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One of the best looking Pocket PCs around, the new HTC Touch Cruise was made to turn heads. Not just a pretty face, its features set it apart, with Wi-Fi, HSDPA, 2.8" Touchscreen display and a 3 megapixel camera.
Hot features
* Integrated Qualcomm GPS receiver
* TomTom satnav software pre-bundled, one free map included
* Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
* 3 megapixel camera with autofocus
* HTC TouchFLO interface
* Jog-wheel D-pad
* Retail package is rich in content
* Strong battery life
*Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE
* 3G with HSDPA
* 400MHz Qualcomm processor
* 128MB of RAM
* 2.8" 65K color touchscreen TFT display with QVGA resolution
Main disadvantages
* No hardware keypad
* Porr video playback
* Display image quality illegible under direct sunlight
* Photo processing issues
HTC Touch Cruise features the new version of HTC's TouchFLO interface and one of the heaviest feature sets in the PocketPC class. Its specifications are similar to the HTC TyTN II, except for the hardware QWERTY keyboard. The Cruise is much lighter and thinner, not to mention much better looking.
Retail package
The retail box is packed with stuff. There is a handsfree and a DC charger. A miniUSB cable was also there along with a spare stylus. Also in the box is a carrying pouch, which was not without some problems. It is too tight, making putting the phone in and taking it out difficult. A screen protector and a huge amount of paper and CDs complete the retail package contents.
The Design
The HTC Touch Cruise is right among the compact PocketPCs on the market in terms of size. At 110 x 58 x 15.5 mm and 130g, it is far not the smallest around but it will still fit in your pocket. Compared to the giant TyTN II, the Cruise earns points on both slimness and weight.
The earpiece is located at the center of the top part of the front panel. There are two status LEDs on each side, while the video-call camera is in the right corner. The right LED indicates data transfer, message receipt and network status, as well as battery charging. It also blinks in red when the battery level drops below 5%. The left LED serves as a Bluetooth-on notification, and glows green to show Wi-Fi status. When both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are enabled, their lights flash alternately.
Below the earpiece is the huge touchscreen display, which we will talk more about later.Under the screen are the Call and End keys flanking the navigation wheel. The wheel has four directions and confirming action, topped with a jog-wheel functionality. The two remaining keys on the front of HTC Touch Cruise are the GPS button and the Internet Explorer button and are used for launching their respective applications.
The top of the device has a single key - the Power button, which is also used for putting the display in sleep mode and for turning it back on. The left side of HTC Touch Cruise has 2 keys - the volume control slider and the voice command key. Pressing and holding the voice command key will initiate recording of a voice note.
Moving to the right panel of the phone shows the microSD card slot, hidden under a stylish cap. The dedicated camera key and the stylus are also here. Bottomside we see the reset hole and the miniUSB slot. The neck/wrist strap eyelet and the microphone pinhole complete the list.
Flipping the handset over we see the 3 megapixel camera, which is located just under the GPS antenna connector. A self-portrait mirror is located just under the lens, while the loudspeaker grill is in the top right corner.
Opening the battery cover was difficult, requiring real force to open. Under the cover is the 1350 mAh Li-Ion battery. Talk time is said to be 7h, while the stand-by is quoted at 450 h, which is ambitious. In reality, the battery will last for about 2.5 - 3 days of moderate usage. Although it seems the SIM card can be handled without removing the battery, this is not true. There is a special lock mechanism that renders such actions impossible.
Display is standard PocketPC
The 2.8" 65K color TFT touchscreen of the HTC Touch Cruise is acceptable and on par with most PocketPC screens out there, which means the usual low legibility under direct sunlight. Topped with the small system font of Windows Mobile, it doesn't come close to providing adequate sunlight legibility.
Telephony is great
HTC Touch Cruise is a mobile phone before anything else. Calling is trouble-free and the Phone application is in charge of all call-related features. Proprietary for HTC, it has large virtual keys that allow easy one-hand operation. In the upper right corner there's the Backspace key, under it is the Video call key and, finally, the Calls Log key.
