HTC Touch

HTC's latest Windows Mobile 6 Professional device is called the "Touch" after its innovative "TouchFLO" interface. In terms of aesthetics, HTC really nailed this one. With the possible exception of the LG Prada, the Touch is the best looking smartphone on the market. A curved black, rubberized body and chrome accents are reminiscent of HTC's S710, but the Touch has an elegance all its own. I also appreciated HTC's attention to detail in the packaging, which matches the elegance of the device.

HTC went all out with a minimalist design. All you see on the face of the device is the display, the D-Pad and Call and End buttons below it, and a small speaker grille at the top. The soft key and application buttons were sacrificed in the name of style—and to great effect, according to almost everyone who's seen me using it.

Along the chrome edges are a total of three buttons: the camera activation button on the right, the volume slider on the left, and power on/off button along the top. On the bottom you'll find a loophole for a wrist tether, a standard miniUSB port, and the soft reset hole. Otherwise, the exterior of the device is incredibly smooth and unbroken by unsightly buttons and complicated-looking keys. In fact, even the buttons that are there have been blended into the surface so well that they are almost invisible. I salute the designers for a job well done.

Once you remove the battery cover, the right edge of the Touch flips up to reveal the hidden SIM and microSD card slots. Taking off the battery cover, by the way, is simple—just slide it up. Of course, it took me ten minutes to figure that out who reads the manual anyway?

Calling and network support

While the heft of the Touch is perfect, the shape throws me off a little when making calls. The quality of the calls was slightly below average, but this could have more to do with the T-Mobile network than the phone itself. This brings up another important point. Since the Touch only supports Tri-Band GSM/EDGE, you will probably not want to use it with AT&T's network because its cell towers tend to be in the 850 spectrum as opposed to the 1900 range. Data speeds are decent, although not in the 3G range. (In this day and age, rolling out a PDA phone without 3G is just plain silly.) If you do need high speed data rates, you'll have to rely on the built-in Wi-Fi.

Of power and processors