HTC Touch Cruise Review

Introduction:

Did you ever get lost going somewhere? If you answered yes, HTC has a solution for you and not only. The new Touch Cruise, successor to the P3300 Artemis should make you feel like a discoverer wherever you go. It not only offers a built-in GPS with TomTom Navigator 6 software, but WiFi, FM radio and a 3-megapixel camera. Aside from that, the phone is a quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) with a tri-band UMTS (850/1900/2100 MHz), which makes it usable anywhere in the world.

In the box you will find:

We were kind of surprised that there was no car charger in the box, since you will mostly need the GPS while driving. We recommend buying one of these for about $20 (15 Euro).


Design:

There are some modifications in the design of the Touch Cruise, which makes it a valued member of the family. Its overall appearance has changed, making the phone much more beautiful and classy compared to the last model. The quality plastic used to make the phone’s body, which is gentle to the touch and feels like rubber coated, contributes for that as well. Its weight has remained the same (130 g/4.6 oz), and it has dimensions 4.3 x 2.3 x 0.6 inches (110 x 58 x 15.5 mm) , slightly smaller than those of Artemis.



You can compare the HP iPAQ 614 to many other phones, using PhoneArena's Visual Size Compare tool.

Cruise has a new front vision, which looks very impressive. This is mainly because of the shiny glass, covering the 2.8” TFT display – the flat surface is very convenient for taking advantage of the touch feature, but is a fingerprint-magnet. It has the same specifications (240 x 320 pixels, 65k colors) as the previous model.

On a flat metal surface, positioned under the screen and fitting the design of the phone, we have the two call/end buttons and two shortcuts leading to GPS and Internet Explorer. Here, we still have the 4-way, rotating navigation wheel with the enter key in the middle, but their form has been change to make them easier to use. The manufacturer has removed the OK and Start buttons, which were facilitating the single-hand use, making it obligatory to take advantage of the touch screen when operating the phone.


The volume slider and the voice command button are on the left where we are used to see them, but the Reset key has been moved next to the miniUSB and the connection slot on the bottom of the device. The hard to press camera key has also remained at the same place accompanied by the regular stylus. The manufacturer has moved the microSD slot, on the same in order to make it easily accessible, and not under the lid as in the Artemis. The power button has been relocated on the top of the phone, which seems logical for a WM device.


The camera with the small mirror, the loudspeaker, and the slot for the additional GPS antenna, are to be found on the back of the phone. Even the design of the back is nice, but still comfortable, because of the rubber coat.

HTC Touch Cruise Video Review:

Interface:

The Cruise also runs on Windows Mobile, but the version is 6.0 Professional, unlike Artemis. Since the phone is a representative of the Touch series, it is equipped with a second generation TouchFlо. Characterized by big fields and movement recognition (across the screen), this function aims to facilitate finger operations. However, if you have previous experience with such devices, you will be familiar with features like the phone book, organizer, messages etc.


The home screen is the same as in the Touch Dual. It is divided in two whereas the top houses four tabs, including a Clock, with information for missed calls and messages, Weather forecast for the city of your choice, a Fast access menu with 9 shortcuts and Profiles menu for switching between the separate modes and ringtones. The lower part on the other hand, is standard for a WM6 phone – and here you will find information on future appointments and tasks to be done.

The Start menu is larger, so it’s easier to operate with fingers. Icons of the last five programs activated appear in its upper part. This function, in combination with the various programmable shortcuts allows you to access the application desired by 1-2 clicks only. If you don’t like the way the Start menu looks, you can choose the old one, which is smaller, but includes more icons.

We can’t really skip the TouchFlo cube when talking about innovations. We’ll explain the function in couple of words for those of you who are not familiar with it. By a vertical movement upwards across the screen, a three-page menu opens and you can browse through it by performing a similar action, but this time in the horizontal directions. The menu contains the following:

1) Shortcuts to Email/Messaging/Internet/Organizer;
2) Shortcuts to nine speed dial contacts and phone functions;
3) Music/Photos/Videos;

Another useful extra is the window that opens, once the small service indicators in the upper right corner have been tapped. It shows the enlarged icons of the applications (battery, communication manager, voice manager, phone status), which are much easier to press with fingers. That’s yet another way to make operating the phone without a stylus easier. In standby mode, the furthest most right icon opens the Task Manager, allowing you to quickly close all or some applications, loaded in the operational memory.

