HTC Touch Pro2 Review

We often spend a lot of time talking about a smartphone's features. Although features are obviously important, call quality is probably the first and foremost thing we should mention. We were extremely pleased with the Touch Pro2's call quality and sound. The earpiece was adequately loud and the phone's speaker also produced good quality sound. The speakerphone was also excellent, thanks to the dual speakers and microphones. We also appreciated the proximity sensor which turns off the phone's display when you raise it to your ear.

We mentioned earlier that the Touch Pro2 has a Mute button on the back cover. Anytime you set the phone face down during a call, the speakerphone will activate automatically. Hence, the Mute button on the rear cover is a particularly useful feature that we found ourselves using often during conference calls. The Touch Pro2 also has another handy feature called Be Polite, which diminishes the volume of the ringer when you pick up the phone. If you flip the phone over, it mutes the ringer entirely. Should you ever forget to turn off your ringer during a movie or important meeting, you'll find this to be a very useful feature.

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The Touch Pro2's 3.6-inch display is crisp and pleasing to look at. The tilting screen is a nice touch, particularly for users who want to rest the phone on a desk or table and view the screen or watch a video from the handheld. The screen supports WVGA resolution at 480 x 800. The accelerometer responded reasonably quickly, though there was a slight lag in rotating the display many times.

In terms of overall responsiveness, the Touch Pro2 is respectable but keep in mind that it doesn't have an ultra-fast processor such as the Droid Incredible or other 1GHz Snapdragon-powered phones. As a result, there were times when we were waiting on the phone to load the Opera web browser or perform a different task. The lags weren't unbearable, but they were noticeable. We didn't notice much lag in the Touch Pro2's ability to respond to screen taps and finger gestures.

We appreciate that the Touch Pro2 comes with the Opera Web browser. With Opera, you'll get a more desktop-like Web browsing experience. The phone doesn't support pinch controls, but it does allow you to zoom in on text and pictures by double-tapping the screen. You can also use the Zoom Bar located at the base of the display to zoom in and out of text and pictures.

The Touch Pro2 is powered by a Qualcomm MSM7600 528MHz processor, 512MB of ROM, and 288MB of RAM. Combined, these specs are respectable for a phone, but Windows Mobile does add a bit of heft that slows things down. As one may expect, the phone tended to lag more frequently when we had multiple applications open and running in the background.

A 3.2 megapixel camera on a phone today isn't bad, but it's not top-tier, either. We were happy enough with the Touch Pro2's shooter, which can also record video. Keep in mind that, like other camera phones, the Touch Pro2 won't replace your DSLR, but it will let you capture memories on the go.

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For hackers and power users, one of the coolest things about the Touch Pro2 is the fact that HTC doesn't lock the phone down to the point that you can't play with it. For example, we didn't care for the phone's built-in reminders and snooze options. After a quick search, we easily located and installed an installation file that tweaked this feature.

In addition, it could be argued that HTC is becoming the manufacturer of choice for true smartphone enthusiasts. For example, there are numerous "chefs" that cook up custom ROMs for HTC's phones such as the Touch Pro2. Some of these custom ROMs include the latest versions of Windows Mobile, at times even before the update is officially released from HTC or the wireless carrier. These custom ROMs also offer additional apps and features that are not always found on the stock ROMs. In this regard, HTC is the complete opposite of some manufacturers (Apple in particular)—although the company doesn't condone or encourage custom ROMs, it certainly doesn't go to great lengths to stop them either. For this, we have to give HTC a lot of credit.

HTC claims you should expect up to 4 hours of talk time and over 2 weeks of standby time on the Touch Pro2's 1500 mAh Li-on battery. Although battery life is sure to vary based on how you use the phone, we were generally able to make it through the day without fully draining the battery while performing a variety of tasks.