Photos: Hands-on with the HTC Touch Pro Qwerty slider
If the Touch Diamond left you yearning for a Qwerty keypad, dry your eyes because the HTC Touch Pro is exactly what you've been praying for
It's fair to say we weren't exactly overwhelmed by the HTC Touch Diamond -- it looks good, but it just doesn't deliver the smooth smart phone goods we loved on other HTC handsets. Enter the HTC Touch Pro, which we've just got in the Crave house. Our first impressions are in the region of good, near the border with great.
While it looks quite chunky it's actually not much larger than a Nokia N95, plus it comes with a secret weapon in the form of a slide-out Qwerty keypad. Like the Touch Diamond, it uses the TouchFLO 3D interface, which improves the Windows Mobile experience by making it more finger-friendly, but here it's even snappier.
When you slide the keyboard out, you're offered a very handy shortcut menu, as you can see in the picture, which gives you access to a variety of services, including messaging and the Internet. Everything looks razor-sharp on the Touch Pro's bright and crisp VGA screen.
If you look closely at the keypad you'll notice there are dedicated number keys at the top, something its predecessor, the HTC TyTN II, didn't have. Overall we think we're going to get along with this device a whole lot better than its keyboard-less brother and look forward to testing out its many features. The HTC Touch Pro is likely to be out on most networks soon for free on a contract, and you can buy it now for around £500 SIM-free. For more pictures and info click on the next page. -Andrew Lim
Update: Read our full HTC Touch Pro review here.
From the front, the Touch Pro looks very similar to the Touch Diamond. There's a large touchscreen, a set of navigation keys and a touch-sensitive scroll wheel that can also be clicked.
At 18mm thick, this isn't the slimmest phone out there, but when you take into account how many features are crammed in -- especially the slide-out Qwerty keypad -- it's not that big at all. In fact, next to its predecessor the TyTN II, it looks more compact.
On the back there's a 3.2-megapixel camera with auto-focus and an LED photo light, which is an improvement on the Touch Diamond. From the few pics we've taken so far, image quality seems good, but we need to do further testing. Expect a full review soon.