If you press and hold the red receiver for about 3 seconds, a Quick list menu opens and it lets you switch to Airplane mode, Lock device, Terminate data connection, Vibration and fast access to settings.

Phonebook:

The phone book of Touch Cruise is almost identical to the other WM6 phones. The number of contacts that can be added is not restricted and depends only on the memory available. All contacts are displayed as a list; each field consists of the name and the number of the contact, while a letter placed beside them indicates what the type of the number is (w – work; m – mobile, etc.). Pictures are not displayed even if there is one attached to the contact.


The line displayed at the top of the screen is a search field, which initiates a name and number search on entering a symbol – the more symbols you type, the more accurate the match is – it’s quite useful! This one searches all names entered for the contact, but if you want to find an acquaintance by other field like “company” for example, you have to use the “Search” application. There are tabs with different letters (divided in groups of three) just below it. This way you can arrange the contacts so that only the ones beginning with a given letter are displayed. These two search features are quite handy and they make finding a particular contact in the phonebook very quick.


The old tabs, filtering by first letter have been replaced by a vertically positioned bar, with all the symbols possible on it. If you run your finger across it, the letters enlarge as you pass over them so you can easily choose the one you want. This is very similar to the iPhone but is way more comfortable from the other WM6 phones.

Too bad that’s not the case when adding a new name to the phonebook; the device offers way too many capabilities, including multiple work and home numbers, but there’s only one for mobile –something quite inconvenient as that’s exactly where we wanted to add multiple numbers to. The numerous address, e-mail and other address fields confuse you even further – it would have been a lot easier if the most frequently used fields are highlighted in some way. We would choose this to be done with the Name, Picture, Mobile number and e-mail fields and thus finding them would have been easy, eliminating the need to go through the long list.

Personal photos and ringtones can be assigned to each contact; there’s no restriction on the dimensions of the pictures but they are visualized in very small size even on an incoming call – we think they are useless. You can also add a note to each contact.

Dialing a number:

To dial a number, which is not stored in your contacts, you’ll have to use the virtual keyboard (it is activated by pressing the green receiver), since the device does not have a hardware one.

Pressing the buttons you will start imputing the digits of a possible number, but at the same time you will search the phone book as if imputing a text by a predictive text input system. So, to call John you can press 5-6-4-6 and the matching contacts will be visualized in the list.

Organizer:

Alarms can be accessed through the home screen, by tapping on the clock icon. Three of them are available, and they can all be configured to be active for certain days of the week, assigning names and different sounds to each of them. All alarms can be active simultaneously, and overall they are easy to use and do what they are supposed to. We are rather disappointed that their number is limited to three, as it was in the previous version of the OS.

The next tab in this menu is the clock; there is a field called Visiting next to it, which can be used as a World Clock – select another location and the phone starts using its local time. The clock has an option to be displayed on the title bar of all the menus, which is handy.

The electronic calendar, where you can save your appointments, can be found in the HP Shortcuts menu. You can use options like: reminder (PRIOR NOTICE 1/5/10/15/30/45 minutes, 1/2/3/4/5/6 hour/day/week), recurrence (Once, Every (same-day-of-the-week), Day (same-date) of every month, Every (same date-and-month) for every year, sensitivity (normal, personal, private, confidential). You can also add attendees (required or optional) from your contacts where e-mail addresses have been added and where meeting requests will be sent.


Examining the calendar can be done by day/week/month/year/agenda and you can choose starting day for the week and the week duration (5-6-7-day week). The appointments for the day are clearly shown in their time limits, so you can see your free time at a glance.

You have Tasks menu, where you can add to-do items. For a given Task you can set subject, priority (normal, low, and high), start/due date, reminder (to be notified if it’s due), category (business, holiday, personal, seasonal) and write a note. The Task can have recurrence (Once, Every (same-day-of-the-week), Day (same-date) of every month, every (same date-date-and-month) for every year and sensitivity (normal, personal, private, confidential). Examining the tasks in a list, you can easily see which of them are finished and which are not. The tasks options can be: sort by (status, priority, subject, start date, due date) or filter (all, recent, no categories, active, completed).

The Calculator is simple but its buttons are relatively big and can easily be pressed with your fingers. Features like scientific calculator and unit converter are still missing.

‘Notes’ are simple notes in which you can input text by the keyboard or by hand as an image. They can be synchronized with outlook.

