An overview of the HTC Touch HD2

Introducing the HTC Touch HD2

Any new smartphone that is revealed tends to immediately draw natural comparisons to Apples iPhone, quite often unfairly so. However with the release of the Touch HD2 the comparisons are justifiable due to its sleek looks and excellent performance.

The Touch HD2 has an extra large 4.3 inch, 800 x 400 resolution multi touch capacitive screen. This screen dominates the bulk of the front of the handset. It is one of the first phones to include HTC Sense software, which operates on top of the phones Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system. This gives the user a much easier interface to operate the phone with than the traditional Windows version. The home screen will default to the weather when not in use, and using the on board gps gives you a screen that matches your weather conditions outside. This HTC Sense also includes a tab to access Twitter enabling you to enter a tweet, send direct messages and update your status. The HD2's web browsing is impressive and very much like using a desk top, which will appeal to many potential customers. Zooming in and out simply requires a double tap on the screen.

The HD2 is much slimmer than the iPhone, measuring in at just 11mm thick, 67mm wide and 121mm high. However, it weighs 157gram, so is by no means a lightweight phone. Well chosen materials make the phone feel great and expensive. With it's metalic back and rubberised finish. There are only four physical buttons on the front of the device comprising of call pick up, call end, home and the web and back button. On the back of the Touch HD2 is the 5 mega pixel camera. This is backed up by an led flash, auto focus, video capture and playback and two times zoom. One glaring downside to the HTC Touch HD2 is its obvious lack of in built memory. With just 512MB of ROM and 448MB of RAM, I can see most users taking advantage of the microSD card slot to bulk that memory up to a maximum of 32GB, on par with the iPhone.

Other features include FM Radio, a 3.5 mm stereo audio jack and Standard Micro-USB (5-pin micro-USB 2.0). Running from a rechargeable Lithium-ion battery which provides talktime of upto 320 minutes and 390 hours standby time. Network speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps download speed and up to 2 Mbps upload speed.

In conclusion, the HTC Touch HD2 has a vivid, large touch screen with extremely quick response thanks to the Snapdragon processor. Despite obviously lacking with its built in memory, its sleek design and impressive user interface thanks to the Sense software does make it a worthy contender to the iPhones crown.