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HTC Touch Dual smartphone

Good to see HTC back on track

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Review The folks at HTC must still wonder how they got the original HTC Touch so wrong. Luckily since then they've staged a comeback. The TyTn II was nothing short of superb and now we have the Touch Dual.

In the hand the Dual is similar but not identical to the original Touch. At 107 x 55 x 16 it is just a shade taller, narrower and thicker, while at 120g including battery it is also some 8g heavier.

HTC Touch Dual Windows smartphone

HTC's Touch Dual: similar to the original in look and feel

The main body of the phone is again covered in a smart-looking black rubberised plastic that provides plenty of grip in the hand and is stylishly offset by a highly polished chrome strip that runs around the handset. Centre stage sits a 2.6in, 65,536-colour, 240 x 320 TFT touchscreen, some 0.2 of an inch smaller than the screen on the original Touch.

On the whole it is a very fine looking device, and feels well bolted together in the traditional HTC manner. The 3mm reduction in width makes a greater improvement on how the phone feels in the hand than you might expect.

The major difference between the Touch and the Dual becomes clear when you push the top half of the phone 'up' with your thumb and a 16 (or on some versions 20) button keypad is revealed. Not only does this allow you to input numbers and text without recourse to the touchscreen and virtual keyboard but it also serves to extend the phone, putting the earpiece and microphone closer to the places they should be when you are talking into a phone; your mouth and your ear.

The slide mechanism is perfectly weighted, and opening and closing the handset with the thumb of either hand is supremely easy thanks to that rubber-style coating.

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Latest Comments

I'm trying really, REALLY hard...

to want to be an HTC user. On pixels, they have fantastic stuff until you look at the fine print (what's 'acceleration'? or this 'Wi-Fi' thingie that we've *already got hardware support for*'? No standard headphone jack? What are you supposed to use, a Bluetooth stereo headset? There goes the battery life downwards, never to come within hailing distance of 'adequate' again...)

When I'd started looking at them after deciding to ditch my (original) Nokia N70, they looked good...but having been burnt by too-new, unreliable crap-mislabeled-as-software, I decided to wait. Now, one of the (apparently few) happy Motorola customers thinking about a more bling-y set, I'm left scratching my head. Prices here in Singapore - compared to the Moto V9 or even the Nokia latest - are high enough that you really wonder what you're getting for the money. A better 3G experience? Doubtful. More capable/stable software? It's Windows Mobile (né WinCE; correctly pronounced 'wince' after the most common user action). 'Nuff said about that...

Mine's the one with the 'I just want to get stuff *DONE*' button on the lapel...

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WiFi much more important

McDonalds do free WiFi, pubs do free WiFi. If I want to surf the net, I'd much rather pop into McDonalds, spend a couple of quid on a burger and search for maps/websites, than spend £4 on a 3G connection which may be only 128kb/s (blinking O2).

I wish more mobiles had WiFi :(

And goddamit - why can't you turn these blinking devices off! I've been stranded in London and unable to ring home, all because I can't turn my XDA IIs off and save charge.

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For me

The real killer is the lack of a 3.5mm earphone socket.

I mean why, oh why, oh why, oh why, oh why, oh why would you make a phone that was good at playing music and video, and then cripple the sound by forcing the owner use the God-awful supplied earbuds?

Why do you do that, HTC? Is it stupidity or sadism?

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