Search is an application searching in all files in the phone. You can specify certain types of files (calendar/contacts/excel/messaging/notes/etc), but the best option is All Data, which will rummage everything in your phone.

File Explorer is the mobile alternative of Explorer in Windows environment with computers. We use it to view the phone memory, including the system folders of the device, which feels like working on a PC.

Bluetooth Explorer is very similar to the file explorer mentioned above, but has a different application. It enables you to search for other devices, which have file sharing activated and give you access to their Bluetooth shared folder. You could put in and copy files from it. Once you have activated the Bluetooth file sharing, all the rest of the devices with the same technology enabled will have access to your shared folder. This function can save you time, since, instead of rummaging through files, you can just place them in the shared folder and the other person can get them by him/herself.

The HTC Touch Cruise doesn’t have a good voice commands system but only a possibility for voice dialing of contacts which you have to input in advance. This is quite an inconvenient, clumsy and old system and it’s a pity that the manufacturer has not used something better. The Eten and Nokia smartphones for instance, have a speaker-independent voice commands/dialing system.

Messaging:

The different types of messages (SMS, MMS and E-mail) are placed in the same menu. Since Cruise doesn’t have a hardware keyboard, you only have a few types of a virtual one:

We think that the full QWERTY keyboard is the fastest and most convenient way to type a message, but if you train the other methods, they can also be quite handy! Combined with the T9 predictive system, entering text with the phone is pretty quick.


Just a few steps away, is the option to add your e-mail account (POP3 or IMAP) and to use it on your mobile phone. Very nice extra is that the phone can try to get the email settings automatically from the internet, and so we configured our Gmail Account by entering only the username and password. Windows Mobile 6 already supports HTML formatted e-mails.

The client is very similar to the Outlook on a computer, you can filter your inbox to see just some results, reply to a message, or forward it to other person. The support for attachments allows you to download or send one, in addition to the text body. The phone can be set to synchronize with your company Exchange Server.

As standard, Windows Mobile comes preloaded with the mobile version of Live! Messenger (MSN). Windows Live account will be added in Messaging when you add your e-mail account. You can add third party application for other popular instant messengers like AIM, Yahoo! Chat and ICQ.

Connectivity and Data:

HTC Touch Cruise is a quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900 MHz), with a tri-band 3G (850/1900/2100 MHz), which makes it capable of global roaming and you won’t have to wait for months, till there is a version of the device suitable for the area you live in. For an Internet connection, you can use not only the high-speed 3G, but the built-in WiFi support as well. It can actually save you some money if you are not on an unlimited data plan.

For local connectivity, you have the Bluetooth 2.0 and the miniUSB slot. In case you go with the second option, ActiveSync or Windows Mobile Device Center must be installed on your computer, depending on the OS it’s running on (XP/Vista). The application allows fast and easy synchronization between the phone (contacts, e-mail, organizer) with Outlook.

Internet:

Like in every WM6 phone, we have the mobile version of Internet Explorer present here. Unfortunately, the name is the only thing that relates it to the PC version. Large pages can be loaded, but it happens slowly. That’s where the agony begins: you have three options for visualization, One Column, Fit to Screen, Desktop. The first two deactivate horizontal and allow vertical scrolling and the last one tries to show the page as a PC. It performs ok and does the job. Navigation though, is not comfortable. You cannot zoom out or pan, for easier repositioning (like the iPhone), and if more text is present, be ready for constant scrolling in both directions, since there is no option to fit the text to the screen (as in S60).


If you don’t like this internet browser, you can try the Opera 8.65, which is also installed. It looks quite like Internet Explorer, but is faster. Besides, page navigation is much easier, since it only takes couple of finger taps to look around all over the place. This reminds us of the technology used in the iPhone. There is another considerable advantage Opera has and that is the ability to open various pages in tabs like in Mozilla Firefox. This function allows you to have a few pages open at the same time, reading one while another one is loading, for example.


If you don’t like either of the browsers, you can still install another one. That’s the beauty of owning a PocketPC. Unfortunately, currently, there are no good alternatives. Only a few expected soon programs sound like, they’ll have what it takes, but they are still in beta versions: Opera Mobile 9.5, SkyFire, and even Microsoft’s own DeepFish.

Of course we had to try Skype! It is very stable, but there was some lag when switching between the separate tabs. We made a few calls using an 8 Mbps WiFi connection, and there were no delays or interruptions.

