HTC Touch2 review (unlocked)

Aside from navigating the Web, you can navigate the streets with the smarpthone's GPS/A-GPS. Like a number of other smartphones, the Touch2 includes the QuickGPS utility, which downloads the latest satellite information over the Internet to help speed up the time it takes to find your position. Google Maps also comes preinstalled on the device so you can see your location on a map, as well get text-based turn-by-turn directions, traffic data, and conduct business searches. In fact, if you choose HTC's TouchFlo interface, there's a dedicated Map Search tab where you can enter search terms, such as coffee or hotel, and the Touch2 will display results on Google Maps based on your current location.

Other apps and tools that ship on the HTC Touch2 include a Adobe Reader LE, a task list, a voice recorder, a notepad, a calculator, a set of HTC Debug tools, and more. Once the Windows Marketplace is open, you'll be able to download more apps, utilities, and games right from the device, and Microsoft's MyPhone backup service will allow you to manage your apps as well as reinstall them should you need to restore your smartphone.

Multimedia features aren't anything beyond ordinary. Windows Media Player 10 Mobile supports various music and video formats, including AAC, AAC+, MP3, WMA, WAV, WMV, MP4, 3GP, and AVI. There's also an FM radio, though you need to use the included wired headset since it contains the tuner, and a dedicated YouTube app.

On back, you'll find the Touch2's 3.2-megapixel camera.

The Touch2 has a 3.2-megapixel camera with fixed focus. For regular still images, you have a choice of five resolutions and four quality settings and also get a standard set of camera options, such as white balance, brightness controls, and ISO settings. In addition to regular photos, you can capture panorama shots, contacts pictures, picture themes, MMS video, and standard video.

Picture quality was a little dark.

Picture quality was OK. The image came out a little dark, even after adjusting the brightness and white balance. However, you could still make out the objects in the photo, and video quality was acceptable.

Performance
We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; GPRS/EDGE) HTC Touch2 in San Diego using AT&T service and call quality was good. Voices sounded impressively clear on our end, despite a noticeable background hiss. Friends also had good things to say about the sound quality on their side of the conversation, and we didn't experience any dropped calls during our review period. Speakerphone quality was acceptable. Volume was just a little weak when we took a call outdoors, and callers said they could tell we had switched to speakerphone, but overall, the Touch2 was better than most. We had no problems pairing the Touch2 with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset and the Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones.

The Touch2 is powered by a 528MHz Qualcomm MSM7225 processor and has 512MB ROM/256MB RAM. The smartphone was relatively responsive with occasional moments of sluggishness, though no worse than other recent smartphones. There's a task manager in the upper right-hand corner of the Today screen where you can close out of running apps and keep tabs on memory. Browsing the Web required a bit of patience over EDGE. CNET's full site took 1 minute and 5 seconds to load, while CNN and ESPN's mobile sites came up in 16 seconds and 32 seconds, respectively. We watched YouTube clips right from Internet Explorer Mobile, thanks to the added Flash Lite support, but it took a while for videos to buffer both at the beginning and during playback.

The HTC Touch2 features an 1100mAh lithium ion battery with a rated talk time of 7.3 hours and up to 15 days of standby time. In our battery drain tests, the smartphone delivered 7 hours of continuous talk time on a single charge.