This is a follow up post to my last article reviewing the Palm Pre.

As I explained previously, I was not a huge fan of the Pre. It was an ok platform, but it didn’t knock my socks off and it really didn’t measure up to the iPhone, in my opinion. In fact, even though it did some things very well, making phone calls wasn’t one of them (that is the reason most people buy a phone, after all!).

So at the end of my 30 day trial with the Pre, I told Sprint I wanted to upgrade my phone to the HTC Touch Pro 2. I previously owned a HTC Touch Dual with Cincinnati Bell, so I had a feeling I was going to like the Pro.

I was wrong. I LOVE IT!!!

The Good

The Pro 2, as well as some of the other HTC models, comes with the TouchFlo 3D interface that sits on top of the Windows Mobile 6 platform. While it takes some getting used to, after only one week I find myself much more productive with the TouchFlo than I was with the Palm OS. Here is the good stuff, point by point.

• The Pro 2 has an “application slider” across the bottom, displaying icons for your Home, Email, Messaging and Calendar by default (you can see it in action on the Touch Pro here). You can also drag and slide your finger to the right to go to other areas such as Internet, Music and Weather. There are about a dozen in all. While on the Home screen, if you have any emails or text messages, the number of each appears on top of the associated icon. This is a nice improvement over the Palm Pre, which displayed notifications at the bottom of the screen by reducing the top part of the display. And the Palm only had 5 launch icons, one of which was the phone keypad (which underscored, to me, that the phone functions were thought of as an application rather than the primary purpose of the phone). In all, I find that both launching applications as well as  “eyeballing” the current status is much better on the Pro than the Pre.
• What can I say about the Home screen? In short, genius. With the large clock display and statuses for missed phone calls, voicemails, and upcoming appointments (in addition to the application slider), I can easily glance at the screen to figure out what action to take, or anything I may have missed. The Palm was a little less informative, and the clock display was only large while the phone was locked (the eyes aren’t what they used to be, you know?).
• The People page is where you set up your favorite contacts, or you can display all contacts. This is where the Palm really fell flat, IMHO. Setting favorite contacts just wasn’t the Palm’s strength, again underscoring that it is an app platform and not a phone.
• Email and texting, which I associate as similar applications, are about the same on the Pro and the Pre. When texting, I do prefer the “instant message” type of view that the Pro gives you, where the Palm would insert a line break every time the clock moved more than a minute. That’s minor, though.
• Web browsing I would also call a draw with the Pre. The Pro uses Opera Mobile 9.5, which seems to be about even with the Palm browser. And both take good advantage of the auto-tilt feature that is becoming very common. One minor complaint about the Pre was that I always had to drill-down one folder to get to a bookmark, which seems like an unnecessary burden.
• The keyboard – hands down winner is the Pro over the Pre. Both have full QWERTY-style keyboards, but as you can see in the picture above, the Pro’s keyboard covers the entire length of the phone. The Pre condenses the keyboard to the width of the phone, which is considerably smaller. For a guy with big hands, the Pre was a little annoying to type out long messages.
• The “App Store” – I’d have to say the edge goes to the Pro here, but that may simply be because Windows Mobile has been around longer than the Palm Pre. But both are sadly trailing the iPhone in this area. Microsoft has legions of developers, you’d think they would get on the ball here. I have no forecast for the Pre.
• Bluetooth features – again the winner is the Pro. While wearing your headset, not only does the Pro announce your incoming calls by reading out loud (yes, you read that right) the contact name, but you can also perform voice dialing without pre-recording the names in your own voice. Just say “Call Matt Noonan mobile” and the phone will confirm your choice, then dial the number. This was also a feature on the Touch Dual, and I loved it then (actually, I think it is a Windows Mobile 6 feature). My previous phone was a Motorola Razr V3, and if you wanted voice dialing you had to record each and every voice entry in your own voice. And somehow the Razr could never truly distinguish between “Home” and “Mom”. The Pro handles this with ease. There are also some other voice commands you can use, such as “What time is it?” and “When is my next appointment?”. If you don’t have a headset, you can hold down the Talk button and get the same function. Cool.
• And the coolest feature of all? While on a call, simply lay the Touch Pro 2 face-down on the table and it turns into a speaker phone automatically. Very, very cool.

The Bad

As I said in my last post, every cell phone platform has something about it you aren’t going to like. I think the complaint I have heard the most about the iPhone, which I think we can all agree is the category leader here, is that there is no physical keyboard. The question is always, does the phone have more features that you like vs. what you don’t like. So here are some of the things I don’t like about the Pro 2.

• TouchFlo vs. Windows – While the Touch Dual let Windows Mobile menus invade it’s interface, the Pro tries to hide the standard Windows look and feel. In fact, the only hint that the Pro is based in Windows Mobile on the Home screen is the Start menu at the top left. However, clicking on Start does not produce the standard menu, but instead takes you to the application list (this is a nod to the iPhone’s app list). And other WinMobile functions are similarly buried. The problem is that the TouchFlo interface cannot get past the fact that Windows is under there, somewhere. And sometimes, TouchFlo gives way to Windows when it shouldn’t. For example, there are TouchFlo screens that duplicate Windows screens (email and texting are two), and sometimes you get one version and sometimes you get the other. It’s a little schizophrenic, but it’s a minor complaint. Clearly, phones like the Pre and iPhone benefit from having a “from the ground up” operating system, and all the apps inherit this benefit. It seems to me that Microsoft should get with the TouchFlo people and come up with an integrated OS.
• The Auto-Tilt – well, it isn’t always “auto”. Like the Palm, the tilt works great in some applications (particularly the browser), but seems oddly absent in others. However, Windows Mobile to the rescue, you can force a change to landscape mode, and on the Pro this is easily accomplished by sliding out the keyboard (push the keyboard back in to force portrait mode). Still, not as slick as the iPhone.
• HTML mail – I have seen the first Pro (not the 2) handle HTML formatted mail, so I know it is possible, but for some reason the option is disabled on my phone (as it was on the Dual). Google did not help with a solution, saying basically that you need Exchange 2007 to enable this feature, but I know this is not true. If I figure it out, I will post the solution so that others may benefit.
• No IE Mobile – While Opera is an excellent browser, sometimes it is nice to have an alternate (especially if you develop mobile web applications, as I do). It seems weird to me that the HTC folks removed this option.

Summary

Do I love my new Touch Pro 2? An emphatic yes. Is it better than the Palm Pre? For me, and for how I work, another yes. Is it the iPhone killer? No, probably not. The Touch Pro 2 is far and away the best Windows Mobile phone I have encountered to date, but the TouchFlo 3D is a (great!) bolt-on interface and will always trail integrated platforms like the iPhone and the Palm until the integration factor is overcome.

All 3 are good phones, the Palm Pre, the HTC Touch Pro 2 and the iPhone. I don’t think you would be unhappy with any of them if you are in the market for a smart phone. All I know is…

Unlike the Pre, I won’t be returning this phone after the 30 day trial period.  :)