BasicDog

It all began while I was on holiday for a week and the only way I could keep an eye on my site was to pay £1 an minute for a slot machine-esque internet access point. Anyway, this isn't about those awkward internet machines on holiday, but about how I find myself owning a HTC Touch Dual. The short of it is that I decided to get a PDA-phone, and now find myself wondering how I lived without one.

The PDA-phone I chose was the HTC Touch Dual (as I am sure most noticed from the title of the article) on T-mobile, and I must say that for the money (£25 per month) I don't regret the decision at all.

Specification

Phone Features
So that's all the technical bumph but what you relay want to know is the features, and a major one is the slide out keypad which was added to this phone due to popular demand by the users of the previous HTC Touch phones, though I have found that I rarely use it myself. even with the small size of the phone they managed to fit a stylus which slides out from the top right corner of the phone, which is very handy for when you find yourself viewing complicated webpages or typing on the smaller on-screen keyboards.

The memory card slot supports the MicroSD HC format which has a data transfer speed of up to 6mb/s, and for those who are not aware 6mb/s is very fast for tiny memory cards.

The phone has HSPDA which is the latest in wireless network connectivity utilising the mobile company networks, though it is missing Wi-fi connectivity which is a shame as it would make transferring files between home PCs and the phone a lot easier. An added plus of the HSPDA is the ability to use the phone as a modem for your PC or laptop, giving you up to 100kbps (what I have personally experienced) broadband anywhere you want it, provided you have signal on your phone of course.

GPS is also unfortunately missing from the phone, and my experiences with GPRS which is featured on this phone are not great. Google Maps utilises GPS and GPRS to act similar to satellite navigation system and the GPRS always seems to be at least one street away from where I actually am.

Though I am sure that the removal of Wi-fi and GPS make the phone both lighter and smaller, this may a bad trade off for the more demanding consumers. That said I have never had these features on a phone and so I must say that I do not feel the need for them.

TouchFlo
TouchFlo is an innovative interface which can be used to easily access the different functions of the phone. It is activated by sliding your finger up the screen, then sliding to each side will rotate the TouchFlo 'cube' showing different sides, each with a different set of functions. There are three sides in total; the first allows you to add 9 contacts (with photographs) and when pressed it will call them, the next side displays some basic functions such as the E-mail, SMS, Internet Explorer, File Explorer, Calender etc. using nice big icons. The last screen has three huge buttons; Music, Photos and videos, each one opening the relevant programs. The main idea that HTC have adopted here is that all you should need to use any of these functions on the phone is a finger.

TouchFlo also makes an appearance in the photo viewing application, in which 'gestures' on the screen make the zooming and rotating of images very easy, don't worry I will explain; while pressing on the screen and moving your finger will do the following; a full clockwise circle will zoom into the photo and anti-clockwise for zooming out, a semi circle in either direction will rotate the photo 90degrees and moving from left to right and vice-versa will show the next and previous photo. The really clever part comes when zooming, as the size of the circle determines how far and where it will zoom into, so that the circled area will fill the screen. I find this very useful when showing others your photos as on the small phone screen you certainly need a quick and easy zoom.

Software
If you are already a veteran Windows Mobile user you will undoubtedly have a set collection of your favourite software, though if you are not then I will give you a run down of the software included with the phone and also those that I could not leave the house without.

The standard software includes Pocket Office(Word, Excel, Outlook, Adobe PDF viewer) allowing you to edit and forward any work you might have, and an MP3/AAC player allowing you to fill your MicroSD card full of MP3s and listen to them on the go.

If you are like me you will want to install all manner of software on your Touch Dual, and rest assured you will have plenty opportunities. After searching the internet for but a few seconds with either the phone or your home PC you will be bombarded with many sites, all with hundreds of applications for everything you can possibly think of. This new software can then be installed in one of three ways; if you downloaded them using your phone you can install them with the actual phone which includes a Java installer, or you can use MS Activsync to install them from your PC straight onto the phone or memory card.

I have installed additional software to make the phone my perfect digital companion, this includes a messenger (palringo), an IE add-on with tabbed browsing (PIEPlus), Google Maps and a battery display for my today screen. A must for this phone is a video player other than the built in Windows Media Player, for this I had tried a few including mPlayer though finally settled on TCPMP, a free media player with codecs already installed and ready to use.

I started off trying to browse the internet on the phone with mixed feelings, these were of amazement that I was actually doing it, but also of frustration on how awkward it was displaying the more complex webpages. This is mainly due to the smaller size of the screen and can be reduced by rotating the screen 90degrees (landscape) or finding and installing alternative internet browsers.

Battery
If you are used to the battery life of a normal phone that lasts 5+ days as I was, using this phone will at first frustrate you as the battery will only last a day with intensive web use or video playback, or nearly three days if you use it as just a phone. A quick check on Ebay for two new Li-Ion 1120 mAh batteries and this issue fades to a minor annoyance.

Pros:
Small and Light
HSPDA
Second VGA camera for video calls
Windows Mobile 6 with Java.

Cons:
No hardware keyboard
No Wi-fi
No GPS
No flash/light for camera
Battery life

Conclusion
While previous PDA users may be torn between the portability and business features of the HTC touch Dual, those who have experienced only mobile phones will welcome the functionality and style of the phone.