Features
The T-Mobile HTC Touch Pro2's feature set is largely similar to the unlocked version. The main highlight of the smartphone is the new communication technology called Straight Talk that aims to better integrate the handset's messaging, phone, and conference calling capabilities, and better serve business users. For example, you can create a conference call from within your e-mail in-box by selecting the participants names via the "To" field in body of the messages. Alternatively, from the onscreen dialer, there's a conference caller mode switch on the lower right corner that you can activate and then select your conference call members. Once on a call, there's a conference manager where you can hold private conversations with the participants or switch back to the main call. One other cool trick is that you can activate the speakerphone by placing the handset face down on a flat surface and there's even a mute button if you need to block out sound.
Other phone features of the Touch Pro2 include quad-band world roaming, speed dial, smart dialing, voice commands, three-way calling, a proximity sensor, and text and multimedia messaging. The address book is only limited by the available memory (the SIM card holds an additional 250 contacts), and each entry can store multiple numbers, home and work addresses, e-mail, birthdays, and more. For caller ID purposes, you can pair a contact with a photo, a caller group, or a custom ringtone, or you can add your most frequent contacts to your MyFaves circle. (Note that MyFaves plans start at $39.99 a month). Bluetooth 2.0 is onboard with supported profiles for mono and stereo Bluetooth headsets, hands-free kits, object push, file transfer, personal area networking, dial-up networking, and more.
The HTC Touch Pro2 is 3G-capable, offering dual-band UMTS/HSDPA (AWS Band IV & Band I) support. T-Mobile's 3G network is currently available in 130 cities and offers download speeds of up to 1Mbps and an average data rate of 600Kbps with a peak of 1Mbps. While the carrier expands its 3G network (T-Mobile plans to expand to 100 additional cities by the end of 2009), the smartphone offers integrated Wi-Fi as an alternative means for getting online. Unfortunately, the Touch Pro2 does not offer UMA (unlicensed mobile access) support, so unlike the RIM BlackBerry Curve 8520, you can't use the phone's integrated Wi-Fi to make and receive calls via wireless networks using T-Mobile's Unlimited HotSpot Calling service.
GPS is almost becoming a must-have feature on smartphones nowadays, and the Touch Pro2 comes through with an integrated and assisted GPS, which means it uses a combination of GPS satellites and cellular tower triangulation to find your position. A utility called QuickGPS is also installed on the device to speed up the time it takes to find your location and works by downloading the latest satellite information via an Internet connection. Google Maps, which comes preloaded, will help provide you with text-based turn-by-turn directions, business searches, and traffic information, but for any type of real-time voice guidance, you'll have to invest in a location-based service, such as TeleNav Navigator.
The rest of the HTC Touch Pro2 is pretty much standard fare for a Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional device. At GSMA 2009, HTC announced that it would offer a Windows Mobile 6.5 upgrade when the new mobile operating system is available, though this will also be dependent on the carriers. T-Mobile has not officially announced that it will offer an upgrade, but it did say that it will make customers aware of any upgrade opportunities.
In the meantime, you still get the standard Microsoft Office Mobile Suite for editing native Word and Excel documents and for viewing PowerPoint presentations. In addition, it offers Microsoft's Direct Push Technology for real-time e-mail delivery and automatic synchronization with your Outlook calendar, tasks, and contacts via Exchange Server and support for POP3 and IMAP accounts. To make e-mail setup easier, T-Mobile includes a wizard for each of the popular e-mail clients, including Outlook, AOL, Gmail, Windows Live, and Yahoo. The phone also comes preloaded with a handful of instant messaging clients, such as AIM, Windows Live, Yahoo, Google Talk, and MySpace IM.
In addition to the staple PIM tools, such as Adobe Reader LE, a ZIP manager, a voice recorder, a calculator, and a notepad, the smartphone comes with a handful of extra applications, including the Opera browser (in addition to Internet Explorer Mobile), Jetcet Presenter 5, WorldCard Mobile business card scanner, and a Teeter game. A task manager and switcher, located on the upper-right-hand corner, helps you keep tabs on memory and storage and lets you toggle between apps. The system was already clunky, and now it seems even more so with the introduction of the Palm Pre and its smooth multitasking capabilities.
The Touch Pro2 keeps the same 3.2-megapixel camera/camcorder as its predecessor, which is a little disappointing considering that the Touch Diamond2 got upgraded to 5 megapixels. Picture quality wasn't the best, as colors looked washed out and gray. There was also quite a bit of shutter lag, and we missed having a dedicated capture key on the spine of the phone.
While multimedia isn't the purpose of this phone, Windows Media Player 10 Mobile player lets you check out AAC, MP3, WAV, WMA, MPEG-4, WMV (just a sampling) music, and video files. You'll want to load these files on a microSD card, however, as the smartphone comes with a paltry 255MB RAM and 512MB ROM. There's also a dedicated YouTube application and a streaming media app.
Performance
We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) HTC Touch Pro2 in San Francisco using T-Mobile service, and call quality was excellent. We enjoyed rich-sounding audio on our end with very little to no background noise or distortion, and we had no problem using an airline's voice automated system. Callers also reported good results with no complaints. However, the speakerphone was another story. They said sound quality was tinny and audio kept cutting in and out, and they could occasionally hear themselves. Meanwhile, we had the complete opposite experience with the Touch Pro2, offering great sound quality and plenty of volume, even in noisier environments.
We paired the smartphone with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset and the Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones without a hitch. The Touch Pro2's speaker system pumped out music with impressive volume and sound; we're guessing most of you will use headphones to listen to your tunes. While HTC has vowed to include 3.5mm headphone jacks in its future devices, the Touch Pro2 requires the use of an audio adapter, which, to HTC's credit, is included in the box. Unfortunately, it's a bit of a cumbersome solution but it let us plug in our Bose On-Ear Headphones and jam out to our tunes comfortably.
Though the Touch Pro2 is equipped with a 528MHz Qualcomm MSM7200A, we encountered some occasional sluggishness when using apps and switching screens--you know, the standard few-second turns of the pinwheel while waiting for an app to launch. Fortunately, it wasn't anything crippling, and more often than not, the smartphone was responsive. We were happy with T-Mobile's 3G network and got consistent and reliable coverage throughout San Francisco. Using the carrier's 3G network, CNET's full site loaded in 50 seconds, while CNN and ESPN's mobile sites came up in 7 seconds and 18 seconds, respectively. We also watched a couple of YouTube clips, which took a while to load and buffer over 3G but not surprisingly, much faster over a Wi-Fi network. In both instances, however, playback was smooth, and picture and audio were synchronized.
The Touch Pro2 also proved to be a reliable navigator. Using TeleNav GPS Navigator, the smartphone located our position in less than a minute and did an accurate job of tracking our movements as we made our way around San Francisco. We also plotted our standard course from the Marina District to CNET's downtown headquarters, and TeleNav provided us with an accurate route as well as traffic information and clear voice-guided directions. The 3D moving maps were also easy to read on the Touch Pro2's large display, especially in landscape mode.
The HTC Touch Pro2 features a 1,500mAh lithium ion battery with a rated talk time of 7 hours and up to 14.5 days of standby time. The Touch Pro2 was able to offer up 30 minutes more than the promised talk time in our battery drain tests. According to FCC radiation tests, the Touch Pro2 has a digital SAR rating of 1.2 watts per kilogram.
