Jenneth Orantia14 June 2008, 9:00 AM
It's no supermodel, but this smartphone from HTC certainly comes close.
The latest update to HTC’s Touch range is the Cruise, a Windows Mobile 6 Professional smartphone that gets its name from an on-board GPS chip (and not a certain wacky scientologist, alas). It doesn’t add anything we haven’t seen before in HTC’s lineup, but marries the GPS, Wi-Fi and 2.8in screen of the TyTN II with the sleek form factor and TouchFLO interface of the Touch Dual. Unlike either unit, however, it doesn’t have a slide-out keypad.
The Cruise isn’t quite as good looking as the Touch Dual, but it’s still attractive for a smartphone, with a mirrored chrome front, soft touch black finish and unique shape that’s both angular and curvy. Characteristic of the Touch range, it’s slim and compact, and its 2.8in display (which has the standard QVGA resolution) is flush with the casing.
The usual answer and end call buttons are below the screen, as well as launch buttons for CoPilot Live 7 and Internet Explorer, and two buttons that correspond to on-screen soft keys. Navigation takes place by tapping on the touchscreen with the included stylus (or your finger) and the mechanical scrollwheel. Unlike other HTC smartphones, it doesn’t come with dedicated OK and Start menu buttons, which simply means more on-screen tapping. Two cameras are on-board: a front-facing VGA one for video calls and self-portraits and a three-megapixel one on the rear that includes auto-focus but no flash.
Running the show is a 400MHz Qualcomm MSM7200 processor, and for the most part performance was snappy, although a tougher-than-usual glass overlay means the screen isn’t as sensitive as we’re accustomed to.
Like the TyTN II, the Touch Cruise uses CoPilot Live 7 for mapping – an application that costs a couple of hundred dollars when bought separately. This program does a great job at making the most of the limited screen real estate, with large buttons, predictive address matching (so you don’t have to enter the whole address), and turn-by-turn voice guidance. Features typically found in standalone GPS navigators are all on-board, and it also integrates with the Cruise’s phone and PIM functions, offering click-through phone numbers for points of interest, address lookup for Outlook contacts, and the ability to send your current location, ETA and destination using SMS.
A feature found in all Touch smartphones is the 3D cube launcher, providing quick access to multimedia, contacts represented by photo thumbnails, and commonly-used applications. HTC throws in a few other programs and GUI enhancements that make it easier to use the device one-handed, but for writing email, web browsing, and adding meetings and contacts, the interface is still classic Windows Mobile, which means tapping on lots of small buttons and ample use of the stylus. Also, as it doesn’t have a physical keypad, you have to use the on-screen software input methods, ranging from handwriting recognition (slow and error-prone) to predictive text (difficult-to-use) and a QWERTY keyboard (effective but with tiny keys).
Windows Mobile 6 Professional is well-stocked when it comes to software, but HTC throws a few more goodies in the bag. The HTC Home plug-in for the Today screen is infinitely superior to anything we’ve seen from other Windows Mobile vendors, with a tabbed info panel that shows the time and phone information, weather forecast, customisable program shortcuts and a profile switcher. The Task Manager applet adds a ‘real’ close button to the taskbar, and Audio Manager, Camera Album and Opera Mobile 8.5 are better versions of the equivalent Windows Mobile.
One thing the Cruise doesn’t lack for is wireless connectivity. It offers quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE, as well as 3G, HSDPA, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR. Internal storage is 256MB, and while the bundled 512MB microSD card is skimpy, the Cruise supports high capacity cards like SanDisk’s 8GB microSDHC card. Battery life is quoted as up to four hours talk time and 450 hours of standby over 3G.