HTC Touch Pro

The Touch Pro is HTC’s top-of-the-range smartphone, and it’s aimed at business users. The 2.8-inch touchscreen display is outstanding, and it’s one of the sharpest we’ve seen on a mobile phone. Surprisingly, it’s also capable of displaying web pages in full, thanks to the Opera browser, and double-tapping on a specific area lets you zoom in. It’s not perfect, however, and our phone suffered from occasional lag when zooming in.

You’ll find a host of navigation buttons below the display, and there’s a stylus stowed away at the side. The slide-down QWERTY keypad makes this one of the bulkier smartphones on the market.

Most noticeable is the extra depth over regular phones. It’s a price worth paying when it comes to usability, as the keypad is excellent. It makes it easier than ever to create emails and documents when out of the office, and HTC has even managed to cram in a fifth line for numeric characters.

HTC’s TouchFlo 3D interface is installed, offering an alternate way of navigating the Windows OS. With large onscreen buttons, it negates the need to use a stylus. It doesn’t completely cover the Windows OS, however, and the phone switches back to the fiddly menus once you want to change settings. Connectivity is excellent, with 3G/HSDPA offering rapid web browsing, and Wi-Fi and Bluetooth also in place. A Micro-SD slot lets you add additional storage, and you’ll need it considering the 512MB built in.

The Pro is packed with features. You’ll find GPS and Google Maps installed as standard, and it found our location within ten seconds. This is faster than anything else we’ve seen to date.
There’s a 3.2-megapixel camera on the rear, with quality helped by autofocus and an LED flash.

If you don’t mind paying for it, the HTC Touch Pro is one of the best smartphones you can currently buy.

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