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Like the old HTC Tilt or a notebook computer, the Touch Pro2's screen slides up into an upright position. As with other Touch Pro2 variants we noted some play when the display is in notebook mode which can be a bit annoying when tapping on the screen. It also works in flat mode for those who prefer holding it with two hands and don't mind glare from the sky or overhead lights. The screen is high gloss, so glare can be an issue and the display is readable outside but just barely. The keyboard is absolutely capacious and larger-fingered folk will find this the most amenable smartphone keyboard on the market. The BlackBerry Tour's keyboard looks tiny in comparison. We particularly like the offset keys that match a notebook or desktop's keyboard rather than being stacked one above the other in orderly but un-ergonomic columns. This reduces typing missteps and just feels right. The spacebar is oversized and there's a dedicated number row. A press of the Fn key turns the numbers into symbols and the keys are clearly masked. The resistive touch screen is sharp, colorful and large-- we like. Though it lacks the super-light touch response of capacitive displays such as those on the Palm Pre and Android devices, it works with a stylus (still a necessary evil if you use legacy WinMo apps with tiny close boxes and small fields) and is more precise when tapping on links in the on-board Opera and IE 6 mobile web browsers. At 3.6", the display is large enough to make using all elements of TouchFLO 3D with a finger easy. The original Touch Pro's smaller display made it feel less responsive to finger touch. Photos and video look lovely on the phone and it can handle playback of locally stored video up to 650kbps well (not too bad for a business phone). The phone has an accelerometer that works in many applications and you can also slide out the keyboard to switch to landscape mode in any application. There's haptic (vibration) feedback though it's used in only a few places, and on screen keyboards including HTC's with larger keys (the stock WinMo on-screen keyboard has laughably tiny keys).
The Touch Pro2 features a large offset keyboard. TouchFLO 3D has a multi-screen user interface and most screens are the same as on the Touch Pro: today view with the time, carrier info, appointments and call info; weather for multiple cities (the prettiest weather we've ever seen on a phone), photo caller ID, email with highly graphical elements like flick-able envelopes; SMS; web (Opera plus shortcuts like YouTube); settings and stocks (that's new). It's fun, it's very attractive and most important, TouchFLO 3D is responsive. We still found ourselves occasionally missing finger actions on the first try once in a while, but after a day of use (or less) accuracy is very good for a non-capacitive display. Being Windows Mobile, the phone does lag a second or two once in a while but it's by no means consistently slow. Video Review Here's our 10 minute video review of the Sprint Touch Pro2 showing general design, web browsing, Sprint TV and more.
Internet, email and Battery Battery life was a sore point for the original Touch Pro on Sprint, which runs on much the same hardware. HTC did something right because the Touch Pro2 easily lasted us through a day of moderate use while the first gen smartphone couldn't make it through the day. The usual suspects drain battery more quickly: GPS, Sprint TV and WiFi, but these are no longer deal-breakers that kill the battery in a few hours. Even with a 30 minute GPS navigation session, the phone made it through the day. The Touch Pro2's Achilles heel is MS Direct Push email which does drain the battery and make it hard to get through a full day. When we instead set the phone to check mail on a 15 minute interval, battery life wasn't decimated as it was with Direct Push on. Push email on WinMo is generally hard on battery life and if push email and instant notifications are your bread and butter, the BlackBerry still wins since its battery life isn't so negatively impacted by push. On the other hand, the Touch Pro2 handily bests the BlackBerry for web browsing. The 'Berry browser is still brought to its knees by little old JavaScript, a ubiquitous and useful web standard, while Opera 9.5 Mobile and even IE Mobile handle it fine. Opera does the better job of accurately rendering JavaScript among the two, but both render desktop web pages better than RIM's browser. Opera is one of the best mobile browsers and has become a standard for HTC's touch screen WinMo phones. While it lacks the iPhone's pinch and zoom which requires a capacitive display, it renders as well, though not quite as quickly (we wouldn't call it slow on the TP2, it's fast enough). The 800 x 480 high res display is wonderful for web browsing, though at initial view most text is too small to read so you'll need to zoom in for serious reading sessions and to tap links. The initial overview makes sense since we often need to scan a page to find the link or text we want, but we wish it were easier to press tiny links at that view to save time by not zooming. Windows Mobile, as you'd expect, excels at all things Microsoft. This means you get a decent Office Mobile suite that can view, edit and create MS Office documents; the mobile equivalent of Outlook (messaging, contacts, tasks, calendar and notes); MS Live application support and very good syncing with Outlook on the desktop and Exchange servers. As a business tool, Windows Mobile makes up for its lack of a flashy, modern UI and it's extremely powerful. Of course, HTC has taken care of the UI-- even better.
Multimedia Since this is a business phone, you might not expect much in the way of multimedia. The usual Windows Media Player mobile is on board for music (MP3, WMA and AAC formats) and video (WMV, MPEG4 and others). Its user interface is lacking but HTC does offer their own front end for music and video playback that helps, though it's not very full-featured. For serious music types, there are a variety of good music playback apps available from 3rd party developers. Video playback, not always a strong point on HTC's business phones, is good, though it won't woo you away from the iPhone. The huge screen looks great for video playback and QVGA video up to 650kbps plays very smoothly. VGA video encoded at 450kbps likewise plays well. Video plays in landscape mode if you wish (who wouldn't?) and it fills the screen (there's a full screen mode for videos smaller than native screen resolution). An FM radio, a sometimes-HTC feature, isn't on board and the FM Radio CAB installer from XDA-Developers installs but it gave an error and quits when we tried to run it. Music playback through the 3.5mm stereo jack (a rare feature on an HTC phone) sounds full and rich with a decent set of earbuds. The smartphone also supports Bluetooth stereo A2DP for those of you who detest wires.