Windows Mobile 6 Professional has been available for quite a while now, so everyone interested in PocketPCs has probably long since come to know it. Essentially, any PocketPC is just a software platform which you can expand according to your needs, thanks to the multitude of available applications.
Any current PocketPC user would hardly need a review of the default Windows Mobile applications that come preinstalled with the device - they are always the same. The reason why people change their PocketPC with new ones is only the hardware equipment - they simply want snappier and more user-friendly hardware to run their favorite applications on.
PocketPC fans and users will be interested in the hardware part of this review. This particular PocketPC is powered by a Qualcomm MSM 7200 chipset platform. A primary 400MHz Qualcomm ARM11 processor runs applications, while a secondary 274 MHz ARM9 microprocessor is in charge of radio equipment. Other hardware specs include 128MB of RAM and 256MB of ROM, which are both decent numbers.
When you power up the HTC Touch Cruiseyou notice the custom HTC home screen. It's an add-on that simply comes preinstalled (same goes true for the TouchFLO for that matter) and it offers five separate tabs with frequently used functions.
The Home tab shows the time and date and status indicators for unread messages, mail or missed calls. The Favorite people tab lets you store quick dial shortcuts to people in your contact list that you call frequently (their images get shown too). The Weather tab is rather self-explanatory - it even gives you a weekly forecast. The Launcher tab stores several configurable shortcuts and, finally, the Sound tab offers quick setup of ringing profiles and your current ringtone. Furthermore, a little tweak allows you to change the number and order of the tabs according to you preferences.
Ever since Windows Mobile 5, PocketPCs has support for changing screen orientation. The Touch Cruise is no exception and can be rotated by clicking the shortcut on the today screen or through the settings menu. For those of you that are not familiar with PocketPC, we should probably explain that those handsets have no "main menu" the way feature phones or Symbian devices do. Here you have the Programs menu and the Settings menu - they are almost all you need to access the PocketPC features. They are accessible through the Start menu which, like the one in the desktop Windows, is a user configurable list of shortcuts to some favorite applications.
The Communication Manager is where you turn all the connectivity features on or off, such as Bluetooth, WLAN, Data connection and even telephony.
Another proprietary HTC plug-in provides easier access to the icons placed on the top bar of HTC Touch Cruise. Once you click the bar near them a pop-up with the same icon appears, but this time they are of much larges size and far easier to press with a finger.
The HTC TouchFLO in the HTC TyTN II is a nice touch. With the HTC Touch Cruise, the new version has much more to offer. This is probably the most important plug-in on the device and it is great that it comes preinstalled. The new TouchFLO technology greatly improves the user-friendliness and pretty much sidelines the stylus for navigating your PocketPC.
The TouchFLO technology is a software enhancement that allows the touch screen to recognize the difference between using the stylus and using your finger. It enhances user experience by allowing smooth scrolling with fingers. Without it, finger-scrolling of lists or web pages would be impossible.
The Touch Cruise is much more sensitive and easy to control than HTC Touch. A slight touch on the screen is more than enough to get the device to accept your command. All in all, the touch experience with the HTC Touch Cruise is second only to the Apple iPhone.
Contact management works
The Windows Mobile OS has an unlimited contact list with a vast number of available fields for each entry. Synchronization with MS Outlook is seamless, as it should be. There is a letter-by-letter search available in the phonebook so finding contacts is simple, even if you have hundreds of contacts.
Sending and receiving messages is done via the centralized Inbox, with separate folders for SMS, MMS and email. SMS length is virtually unlimited, as well as the memory available for received and sent messages. The Outlook Mobile email client supports multiple POP3 and IMAP accounts. There is full support for sending and receiving attachments and support for Direct Push.
