The Sprint Touch Pro is essentially the Sprint Touch Diamond with a full QWERTY keyboard, the same 3.2-MP camera, but with a flash, and room for 16GB of storage (up from 4GB of internal memory). Plus, the Touch Pro keeps the Diamond’s speedy EV-DO and Wi-Fi connections, along with quick access to Sprint’s over-the-air music store and Sprint TV. However, HTC’s TouchFLO 3D user interface isn’t as smooth or responsive as the iPhone 3G or T-Mobile G1, and the underlying Windows Mobile operating system feels a bit dated. Does this smart phone have the right stuff for demanding power users?
Design
The Sprint Touch Pro feels bulky and thick, but is well built. Its metallic accents make the device look a bit like a hot rod in the smart phone space. Measuring 4.0 x 2.0 x 0.7 inches, it’s a tad smaller than the AT&T Tilt and Sprint Mogul, but those HTC devices lack the chic design of the Touch Pro. At 5.3 ounces, the Pro was always noticeable in our pockets, but was comfortable during phone calls.
The front of the Touch Pro is reflective, so it gets littered with fingerprints easily. Its face has the same controls as the Touch Diamond: Home, Return, Call and End keys, as well as a center selection button that doubles as a four-way directional pad. You can also control the device by using an included stylus in conjunction with its large 2.8-inch 640 x 480 touchscreen. Each stylus tap was accurate out of the box, and we appreciated that it could be stored in the bottom right corner of the Touch Pro. On the other hand, we wish we didn’t need to use a stylus at all.
The ports and buttons of the phone are the same as the Diamond, too. There are volume controls on the left side, a power button on the top, and a mini-USB jack on the bottom. Unlike the Diamond, you can add a microSD card (up to 16GB) by removing the rear cover of the device. We would have appreciated a camera quick-launch button somewhere on the phone as well.
The Touch Pro comes with a charger, an extra stylus, a USB cable, mini-USB earbuds, a carrying case, and a bulky 4-in-1 adapter for adding a 3.5 or a 2.5-mm headphone jack and for charging and syncing via USB at the same time.
A built-in accelerometer senses when the phone is turned on its side and automatically reorients the screen to landscape mode. This was especially useful when we were browsing the Web or when we wanted to access the landscape menu of TouchFLO 3D: in this orientation, the Touch Pro offers quick shortcuts to your bookmarks, calendar, contacts, e-mail, messages, notes, tasks, and Web search, all on one screen.
Keyboard
The Touch Pro’s QWERTY keyboard is good, but it’s certainly not our favorite. Each key is large, but the layout is pretty flat, and we found it difficult to type quickly without making errors. We appreciated the quick launch keys for text, e-mail, and the Web browser. Given the plethora of buttons we wish that “@” was given its own key, instead of having to share real estate with the “2” button.
User Interface
HTC’s TouchFLO 3D interface loads on top of Windows Mobile; this feature-rich UI lets you finger swipe through each main menu choice. We prefer this overlay instead of Windows Mobile’s stock Today screen because it brings all of our most used content forward, such as contacts, messages, music, photos, and even the weather. The Pro features the same 528-MHz processor that the Diamond has, though, so the sluggishness of the UI was still noticeable from time to time when we tried to flip through the ribbon menu quickly. Once you leave the TouchFLO shell, though, you’ll find yourself inside the drab but business friendly Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional environment.
