Hands-on with the HTC Touch HD

Hands-on with the HTC Touch HD

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Published on: 05 November, 2008 by PhoneArena Team

Hands-on with the HTC Touch HD

Click to see a large image.
Click to see a large image.
Click to see a large image.
We are eager to show off – we’ve got the Touch HD, HTC’s top notch product , in terms of specifications. The “HD” in the name reminds us of High Definition – high-resolution video, and with its huge 3.8-inch screen the Taiwanese monster clearly states its desire of being a leader in entertaining. On the phone’s screen, from the picture on the box, you can see a dynamic moment of a soccer match – “Oh, it has television!” - this thought crossed our minds, but then we quickly remembered that this is not mentioned in the specs. It’s a pity, it would have been great, but it seems that V900 stays the leader in this aspect. We stopped thinking about “what it isn’t” and opened the box, in order to take out the big, but thin phone. The word “big” doesn’t have a negative meaning here, since the border around the screen is so tiny, it’s hard for Touch HD to be any smaller. We plugged-in the battery and began waiting for Windows Mobile 6.1 to load for the very first time. In a few minutes TouchFLO 3D welcomed us – nothing special, it’s almost the same as on the previous models. We experienced a bit of lag in the beginning, but after all the phone had just been started, it’s normal. We turned on the Wi-Fi immediately and tried to enter the password… unfortunately we accidentally clicked somewhere else, but after some time wandering through the menus we managed to connect.

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Well it doesn’t have television, but let’s watch YouTube – yep, the clips are looking good, but we are wondering why it lags a little when the settings are brought on. Is this a temporary problem? After all this is HD – YouTube isn’t good enough for an 800x480 resolution display, we’ll play our high-def clips. We plugged-in our microSD card (by the way the slot is underneath the battery lid) and began searching for the video player icon on the TouchFLO screen – we couldn’t find it because such is actually missing. Well OK, we have used WM6.1 phones before, so we found our file by hand and tried to run it. Too bad, HD, but plays neither DivX, nor XviD clips straight out of the box… At least we managed to open an MP4/H.264 high-resolution file, delivering some decent quality. The display is huge, making it terrific for watching videos, but the sound was a bit quiet, so we tried to turn it up and realized that the volume rocker is on the left side, i.e. it remains on the bottom when the phone is turned horizontally for watching videos – quite unpleasant. Even after turning up the volume, the sound wasn’t loud enough, but the device has a 3.5mm headphone jack at least.

We spent some more time with the menus and couldn’t find any interesting new features. Maybe HTC are relying on the hardware for the success of this model, or maybe on the hope that someone’s may optimize Android OS for it. However, for now we’re going to test it with the preinstalled OS – Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional and will soon tell you if it’s worth it in our review – expect it!

Click to see a large image.Click to see a large image.Click to see a large image.
Click to see a large image.Click to see a large image.Click to see a large image.

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0
1.
im praying that this comes with a keyboard as the T-Mobile Wing 2 and also this one alone w/o a keyboard comes as the G2 with a screen upgrade (like they did with the T*Omnia).

this thing is beautiful.
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0
2.
sick



simply sick
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0
3.
Please ATT please PICK this up(probablly not lol)
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4.
oh, man, this is the first time i regret to have vzw... this phone is a kick ass phone, but too bad, i don't use gsm network... sucks for me... :( just waiting for touch pro on vzw... :P
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0
5.
I'll forgive it for not having out-of-the-box DivX/xVid...

This thing is just *beautiful*!

(By the way.. Great hands-on this time. I can't wait for the full review... And to putting my hands on one of these!)
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6.
this phone is so nice looking... it'll be at least $300-400 if it comes with a plan, if it even comes to the US (Is it?).
The Diamond, Touch Pro, and Touch HD are 3 of the nicest phones out there.
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0
7.
gawd, it looks like another crap htc phone has come to fruition. they are all the same.. and damnit they all BREAK CONSTANTLY.
its not HTCs fault.. i think... Windows Mobile just is an unstable platform..

of course i see HTCs come back many many times more than the samsung versions w/ winmob, soo.. maybe its htc.

there is not a single HTC version that we have, that i have ever reccommended.. ugh.
0
9.
hi hater
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26.
looks like u must be an iphone fanboy!
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8.
it's not coming to the us....been stated on alot of sites....phone is between 800-1000 from online stores.
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10.
US...2nd QTR of 2009
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15.
What web sites say it is not coming to the states?
Reply to this comment This comment is posted in response to #10 ( Show )
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16.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/07/htc-not-bringing-touch-hd-to-the-states/
http://twitter.com/htc/statuses/948774282
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0
22.
That sucks... I was really looking forward to buying this phone. I have owned the original touch, and now the touch pro and both are awesome phones. In their post they say that they are better off just waiting until the next round of products launches, hopfully this means that it is just going to be a 2nd version of the phone. Either way I defiantly think that HTC is heading in the right direction in mobile technology.
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11.
come on t-mo lets do this...
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12.
It's not coming to the US, HTC already stated that by the time they added US 3G to it the hardware would be outdated. So either get it and not have 3G or wait for something else.
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14.
Sprint released a press letter stating that they were working hard w/ HTC to develop a CDMA version of the phone. (yes I know Sprint does not make the phones, but they have the final say so on the products and programs incorparated in the phones.) the articles go on by saying that it is aming for a late 2nd quater, early 3rd quater release date for 2009.
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  Total: 26 post(s)
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