Camera

This puts the Touch on par with Apple's iPhone, which also has a 2.0-megapixel camera, and the two phones were on par with each other in photo quality. Video quality for the Touch was also okay and similar to the iPhone's, although it was a bit grainy indoors. The one-touch camera button is located on the lower right side of the phone, but users can also press the large silver navigation button on the front of the phone to take photos.

When a user brings up the camera by pressing one of these buttons, the screen displays several options to control the quality of photos. These capture modes include video and six different photo modes. The photo modes range from standard still photos to "burst," which takes a series of up to 30 photos as long as the camera button or front "enter" button is pressed down.

The Touch provides a lot of options and information when the camera is open. This ranges from the number of photos or amount of video that the Touch can record with available memory, to a "quick settings" panel that allows users to control brightness, white balance and resolution, among other things.

It took some time to figure out how to go from the photo screen to saved photos - tap on an arrow on the lower left hand side of the screen - and how to get back from saved photos - tap twice on the screen to bring up a menu, and select the backward arrow. When the photo screen is open for a while and the user has not made any selections, the options displayed on the initial screen disappear. Users can bring them back up with the tap of a finger on the screen.

Basic Features

The Touch runs Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional, so users have access to Excel Mobile, PowerPoint Mobile and Word Mobile. The Touch is also sold with Internet Explorer already installed.

The phone turns on to a home screen, also referred to as the "Today Screen." This includes a very large clock, weather information that users can customize to their city and new messages and missed calls. There is also a customizable launcher where users can add applications of their choice.

Whether users prefer the "Today Screen" or the iPhone's simpler home screen with more icons linking to applications, weather and other items may depend upon the person. It did seem easier to reach these things on the iPhone, rather than finding them on the Windows Start menu or interface on the Touch.

The three-dimensional Touch Cube interface is nonetheless one of the highlights of the Touch. This feature is accessed by swiping a finger up from the bottom of the screen, and then swiping a finger to the right or left to spin the cube and pan through applications, media and contacts. The contacts side of the cube displays the user's top nine contacts with their photos. Unfortunately, the Touch Cube interface is only available when the phone's display is in portrait view. Therefore, users need to make sure the display is not set to landscape view, to enable this feature to work.

Basic features on the Touch include a calculator, calendar and camera album. The one-touch talk button near the bottom of the phone brings up a keypad for users to make a call, and the end button closes this. The Touch also has access to GPS through Sprint Navigation.

The Touch features a Li-Ion battery, and the phone generally has up to four hours of talk time. The media playback time is up to eight hours for video and 12 hours for audio.

< Prev Next >

This article is Copyright 2002-2012 Mobiledia Corp. and the review in part or in whole may NOT be reproduced in any electronic or printed medium without prior permission from Mobiledia. For information on reproducing any part of this review (or any images) please contact us.