There are several text input methods with the HTC Touch Cruise, all of them based on typing on the screen. The classical on-screen QWERTY keyboard is available and there is also handwriting recognition. There are two virtual keypads available to the Touch Cruise's users designed by HTC themselves. One is a 12-key phone-like layout, the other is an implementation of the RIM's SureType, with 2 letters per each key in a QWERTY layout.
The built-in file manager of the HTC Touch Cruise is the standard Windows Mobile variety and can create new folders, copy and move files, set tracks as ringtones or simply send files to other devices.
nice camera, bad processing
PocketPC is traditionally the bottom of the food chain when it comes to camera performance. HTC is obviously addressing this issue with the Touch Cruise, but it seems to have taken a step back this time.
The 2.8" TFT display is a really nice camera viewfinder to have. The Touch Cruise camera can be operated as a regular digital camera - a half press on the shutter key locks the auto focus and exposure, while pressing the key all the way down takes the actual shot. However, the camera key requires a severe amount of pressure in order to take a picture.
There is a nice camera menu, easy to operate with your fingers only. White balance can be either automatic or custom set to daylight, night, incandescent or fluorescent. You can apply several color effects (Grayscale, Sepia, Cool, Negative) and use the special camera modes such as Panorama, Sports and Burst.
The image quality is not on par with the best 3 megapixel cameraphones such as the Sony Ericsson K800, for example. The images suffer in terms of dynamic range. The colors are spot-on on most occasions and the macros come out just fine thanks to the auto focus.
The HTC Touch Cruise camera captures MPEG4 video in QVGA resolution (320x240 pixels) at 30fps, which is acceptable. Alongside white balance and color effects, you can also set the Flicker adjustment, contrast, saturation, hue and sharpness.
Connectivity: Data transfers of all kinds
With PocketPCs, connectivity is king and one of HTC Touch Cruise's best features. Direct USB connectivity allows PC synchronization of any kind (email, contacts etc.). Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi are also present to take care of the wireless communications. There is no Infrared port but that is not really that big of an issue nowadays.
For network data transfers you can rely on the UMTS and HSDPA support. There are also GPRS and EDGE, to give you a full package of connectivity options.
Two good web browsers
Internet explorer and Opera Mobile are both available on the device straight out of the box. Our personal pick is Opera for its superior page rendering. The generously sized display makes even the finest print readable. The Internet Explorer is a distant second-choice with a less user friendly interface and poor page rendering. Some more complicated pages look a bit odd with the IE.
Organizer works
Windows Mobile offers several time-management features and all are easy to synchronize with MS Outlook. The Calendar is better than the one used in Windows Mobile 5, allowing searching for future events. It has daily, weekly and monthly and yearly views and the week can start on either Monday or Sunday.
The To-Do list lets you to add tasks and assign priority. With Notes you can either type or directly write the text down on the screen. There is also a voice recorder that can be easily started by pressing and holding the dedicated key.
The Alarm clock has three alarm slots each with its own repeat pattern. As a whole, this is t where a third party application is a must. There really are some better solutions than the Microsoft offer. You will also find the dual-zone clock. The Calculator is another well-known application.
Other interesting applications are the Office Mobile, ZIP manager, the Windows Live service and the Search application. The Office Mobile features support for viewing and editing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint office files, while the ZIP manager adds support for archived files.
The Search application searches throughout the whole file system and applications. You can set filters, so that the application searches only in places you need.
HTC Touch Cruise offers a load of features along with compact size and stand-out styling. The touchscreen experience is only second to Apple iPhone. The GPS receiver and the good battery life will attract users who like to travel a lot. The display issues and the photo imaging shortfalls are of course real issues, but they are expected in the Pocket PC niche.
The Touch Cruise joins the TyTN II as the HTC portfolio headliners and the two feature-packed performers basically raise a fundamental question: hardware keyboard or not. The more expensive TyTN comes with full QWERTY keyboard and tri-band HSDPA. So basically it all boils down to your budget and your work style.
 
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