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HTC Touch HD2: a ‘tragic creature’ crippled by poor software
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The HTC Touch HD2 looks great but its flaws apparently doom it.
This type of news certainly does not bode well for HTC’s Touch HD2, a phone that will be launched into a market that is as competitive as it’s been in awhile.
The word out of Gizmodo is that the Touch HD2 is a beautiful piece of hardware, but will be overshadowed by other phones, Motorola Droid, iPhone, HTC Droid Eris because of flaws on the software side of things.
Here’s the good:
Top to bottom, corner to corner—and it's a long trip—the HD2 is a perfect specimen of glass, plastic and aluminum. The massive screen-to-bezel ratio means the HD2 is essentially just a 4.3-inch piece of glass, its 800x480 multitouch display bordered by just a few millimeters of ink-black trim and a subtle row of satisfyingly pressable little buttons. The handset's minimalist hindside, interrupted only by a slightly protruding lens for the HD2's 5-megapixel camera and a ever-so-slightly grained aluminum battery door, is elegantly tapered, emphasizing just how thin this thing is—thinner than the iPhone, which is pretty good for a phone that I almost want to call a tablet.
Here is the bad:
With Sense HTC has made a sort of meta-OS, which uses Windows Mobile 6.5 as a behind-the-scenes stagehand, which only shows its face when it absolutely needs to. HTC has even added multitouch to the browser, maps and photo applications, which works surprisingly well for what almost certainly qualifies as an after-the-fact hack. It's impressive, but every time you notice the absurd lengths to which HTC has gone to deny this phone is running Windows—they've even replaced the calendar and text messaging apps, for god's sake—you find yourself asking the same question: Why even bother?
So basically, unless you love Windows Mobile, and maybe a lot of you out there do (I’ve had a bit of the good and a bit of the bad with it), you probably are going to want to take a pass on the Touch HD2. The good people at HTC were apparently too lazy to completely replace the UI and were probably too focused on other things to be bothered.
Of course that's probably not the real reason, but in summary, the Touch HD2 appears to be a flawed phone.
This will be the best WinMo release in awhile but it really has a lot of catching up to do if it wants to become relevant. It's also a shame because the phone itself looks awesome.
If only it had Android...
For more info, contact Adam: admillios@gmail.com
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