Sprint Touch Pro / HTC Fuze / HTC TOUCH PRO – Massive review

The HTC Raphael is known by different names depending on the version and where in the world you bought it. Some of the names include the HTC TOUCH PRO the AT&T FUZE.

The HTC Touch Pro is where I will be focusing my attention today . The Touch Pro is a much awaited upgrade to the HTC Diamond. The Touch Pro has fixed most of the complaints that people had with the original diamond.

If you were to take a picture of the HTC Diamond and the HTC Touch Pro from the front you would see that they look almost identical. The real only change can be seen once you slide out the keyboard, or even flip the phone around and see that the camera that now adds a led flash next to the camera. You would also notice the huge thickness difference between as well.
Hardware
The pro features a 2.8 inch screen that has a overlay of glass over the touch resistive screen. The screen is flush to its housing. The resolution is VGA (640×480). This makes the images on the screen look very vivid and alive. The fonts also look very crisp and readable without straining your eyes.

The next thing is that tells itself apart from the diamond the keyboard. It features a 57 button keyboard. HTC has dedicated an entire row to numbers only. On previous devices, you had to either hit some type of shift/fn button to bring up the numbers. The keyboard also features a few dedicated shortcut buttons. The icons differ on each device but in general, you get one for a new text or mms message as-well-as a mail inbox button. There are a couple of other shortcuts that require you to hit the fn button because they share a button with another icon, those include a opera mobile button and a communication manager that allows access to Bluetooth ,WiFi and phone profiles. The keyboard has a very nice feel to it. Not too hard or too spongy. All the buttons are flush and don’t stick out. I had no problem typing long emails or text messages.

There are ‘only’ 8 buttons on the device. Some of the buttons that you are used to are no longer there such as the ok button. On the front, there is an end button and a call/answer button. On top row there is a home button and a back button. On the left side of the device, there are volume buttons and on the top, you can find the power button. The power button serves 2 purposes. The obvious turning off the device and also as to turn off the backlight. The last one is the D-Pad or D-circle. It has two functions: it can function as a normal D-Pad as-well-as be used as a jog wheel in certain applications.

The Touch Pro has a 3.2 mega pixel auto focus camera as-well-as a video camera that can produce video at 4 resolutions

• Small (128×96)
• Medium (176×144)
• Large (320×240)
• CIF (352×285)

You also have an option to choose the format you want it to be in H.263, 3GPP2, MPEG4.
The still camera has a few options, besides the option to just take a picture. There is panorama, contact and picture theme. You also have the choice to choose different resolutions. There is no traditional shutter button on this phone like most phones. HTC choose to use the center on the D-pad to be its picture button. The camera has the auto focus feature. If you lightly touch it, it will engage the auto focus and then notify you that it ready to be taken.

Another difference between the different versions of the pro is the back portion of the device. Most of them have the same back has the Diamond. But some also have a flush smooth back.

Stylus

The stylus is non-telescopic, just like HTC Diamond. I prefer non-telescopic ones over telescopic ones. The stylus is held into the unit by small magnet.

Battery life impressions
The battery life on the Touch Pro can be sum’d up into few words. Some words that come to mind are “crappy” “pathetic” “reasonable”. All of these keywords have their own merits. First let’s discuss the spec of the battery.
The Touch Pro comes with 1340 mAh Rechargeable Lithium-ion battery. Some could argue that it’s not enough juice to power this device. I happen to agree with this. If you look at all this device has to offer especially other things like the GPS, high resolution screen, bigger processor and more ram, one question would pop up in your mind. Is the 1340 mAh battery really enough for a device like this? If you look at other device in the same range they offer bigger batteries. The Samsung Epix that was just released for AT&T (US carrier) has similar specs. It also has GPS and even a 624mhz Intel processor but yet it packs a 1800 mAh Rechargeable Lithium-ion battery. The Palm Treo Pro offers a higher resolution screen (320×320) GPS and that 128mb of ram as-well-as wifi and GPS and it packs a 1500mAh lithium-ion. Why would HTC decided to go with a lower battery? Is it money? A design flaw? A bigger battery can be done with the same size. Seidio offers a 1500mAh battery that is the same size as the stock battery.