Sprint TV plays well by Sprint TV standards-- we're accustomed to buffering pauses and some digital breakup of video with Sprint TV. It plays more smoothly on the TP2 than several other Sprint phones and actually looks quite nice in full screen landscape mode on the smartphone's large and sharp display. If you're into Sprint TV, the 3.6" high resolution display is as good as it gets. For those who prefer their video more homebrew, HTC's excellent YouTube player is on board along with their streaming media player for MPEG4 video. YouTube video plays back full screen and smoothly over EVDO and it looks as good as on the iPhone. What you won't get is Flash playback directly in the Opera web browser, though IE Mobile does handle it (at about 5 frames/second). Phone: Sprint CDMA and GSM The Touch Pro2 for Sprint runs on Sprint's CDMA digital voice network and it has EVDO Rev. A for fast (very fast) data. Just in case you're not in an EVDO coverage area, the phone can fall back to 1xRTT. And if you're not in any coverage area you can always use WiFi 802.11b/g. In addition, the Sprint TP2 has a GSM SIM card slot for international roaming. The phone isn't SIM locked (that means you can use any GSM carrier's SIM) but using US carriers while in the US is a no-go. We tested the phone with AT&T and T-Mobile US SIM cards and it wouldn't find any networks. We assume Sprint has blocked US carriers so that folks don't buy their phone to use on AT&T and T-Mobile US. The phone has settings for CDMA (Sprint network) only, GSM only and automatic (it will switch to GSM when you're abroad in a GSM coverage area). Voice quality on Sprint's network in the Dallas area was excellent, even with a modest signal. Voice is clear and full and volume is good. Our call recipients said we sounded near landline-clear. Like all HTC Touch Pro2 models, the phone features HTC's Straight Talk speaker phone. While in a call, turn the phone over and press the speakerphone button on the back to switch to the loudspeaker. Thanks to the very large grille area (larger than the unlocked and T-Mobile versions), the speaker is louder than ever. Though there are two small drivers near the top rear section, the added holes allow more sound to exit. The TP2 has MS Voice Command 1.6 for voice commands and dialing, though there's no dedicated button to launch it: instead press and hold the call send button until you hear the beep.
Reception is good and better than average, and we rarely saw the signal drop below 50%, while other Sprint phones we've tested often manage only 33% signal strength in our tough test areas. GPS and Camera The HTC Touch Pro2 has an integrated GPS with aGPS and Sprint Navigation. Once we ran HTC's QuickGPS application to download satellite data the GPS behaved well in our suburban location. It managed to get a fix on 10 satellites indoors near a window and never lost a fix when driving at highway speeds. Sprint Navigation kept up with us on the highway with only occasional short-lived lags of a few hundred feet and at city street speeds it stayed right on target. Sprint Navigation is a monthly subscription service that costs $10/month unless you have one of Sprint's Simply Everything plans since those plans include Sprint Navigation. The GPS is not locked to Sprint's Navigation and it works with the pre-loaded Windows Live Search as well as Google Maps. The 3.2 megapixel camera failed to wow us, same as with the T-Mobile version. Though we noticed less haze and color fringing (likely due to the plastic window over the lens on the T-Mobile version), outdoor images suffered from a baffling combination of oversharpening and softness. It seems that the image processing goes to town sharpening some details while it smooths over less sharp areas, making for spots that look like they were touched up by an Impressionist painter while other areas are jaggy. Indoor shots are noisy since there's no flash but colors are good. Video tops out at CIF 352 x 288 resolution (lower than the T-Mobile version) and it looks fairly good in terms of sharpness and colors, even at an average of 15 to 18fps. Conclusion The HTC Touch Pro2 continues to impress us, this time on Sprint and all the better for their Sprint TV service and fast EVDO Rev. A data connection. We appreciate the addition of a 3.5mm stereo jack and the wider array of speakerphone holes for louder, clearer sound. If you want a business phone that can be your office on the road, it's hard to beat Windows Mobile. And HTC has dressed up Windows Mobile with their TouchFLO 3D so you don't feel like you're using old and dull technology. The phone has a stunning display, a fantastic QWERTY keyboard and fast data speeds. MS Exchange support is very good and Microsoft's mobile Office suite gets the job done. While IE mobile isn't our favorite web browser, Opera does an excellent job of rendering the "real" Internet as Steve Jobs put it. Drawbacks? The Touch Pro2 by design is a large and heavy phone-- how else to get that huge display and super-sized keyboard on board along with a host of other features. Those of you who own the first gen Touch Pro on Sprint may be strongly tempted by the new model's larger, higher resolution display, much better battery life and super keyboard.
Price: $349 with 2 year contract after rebate. $599 with no contract extension. Websites: www.sprint.com, www.htc.com
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