HTC Touch2 Windows Mobile 6.5 Sim Free Mobile Phone - Urban Brown

The Touch 2 was smaller than I expected so it made the phone very comfortable to hold and use. The back cover has a rubberised effect which tends to make it stick to your hand and table tops, very practical in an age of glossy plastic cases!. The urban brown colour stated was a worry before it arrived, but it is actually a very smart graphite type of colour, and not really a true brown in my opinion. Overall the look of the Touch 2 is lovely with only 4 buttons at the bottom of the 2.8 inch screen.

TouchFlo is HTC's front end application which runs very nicely indeed. Very pleasant to look at and offers all the usual applications such as email, messaging, music and settings as scrolling icons at the bottom of the screen. Although the Touch 2 is a resistive screen I did not feel that this was a problem, in fact adding a screen protector appeared to make the resistance screen work even faster! There is however a knack to using the Touch 2 and this requires a little patience at first. All of the TouchFlo applications worked very well especially the messaging application which automatically displays previous messages you sent to contacts as a reminder of your conversations...brilliant! The music player is also really neat, displaying the album artwork and song information. Sound quality was impressive and just flicking the album artwork to change the track was a nice feature. Volume levels can be changed at any time even when the phone powers down which was such a huge issue with other phones I had used. Volume levels do not seem restricted so the maximum volume is very loud!

The HTC Touch 2 runs Windows 6.5 mobile, which runs much better than the previous 6.1 version. The calender application seems pretty similar to the 6.1 version but this is now intergrated with the HTC TouchFlo front end and displays any calender information on the home screen. Mobile office is greatly improved, now you can create documents in Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Onenote from new. The downside is that the screen is only in portrait view for all these applications. A stylus is provided with the Touch 2 which I believe was the right choice by HTC. I do use the stylus frequently and do not find it tedious to use.

Synchronising with Office 2003 was painless using Microsoft Activsync and this ran impressively smoothly for me. Updating all my contacts and calender appointments effortlessly...finally very impressed with this version after some real disasters attempting to synchronising with previous windows mobile operating systems.

Other items of note is the Adobe PDF reader, Opera browser, radio and the built in GPS. All the usual applications are present such as MSN, Facebook and Utube and these all work well. Windows Media player ran smoothly and thankfully plays video in landscape mode! Playback of MP4 films was excellent.

With all this software does the HTC Touch 2 actually work as a phone? I can confirm that this is certainly the case with all incoming and outgoing calls being clear and accurate. Battery life is currently around 3-4 days with occasional use of Wifi, calls and applications. The only real negative aspects of the Touch 2 for me is the camera/video which seems to have limited performance, but other than that I am very pleased with the Touch 2.

Overall I highly rate the Touch 2...windows 6.5 is being slated by most of the technology press but I have found it to be generally sturdy and when added to the HTC TouchFlo software the Touch 2 really does deliver impressive applications and technology in a small package and at a very reasonable price.

Excellent phone excellent buy only problem is that as i have bought it as a pay as you go phone i cant get the settings to enable me to access the internet.... still trawling the net to try and find them

Hi.:)

Okk, the bad rewiews? Mostly bad service, soo lets ignore. The bad phone? Well, its alrighh to be fair.

I've had this phone since Easter. It's pretty good for teenage use, it's hard wearing as well, 'specially since it has had a few tumbles lets say... Here's the verdict:

Outer-view- It has a sleek and stylish design (mine's in exclusive silver) and it's very light. The screen is medium sized - not as big as an iPhones and not as small as an Alcatels. The buttons always glow so seeing what you press is always easy.

Camera- This has some good features, all the pictures i take are of high(ish) quality, and they always seem to make friends and myself look good.:) I also like the photo frames on there, and the long amount of time for vid record. I didn't like the way of capturing photos - HTC you could do better, like providing a button on the side so it was easier than to have to stand in front of a mirror to see where the capture button is!

Apps- The market place is good, but the free apps are either demos or rubbish games. The rest cost money.(Fair enough) I wish they're were trials for every apps! But having said that, this could apply to any phone out there...

Unlocking-Simple, and quick, but if you set a code - remember it.(Or in my case remember HOW to take it off)!

Texting- It's usually quick and speedy, but i wish they'd have made a qwerty keyboard that flicked up whenever you turned the phone horizantal. The Qwerty vertically makes the buttons too small and cramped to type - i have to use my nails or the stylus!

Touch- Responsive, but sometimes(Occasionally) it doesnt respond. And for a quick-Caller and Speedy-Texter like me, i don't usually get out the pen and for the little buttons you have to press with nails. Luckily the screen has no scratches!

Calls- They should invent a button that Blocks calls. Of course if the number is unknown this isn't possible, but when an identified number keeps ringing, it should be allowed to block easily. No dialing a customer services, or quickly picking up and hanging up, just a simple press.
Otherwise, calls are pretty straight forward and the fact you can put pictures with the person makes it a quick scroll with no reading to see who you're talking to.

Battery Life- EXCCEELLLEENNNTTTT. It lasts me four days, and what with me texting, facebooking and gaming all the time, i'm quite surprised. Bluetooth wears it down a bit, but nevermind, i dont really use it anyway.

Bluetooth- Okkk, its confusing and hard to use. It should be improved.

Personal problems with the phone- Just that i found it impossible to find where my Own Number was. My previous phones have been No problem with this, but on the Touch 2, i had to have someone ring me and save my number as a contact!
If you have any guidance on this, please share.:)

Thanks for reading, sorry it was long.. i had much to say:D
xox