FIRST REVIEW OF HTC TOUCH 3G(JADE) PHONE

THE PAST

Right from the onset, for me, cellphone brands always had to begin with a "N" and end with an "A"- NOKIA to be precise! Yes, the very fact that this huge company solely depended on "cellphones" for its survival was AWESOME, unlike Samsung or LG! Yet, ironically, I had the strong inclination to check and buy cellphone products of other companies instead.In early 2004, it began with Samsung's C100(the then sleekest phone of the world). Then Sony Ericcson K500i- the phone that left me with a painful thumb everytime I did a scroll using the awkwardly place joystick(renamed "Painstick"). "It lost all its marbles" was what my cousin Anand told me later. Instead of options "Accept" or "Reject" call, the firmware had upgraded itself to "OK" and "YES". The crazy bits with K500i is long and pretty amusing.

Leaving the Sony experience behind, I followed up with Nokia 1100(The torchlight phone- Good for the price), Nokia 5300 MusicXpress(I got this one from the States in 2006. Great phone but "fat" for my liking), Samsung C160( I don't know why I got this one!!) and Nokia E50(another painful thumb experience). Do not ask me where these phones are now- I do not have an answer. The last phone that I used was a Windows Mobile 5 smartphone with QWERTY keyboard- Samsung SGH i320 [Gifted by my NRI brother:)]. This phone is still usable but it has a cracked screen(a major turn-off) and has some "annoying" issues.

First, the battery life is pathetic, even though the company has provided a spare and a external battery case for charging your battery "offline". But, it still doesn't beat the fact that the battery life is amazingly shortlived.

Secondly, the software is not so robust as there is hardly any firmware update. And after some months of use, you will not be able to disconnect an ongoing call unless you keep pressing the disconnect button. This can sometimes lead to a "switch-off" situation. And for my contacts who have complained about not attending to their calls, here is an update :-
The network goes "off" suddenly and I am not aware of this.

THE NEED

So, tired and dejected, after contemplation, I was back to buying days and what better occasion to look forward than Diwali!


I was looking at a fully loaded phone in the range 10 k to 15 k INR. And after weeks of extensive research, I zeroed-in on three phones:-
NOKIA 5800 XpressMusic("The Batman" phone), Nokia E71 and HTC Touch(Series).

If you check Nokia's website and select all features that you would like in a QWERTY phone(like WiFi, 3G etc), then 5800 XpressMusic(XPM) and Nokia E71 will be the ones displayed. Since I already had a QWERTY smartphone experience with Samsung, I rejected Nokia E71 and the only phones on my list was the XPM and HTC Touch series. Now, the next step was to check out issues with the selected phones. Believe me or Not- the XPM issues thread at the Nokia Support website has been closed because it has run into tens of pages. Of course, they weren't only about issues but answers as well but the thread length left me scared and hesitant. Further, one of my colleague who had the phone agreed to give me a "test" run and I wasn't impressed with the screen surface and the "Touch-Flow" experience. The only great feeling was the screen size.

To add to this, my teammate was pretty vocal about his HTC experience and had even changed his Sony Xperia Touch phone to use HTC's firmware because of the little "extra" it had. Thus, I convinced myself on buying a HTC phone for the first time.

The next step was an extensive research on the prices in Bangalore. There are a couple of good sites where you get a fair idea about the prices. I think the MobileStore website is pretty good in this. Apart from the internet, it is always better to walk into some stores and enquire about the prices. So, after checking prices at Sangeetha and Univercell in IndiraNagar, I finally landed up buying the HTC TOUCH 3G also called JADE(that was within my budget) from the mobilestore at around 17 K with a 5% cash-back offer.


THE TOUCH EXPERIENCE

Image courtesy:Nasa4ppc

The touch experience has been amazingly awesome. I would rate this as the best phone I ever used. The specifics are easily found in the internet. But, I would like to share the end-user experience. HTC Touch 3G also called Jade is based on Windows Mobile 6.1 and has every "techie" thing that I require - from WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, Weather updates to 3G. It doesn't have an accelerometer but the camera always starts in the landscape mode for that digital camera LCD feeling. And unlike my previous conception about smartphones draining out battery, this phone lives miserly giving you ample standby and talk time, provided the WiFi is not always on. It lacks a radio but the storage support(have a 4Gb card) and inbuilt music player compensates your musical needs. Try the "Audio Booster" for that extra BASS effect and you will love this phone even more.

As for the negatives, the greatest drawback of the phone is the camera. I would call this 3.2 Mp camera a "day-only but use outdoors" camera. It is literally useless in the dark as it has no external flash. The contact list is pretty cramped and you must practice to perfect this else use the sleek stylus provided to you. The other complaint might be that the device has only one port(used for charging as well as for the headphones). But, for me this is perfect. I don't like to carry too many wires.

In true sense, from my perspective, an iPhone killer from HTC at an affordable price.

Is this all? Even my phone has it...!!

THE EXTRA TOUCH EXPERIENCE

For the unaware, if you get bored with the "default" operating system Windows Mobile 6.1 then there is something to cheer about. There are many custom ROM's available in the internet. The best place to search is the XDA Developers forum. You will first need to HardSPL the bootloader and then load the custom ROM. Check out for the ROM's available and read the reviews before trying this out. If you need assistance, try querying the forum members.

A statutory warning though :-

"CUSTOM ROM'S SHOULD BE LOADED AT YOUR OWN RISK!"

In my view, PDAVIET's v23 with Windows Mobile 6.5 is great to start off with.


END LOG

I have used this phone for about a month now and am glad I bought this one! For those bored with Nokia's Symbian approach and Samsung's battery woes, try HTC and I bet you will fall in love with it.


Everything written in this article is true except the second last line. Thanks, Mama Puntey for this lovely gift!!Love you...!!