You are always on the move and need a beautiful, small and comfortable office to fit in your pocket?

HTC offers you a solution. About six months ago, Touch appeared on the marked and everyone was impressed by its compact size and innovative options. In other words, it revealed the elegant image of the modern PocketPC, utilizing the design and functions of the widely popular models such as, iPhone, LG’s KF700, Samsung’s F490 and Armani.

The subject of this review is the development of the slider concept with a 3G support (UMTS/HSDPA), a processor twice as fast (400MHz), more memory (256MB ROM and 128MB RAM) and the Windows Mobile 6 Professional OS. We will discuss the HTC Touch Dual.

The phone’s appearance catches the eye extremely easy. If you pull the phone out of the suede bag, included in the box and people around you don’t start asking you questions like “Is this Prada?” or “Is that a new model by Samsung?", then most likely, you are surrounded by individuals, who have spent the last year in a Buddhist temple. Confusion like that could be explained, by the large display, which when inactive, offers extremely beautiful mirror-like effect. The TFT display has a 240x320 pixel resolution and supports up to 65k colors. Its high contrast, providing good visibility in daylight, as well as the easy to clean surface, leave us with a very good impression. Just over its upper right corner is the video calling camera.

The D-pad and the accept/reject buttons are located in the upper half of the slider. After holding the latter, the phone goes to programming mode. The two buttons are easy to press, but are too small and are probably victims to the clear design. On the other hand, the navigational pad is very convenient, and the bulge easing the sliding up/down, is slightly above it.

The lack of software buttons and of one, which to correspond to the “close the window” function” or an “OK” button makes the utilizing the touch screen necessary. In order to take advantage of full functionality of the PocketPC, you still have to use your fingers or the stylus included in the set.

The main 2-megapixel camera and the speaker are located on the back. The back panel is fully covered by the lid of the battery, which has to be removed in order to install a SIM card.

A good smartphone isn't all about looks, but they do matter. In this case, HTC has retained the black, rubber-feel outer casing and rounded edges of the original Touch. The former helps make the Touch Dual comfortable to hold, while the latter looks distinctive. It brings the smartphone away from the staid old world of professional businesspeople and into consumerland.

The Touch Dual is a slim-format mobile and it feels comfortable in the hand, albeit a little tall. The slider format hides a numberpad until it is needed and when you slide it out, the Touch Dual can feel a bit unwieldy in smaller hands.

By introducing the slider, HTC has been able to hide various Windows Mobile shortcut buttons, so the front of the casing only has Call and End buttons and a navigation key. This makes things look pretty sleek.

One other thing to note about the general look and feel of the Touch Dual is that the screen is quite small. At 2.6 inches corner to corner, some might find it a bit squint-inducing.

TouchFLO who?

The TouchFLO system made its first appearance on the original Touch and we still marvel at its cleverness. With a series of finger swipes, you can call up menus that switch animatedly as if you were spinning a cube. Applications, music and contacts are all available this way.

You can also swipe the screen to do things like scroll through webpages, contact lists and the Windows Mobile applications listing. It is all pretty clever and so much cooler looking than the standard Windows Mobile screens.

Of course, you do get back to the standard Windows Mobile screens pretty soon - TouchFLO is not a complete overhaul. As soon as you want to create an email or browse the web, you are back to ordinary Windows Mobile stuff.

Communications capers

If you are looking for a Windows Mobile device with everything, then this isn't the place to be. The Touch Dual runs Windows Mobile 6, which means it's bang up to date as far as the operating system is concerned, but as we've said, Wi-Fi is absent. Also missing is GPS, which is becoming a lot more common in smartphones.

3G is here though, and the front-facing camera allows you to make video calls. Bluetooth is on board and you also get all the usual gubbins to connect the Touch Dual to a PC to sync contacts and diary and to add extra software.

Summary

The most significant improvement in the HTC Touch Dual is surprisingly not the hardware keyboard. Perhaps we would have found it more useful if we had tested the SureType version instead of the numeric keys on our review unit, but to us, the best improvement was in the responsiveness of the phone and the TouchFLO interface. This Touch seemed to work much better than the other two we'd tried, and made the phone much more usable and likable. It still won't match a full-QWERTY phone for productivity, but Windows Mobile fans looking for a mostly-touch device will be happy with the improvments HTC has made. Release: November 2007. Price: $650.

Pros: Fast networking on European HSDPA networks. TouchFLO interface seems to be more responsive.

Cons: Still not as agile as other touchscreen devices. No U.S. 3G support. SureType version more interesting than 12-key numeric.

Look and feel

As with the original HTC Touch, the Touch Dual feels great, with a wonderful black rubberised finish that looks and feels great. Meanwhile, the slide out keypad adds no unnecessary bulk to the device.

Ease of use

Although, the TouchFlo touchscreen interface is a bit hit and miss, its better than all touchscreen competitors except the iPhone. The user interface is simple to master.

Features

A significant improvement on the original, with HSDPA amd a sliding keypad now on board the HTC Touch Dual.

Performance

A great smartphone performance, with rapid internet speeds and an okay camera.

Battery life

Middle of the road battery life that just about does the job, but keep your charger handy.