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TECHNOLOGY BUZZ: Touch the world
Hard facts
Product: Touch phone/smart phone
Brand: Apple Iphone
Capacity: 8GB flash drive
Display: 3.5-inch (diagonal) widescreen multi-touch display; 480-by-320-pixel resolution at 163 ppi
Operating system: OS X
GSM: Quad-band (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz)
Wireless data: Wi-Fi (802.11b/g); EDGE; Bluetooth 2.0+EDR
Camera: 2.0 megapixels
Audio Frequency response: 20Hz to 20,000Hz
Audio formats supported: AAC, Protected AAC, MP3, MP3 VBR, Audible (formats 1, 2, and 3), Apple Lossless, AIFF, and WAV
Video formats supported: MPEG-4 video, up to 2.5 MbpsH.264 video, 640 by 480 pixels, 30 frames per second, Low-Complexity version of the H.264 Baseline Profile up to Level 1.3 with AAC-LC audio up to 160 Kbps, 48kHz, stereo audio in .m4v, .MP4, and .mov file formats; H.264 video, up to 768 Kbps, 320 by 240 pixels, 30 frames per second.
Headphones: Stereo earphones with built-in microphone
Headphones frequency response: 20Hz to 20,000Hz
Headphones impedance: 32 ohms
Input and output: 30-pin dock connector; 3.5-mm stereo headphone minijack
Power and battery
Talk time: Up to eight hours
Standby time: Up to 250 hours
Internet use: Up to six hours
Video playback: Up to seven hours
Audio playback: Up to 24 hours
System requirements
PC with USB 2.0 port
Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, Enterprise, or Ultimate Edition; or Windows XP Home or Professional with Service Pack 2 or later iTunes 7.5 or later
Compared To: Samsung Armani (Rs50,500); HTC Touch (Rs32,500)
Price: Rs36,000
Ever since the launch of the Apple iPhone, the world has gone touch pad crazy and because of it, there have been new-fangled touch screen phones popping up all over the place in all markets. The last was the launch of the Samsung Armani edition in our markets in February, and now the latest gadget to hit is the HTC Touch. We were really curious about how these phones would stand up to the leading contender in the world, so we took these phones on a test cruise.
Samsung Armani went down early. Do not get us wrong. It is a gorgeous phone, a truly beautiful handset both to look at and to touch. Targeted at the fashion conscious user, the phone still offers more than most of its owners would require.
However, there are some drawbacks functionality-wise, including its selling point: the touch screen which does not always respond appropriately, lackluster features and a tricky user interface. Also, the photo quality was not as good as the other phones. The fight, however, between the HTC Touch and the iPhone was very tough.
Firstly, the touch factor. The HTC Touch uses a different kind of touch screen to achieve finger-friendliness, especially gesture-awareness. It is not a multi-touch display like the iPhone and you can use a stylus, again unlike the iPhone which needs a human touch to work correctly. The screen is not gigantic, but compared to some of the competitive phones, it is more than enough.
The screen on the iPhone however is just stupendous. It is gigantic (3.5 inches) and high-res sporting 160 pixels per inch. The screen has the oft-mentioned ‘multi-touch’ feature which is fun. The iPhone also has an ambient light sensor tucked away in there, so it does not blast your eyes out when you are using it in the dark or fail to appear on in direct sunlight. Also, nice is the ‘proximity sensor’ which can turn off the display when the phone is held to the ear or near the face. Finally, the iPhone's glass surface really does feel much nicer than the Touch’s plastic.
Secondly the performance. The HTC Touch runs Windows Mobile six Professional on a 201MHz processor with the standard 64 megs of Ram and 128 megs of flash Rom. This is weak because although this CPU has been used widely on MS Smartphone/Windows Mobile Standard devices before and overall is a good fit for the Windows Mobile Platform, it is much slower on the Touch, perhaps due to the demands of the touch interface.
There were often problems with really long delays before the device responded by opening a window or launching an application. I also found myself tapping and waiting quite a bit. The two megapixel CMOS camera, that is included with the Touch, takes acceptable photos. However, images suffer from excessive foreground sharpening. When resized down to VGA or 800 x 600, photos look decent, but they still lack natural detail and contrast while there is a certain harshness to the images. Video playback also floundered on the Touch.
Conclusion:
The iPhone absolutely rocks the universe with its media capabilities and everything about it. However, HTC Touch with Windows Mobile is the king of productivity and you can actually install software on this phone unlike the iPhone which does not have GPRS, Multimedia Messaging or a built in e mail client
Overall:
The Apple product is hip, flashy, and easy to use. The HTC Touch actually lets you work. In the consumer driven world of mobile phones however, HTC has a long way to go.
— UM
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