HTC Touch Cruise Review

Performance:

We are happy with the performance of HTC Touch Cruise. It didn’t block even once, and the only lag happened during greater loads, but once the RAM is clean, everything gets better. We compared the phone to HTC Touch, Eten X800 and HTC TyTN II, using SPB Benchmark. Without doubt, the HTC top model reigned over the rest, but Cruise managed to get to the second place. Its optimized 400 MHz processor did a good job and didn’t have any major difficulties dealing with even 20 open Opera tabs, which is fairly impressive. Delivering such results was not enough to make us forget of the remarkable HP iPAQ 614. Compared to it, Cruise runs quite slower.

A nice surprise was the sound quality. In both directions, the voices are loud and understandable, somewhat monotonous and sharp at times, but overall, with excellent clarity. This is unusual for a WM6 PocketPC. Most of the time the sound quality is average, but Touch Cruise offers a very good one.

The battery hidden under the back lid is a Li-ion with the same capacity as the TyTN II’s - 1350 mAh. According to the manufacturer, it will give you up to 400 hours in standby mode or 7 hours of talk time. We can’t really prove that, since we don’t have 400 free hours, but we can tell you that it lasted 3 days of average use (1 hour of WiFi, 1-hour talks and 2 hours with activated GPS daily).


Conclusion:

HTC Touch Cruise will provide a reliable and precise navigation when needed. Aside from that, you will make and receive calls with a very good sound quality, no matter in which country you are. The device can be operated single-handedly -thanks to the TouchFlo 2.0 technology and the rotating 4-way D-pad. In contrast to Artemis, which didn’t have 3G support, Cruise has a tri-band one, meaning that even if you are in an area with no WiFi coverage, you will still be able to reply to an important e mail, for example. If you are on the market for PocketPC with a built-in GPS, take a look at the HTC Touch Cruise, and if not, consider TyTN II from the same manufacturer.