Mhz band that AT&T relies on in some metro areas.
As a Windows Mobile 6 phone, the Touch synchronizes with Windows Media Player on XP and Vista systems to play music and video that you either rip yourself or that you've purchased from stores like Napster, Rhapsody, URGE, and Yahoo! Music. (The iPhone will run iTunes, of course.) The Touch's Internet Explorer Mobile browser is set against the iPhone's Safari.
One thing the Touch does that the iPhone won't do (at least, that we know so far) is connect to Microsoft Exchange servers to download business e-mail and synchronize contacts and calendars over the air.
The 3.93- by 2.28- by 0.55-inch, 3.95-oz Touch has a 201-Mhz processor, 64MB of RAM, and comes with a 1GB MicroSD storage card. It has a built-in 2-megapixel camera and makes calls over tri-band EDGE networks; it can also connect to PCs or the Internet via Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g. It comes in green and black.
The HTC Touch is available right now in the UK. A North American version will be coming this fall. As the UK version is an unlocked GSM phone, though, we expect to see the UK version brought here by importers such as Dynamism.com and Mobileplanet.com within a matter of weeks. The phone will cost €449 ($605) unlocked in the UK.
Author: Sascha Segan
Source: http://www.pcmag.com/
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