Ok so back to those keywords I mentioned earlier ‘crappy” I think HTC went the cheap route and ordered smaller mAh batteries to save a little money. The battery performance on a stock ROM (meaning that no modifications have been made) is really crappy. In my personal experience I’m getting less than a work day out of the battery (yes, you can flash or modify your device will discuss this later) that is with push email (push email is on call email so your emails are in real time) and a few texts and web browsing. “Pathetic” can also be a choice of words do to the amount of battery life you get from the device you could argue it’s a new battery. I also mentioned “reasonable” because of the amount of stuff that can be done with this device and its specs. Let’s get this straight, these are not the old school pocket pc device that we started off with that only featured GPRS and in some cases, EDGE. The processor have come a long way too. We were running those OMAP 200mhz processors on the standard QVGA screens(240×320). The amount of ram that was there in those devices was pathetic too by today’s standards. But all these types of features require a lot of juice to run.

For me personally I have been getting pretty good battery life after a couple of weeks. But this is because of some tweaks and hack as well as some custom ROMs that I have put on my device. I installed all the known battery performance tweaks as-well-as having the EDVO(US form of 3G data) connection turn-off itself after a certain amount of time. Battery life can be improved with these various tweaks and more. I just wish HTC put a bigger battery into this great device.

User interface
The Touch Pro features the TouchFlo 3d interface. In a nut shell, it’s basically eye candy that gives you short cuts to different programs. The TF3D (TouchFlo3d) has a very eye appealing look to it. The shell offers a new interface that most people aren’t use to using or seeing on a windows mobile device. The interface can be customized if you install the right programs. In general, there are 7 grids or panels in TouchFlo 3D. Since its customizable, you can remove any that you don’t like.

Home
The first tab is called home it gives you all the basic info you would need, such as time date, missed calls calendars and network name. On the bottom of each tab you are given 2 different soft keys. In the home tab, one takes you to the phone application and other to the programs.

People
Next is the peoples tab. Here you are given option to add your favorite people you like to call or text. HTC choose to use the term people instead of contacts. On this tab your soft keys are all people and menu. The first give you access to all your contacts and not just your favorites and the menu gives you the option to add a new favorite

Messages
The next is messages, here you are given the option to read most of the text messages on the front screen without having to open the inbox, you can also slide up and down to see the different messages. In this tab your soft keys are all messages and menu the all messages open up to well of course all messages . The next is menu, tapping on that gives you three options new reply and delete.

Mail
The next is the same as the last but give you access to the email inbox. The only difference is the soft keys menu brings up new mail, a option to change email accounts, as-well-as send and receive, incase you don’t have your email on push.

Internet
This tab give you shortcut to the opera internet browser. It also give you shortcut to the YouTube app as well as favorites you have on your opera browser. The soft keys on this tab are all bookmarks and open browser.

Photos and videos
This tab gives you the option to view all the pictures and videos you have taken. You can also flick your finger up and down to move to the next picture/video. The soft keys on this are album and slideshow. The album shows all the pictures you have taken. The slide show does just that.

Music
This tab give you the option to listen to music from the home screen. You are also able to flick through the songs. Your soft keys are library and menu. The first takes you to all the music you have. The latter takes you to the following options repeat, shuffle, properties, add to playlist, and audio booster which is just a fancy name for equalizer.

Weather
This tab gives you the ability to view the weather with some fancy icons and animation. You can have 7 different city to look at and flick up and down to see different weather of next/previous city. The soft keys are 5 days and menu . The menu brings up “add a new location”, “remove location”, “update now”, “toggle between”, “f or c settings”, and the “about button”.

Programs
This tabs has a shortcut to programs you use most often or programs you choose to add, the soft keys are all programs and remove

Landscape touch flo 3d
Unlike HTC Diamond, the TouchFlo 3D also works in Landscape mode although it is not as shiny or eye appealing as the portrait mode. It does offer some shortcuts in the form of simple square icons, no fancy flicking or sliding. Just tapping.

GPS

The device also has a built in GPS as-well-as A-GPS. A-GPS is a feature that pulls cell-tower information to give you a faster lock on your location. There isn’t really much to say on it since there are some bugs and problems with it. One for example is once you lock on; there is a stutter with tracking. Sometime you lose the signal and sometimes it has problems keeping up with your location.

Overall impressions
The Touch Pro is a great device if you want the same function as the diamond but yearn for a physical keyboard and a led flash for pictures. This also gives you the best option for the money.

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