Camera:

HTC Touch Cruise disposes of a 3-megapixel camera with autofocus. This should not impress you, since the manufacturer has not emphasized on that feature. You can snap a picture of an interesting moment or loved ones, but do not expect something with a really good (even for a cameraphone) quality.

The camera interface is the same as in Touch Dual. The startup time is about 3 seconds after you press the button. Getting “focused” will cost you another 2, and the actual picture taking, plus saving are another 6-7 seconds. Having in mind that’s not only a camera phone, this result is acceptable.

As we already mentioned, do not expect spectacular pictures. The ones made in broad day light are characterized by blurred details and badly saturated colors, which make the picture monotonous. The quality is worse if the light is artificial and the details are even more unclear.

You can record videos with a maximum resolution of 320 x 240 pixels, and depending on the light, they can be vary from 4 to 20 frames per second. Their quality is quite low and they are more suitable for an MMS or an e-mail.




HTC Touch Cruise sample video at 320x240 pixels resolution
* Note that due to codecs support, you may not be able to play the file.

Multimedia:

As with the rest of the phones from the Touch series, here we also have the standard Windows Media Player, whose main purpose is to play video. It supports MPEG4/H.263, WMV and 3GP. As we expected, they are viewed in full screen with good quality and without any lag in picture or sound. Because of the small buttons, irrationally located on the screen during audio playback, we (and HTC) recommend using the Audio Manager of the manufacturer. It is intended as the main music player and you can add MP3, WMA, WAV, AAC, AAC+ and AMR-NB file formats in its library. The interface is specifically made so it is convenient to use with fingers on the screen. You can sort your music collection in play-lists, by artist, album, genre and composer.


The PocketPCs have always had a weak side – listening to music. Cruise does not change that, because the speaker is on the back of the phone and in order to hear better, you’ll have to turn it around. Not only that, but the sound quality is very low and if you try to increase the volume to more than 80%, a very annoying crackling noise is heard. You can change that by putting on the beautiful and comfortable headphones on, but again, do not turn the volume to the max. Unfortunately, the Audio Booster option (software equalizer) is available only when they are plugged in. The same goes for the FM radio, since it uses them as an antenna.

If you are looking for a music phone, you should try the Walkman series by Sony Ericsson, which have been especially created with that purpose.

Software:

Touch Cruise disposes of 256 MB ROM and 128 MB RAM, and you can upgrade the memory via a microSD card.

WM for PPC provides unlimited capabilities for installing software. The only restrictions are the memory available and the hardware of the phone. The first problem is easily solved by getting a memory card, as there are microSD cards with capacity of up to several GB.

Every WM6 Professional phone comes with programs that are modified, “pocket” versions known PC applications. Such programs are the mobile versions of (Microsoft) Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, Internet Explorer, Explorer, Media Player, etc. The Office applications allow you to view and edit documents of the most-used types and the phone opens them without any error. Even a complicated Excel document with a few sheets is not a problem. Touch also has Adobe PDF Reader preloaded, which like the Office works flawless. We opened a big document (1.5MB) and scrolling through pages, when zoomed to 100% is almost immediate. Many more programs could be downloaded from third party sources.


There are numerous programs created for this platform, almost as much as the ones intended for PCs with Windows operating system. The most popular are the various utilities for personalizing the PPC, multimedia players, file explorers, Instant Messengers, etc. You can download third party applications to be used instead of the preloaded ones.

GPS:

As a direct successor to Artemis, HTC Touch Cruise has a built-in GPS. The helpful navigation system comes accompanied with TomTom 6 Navigator, a program, which is very helpful and popular. Unfortunately, they are no preloaded maps, but when you start the system for the first time, you get the option to download a free map for a specific city. Once this is done, you get a discount code for any future purchases. If you don’t like this software, they are others such as iGO, Mapopolis, CoPilot Live GPS, Google Navigator etc.


The built-in GPS chipset is gpsOne, used in almost all CDMA phones, and if you want to “help” it, you can use the Cruise program QuickGPS. It downloads the latest satellite coordinates from a server, and the positioning is done faster than usual. Some of you might ask why not Sirf Star III, which currently, is known to be the best on the market. Despite of that fact, gpsOne performed unnoticeable weaker than its rival, getting our position under 1 minute for a cold start and almost instantaneously (3 seconds) with the hot. These results are very close to the performance of the Sirf Star III chipsets.

The only drawback gpsOne had when compared to them, was the poorer coverage. However, this does not make it less precise from its opponent, so there should not be any problems.

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.