Pocket PC Thoughts: The Professional Touch...a Review of HTC's Touch Pro (aka AT&T Fuze)

When you first hold the HTC Touch Pro, there is definitely the feel of a solid, professional level device. Although the physical dimensions are very similar to the HTC Kaiser/AT&T Tilt, the Pro doesn't feel as bulky and it feels thinner in the palm -- very comfortable as a phone and as an organizer. HTC has also taken a bit of a different tack with the Diamond/Pro line in that they have deliberately reduced the number of buttons & extrusions to the bare minimum and engineered the remaining ones to present an overall feel of a smooth, unblemished surface.

Figure 2: The design of the Touch Pro is definitely sleak and minimalist. Above the screen are the earpiece and front facing VGA camera (probably not included in North American models). Below the screen are five flush-mounted buttons on the front panel, including the five-way navigation d-pad.

Everything about the TouchPro is designed to encourage the use of touch gestures, rather than the stylus. Unfortunately, this also means that, as with all flat surfaces, the screen is something of a fingerprint/smear magnet. But it is easily cleaned and with the contrast, they were hardly noticeable in normal use. The entire surface of the screen is flat to the edge of the unit with no bezel, which makes it easy to access the entire surface.

You'll also notice the lack of indicator lights. All of the multicolour LEDs we've been used to having to tell us about power, GPRS, messages, Bluetooth, WiFi and GPS status have all been removed. The only indicator lights provided are white ones around the outside of the d-pad, and these are used only for charging and message notification.

The VGA display is clear, crisp, and beautiful. The colours are deep and vibrant, and visible in most lighting conditions -- even outside on a sunny day. There was a bit of difficulty with direct sunlight on the screen itself, but that's normal for this type of display.

Figure 3: Here's a shot of the unit with the keyboard exposed.

HTC did a great job of reworking the overall engineering of the keys, etc. in order to get the 5th row in at the top. This makes it much easier to type mixed alphanumeric text. Although others have complained of small keys, I didn't find them bad at all. You can't really touch type on this kind of keyboard, but I wasn't making side-by-side mistakes as I flew through emails, etc. Notice along the bottom row that there are also convenient special function keys for messaging, email, Internet, T9 keypad, and phone pickup.

Figure 4: Did I mention the minimalist approach? Here on the side of the unit, the only thing presented are the Volume Up/Down buttons. In case you're wondering, no, you can't remap these using the Button application in the Settings menu. I won't bother showing you the other side, since there's nothing there at all.