Mobile phones have become seemingly unstoppable in their continued evolution. Each new generation of mobiles brings something new to the table, whether it’s an old feature or idea executed better, or a wholly unprecedented innovation that revolutionizes the mobile landscape. Just as inevitably, the object of the latter soon becomes the object of the former, as we’ve seen in such mobile staples as ringtones, cameras, music players, operating systems and applications – all debuting at one point or another as brand-new additions to the features of the modern phone, and systematically outdone and upgraded over time. The potential of the cellular phone continues to be both unlocked and unleashed as the years go by.
Mobile manufacturer HTC has put together a new version on an old favorite of theirs, the HTC Touch HD. The aptly-named HD2 delivers an experience not altogether unlike its predecessor, and even outdoes it in many aspects. While the HTC Touch HD, which hit earlier last year, was hailed for its large screen and Windows Mobile OS with TouchFLO 3D, that was then and this is now – 3.8” of resistive touch screen has been outdone in spades by the HD2’s larger, sharper 4.3 capacitive multi-touch screen, and TouchFLO 3D has been taken to a new level and made to hit its stride as Sense. All this is clad in a sleek, sexy housing that speaks to the gadget’s high-end target market.
The HD2 has quite a few excellent connectivity features: quad band GSM with EDGE for US users on AT&T and T-Mobile, 3G HSDPA at 7.2mbps [at least within Europe and Asia], and WiFi and Bluetooth. The phone runs comfortably on a 1Ghz Snapdragon CPU with 488mb RAM and 512mb flash ROM, using a version of Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional OS specially customized to accommodate the phone’s capacitive display and work with the aforementioned HTC Sense user interface. The resemblance to a bigger, wider and taller iPhone is completed by the presence [on the reverse side of the unit] of a video-capable 5-megapixel camera with autofocus and dual LED flash.
Being the only phone in the world thus far with capacitive display on Windows Mobile 6.5, the HD2 sets the bar fairly high for all who wish to follow. HTC customized the Windows Mobile OS with their own capacitive drivers to support this type of touch screen and even tailored the user interface to make all the apps finger-friendly. As such, the large display and the custom software combine to make the HD2 very finger-friendly and easy to use, whether one is on the onscreen keyboard or keying into various apps. Bright and colorful, the display is easy on the eyes with 480×600 WVGA resolution.
The phone also features numerous apps that cater to a variety of needs, from very well-displayed multi-city weather reports to calendars with full month view to even a Peep-powered Twitter app. Web browsing is made easy with Internet Explorer Mobile 6, which seems to handle link selecting and clicking better than the older HTC models’ Opera browser but doesn’t support pinch zoom as Opera used to. That small quibble aside, pages load quickly and look great, which can also be said for almost everything you ask the phone to do – even the camera’s pictures are better than HTC’s other models, and although that isn’t saying a whole lot it’s still notable that the HD2’s camera is among HTC’s best. On the whole, the HTC HD2 is an immensely expensive model for now, but it’d be wholly inaccurate to say that it isn’t supremely tempting nevertheless.
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