Review: HTC Touch HD

Like pretty much every other HTC Device of late the Touch HD offers a very strong build factor, every part of the device feels like an upper end Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional unit. Looking at the front display its easy to see that the Touch HD was aiming to be an "iPhone Alternative" the display which takes up most of the frontside reality comes in at a large 3.8 inches with several touch screen based buttons located directly below the screen, those buttons include the "Call button" the "Home Key" which brings users back to the main Touch Flo 3D home display, a "Back Key" and the "End Call" key. While directly above the screen users will find the phones earpiece speaker and the VGA Video Conferencing Camera. I really liked that the display was 100% flush with the rest of the devices front end leaving a very smooth looking interface that was easy to activate.

Keeping with the smooth lines of the frontside the left side of the unit simply features a volume rocker that actually blends very well with the units lines, only slightly sticking out to allow for easy pressing, while the bottom of the device features the USB charging / Syncing port and the right side offers clean lines. The top of the device again is simple offering the power button which also acts as a standby button.

FInally the back of the device features offers the 5.0 mega pixel camera, its a great option that's accented by a silver lining while the rest of the back end unlike the smooth glossy finish of the device features a rubber finish which means less scratching when you place the device in any type of device belt clip.

Overall the device offers clean lines and an easy to use setup that can work great with a stylus, a finger swipe, and even via one handed navigation. Coming in at 115 x 62.8 x 12 mm its on the rather large size, but given the 3.8 display that didn't really both me, after all you have to give up a little bit to get such a competent display.

I mentioned in the walkaround section that the display comes in at 3.8 inches, what I didn't mention is that the display also features VGA output at 480 x 800. The display also comes equipped with HTC Touch Flo 3D technology, if you've used an HTC Touch Diamond or any other HTC Touch Flo 3D technology based device not much has changed on the Touch HD, and I was okay with that, Touch Flo still worked as originally advertised, and thanks to the bigger and higher resolution screen the display was more crisp.

Aside from higher resolutions and Touch Flo 3D the unit also features excellent video playback, even the display video came in crisp with excellent sound. Videos play in the landscape mode and the play, rewind and fast forward buttons only display for a few seconds after which point the entire screen reality is taken up by the video, simply tap the display and the buttons reappear.

The display also moves in and out of landscape mode thanks to a competent accelerometer which changes displays quickly and works well with games on the big display.

One issue with the Touch HD I had was that the display is a resistive touchscreen which is great for using both your fingers and a stylus in unison, but it doesn't allow for the type of responsiveness found on the iPhone or iPhone 3G devices, it also lacks multi-touch. With that being said the large display and the ability to use more than one type of touch medium was definitely a plus.

Overall a great display that's perfect for website browsing, video playback, picture taking, and any other visual reason you can possibly think of.

The 5.0 Mega pixel camera offers 2592 x 1944 pixels of resolution which is great, and the auto focus helps take excellent pictures, however I was a little frustrated that there was no flash on the device, and even a self portrait mirror was missing. One nice advantage however is the ability to point to anywhere on the landscaped camera view and have that area auto focus on. I found this auto focus feature useful when I wanted to get a nice crisp focus on a certain area on the devices screen.

Pictures overall came out crisp when good lighting was available, however due to the lack of a flash ideal picture taking involves a good deal of lighting.

The zoom on the camera was also fairly decent, I have a pretty steady hand when taking pictures and I found even objects at medium distances were easy to capture.

Pictures had very little undertones or overtones, and were decent in their crispness, the Touch HD picture quality is definitely an improvement for HTC from past devices, but some improvements including better lense technologies and flash capabilities would be very welcomes anytime now.