The Awesome: Arguably the best QWERTY board and speakerphone ever seen on any mobile phone. Anywhere. Ever.
The Good: Huge 3.6" WVGA touch display, Touch Flo 3D Interface, Handy Zoom Bar, myFaves support.
The Bad: T-Mobile capped conference calling at three participants and made IE the default Web browser (Opera is on there but it's semi-hidden), Pretty bulky by today's phone standards, No UMA calling (HotSpot) support, No 3.5mm audio jack, Display is resistive and not capacitive and/or multitouch.
The Ugly: The insanely high price tag. And, y'know, WinMo 6.1 is really old at this point.
Mini-Review:
T-Mobile is the first of the four major American carriers to launch HTC's flagship Windows Mobile device, the Touch Pro2. T-Mo took the unlocked GSM version that first appeared back in February and gave it a minor cosmetic makeover, added and subtracted a few features/apps, and slapped a ridiculous $349.99 price tag on the thing (after rebate, with two-year contract). I don't mind the "mocha" color scheme, am only minorly annoyed by the minor crippling of the otherwise stellar conference calling features and the decision to make IE the default browser (instead of the far superior Opera Mobile), and can get over the omission of UMA calling. But that price tag is darn near unforgivable.
T-Mo may be first out of the gate with TP2 in the USA, but leaked photos already have the device clothed in AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon branding. And said photos would have the Sprint and possibly Verizon versions shipping with a nice upgrade in the form of a standard 3.5mm headphone jack (T-Mo's version uses HTC's USB audio port, which the company has said is being phased out).
So we know the other versions are coming, and we know at least one or two of 'em have headphone jacks, and we know that T-Mo's 3G coverage doesn't reach as far as the other carriers' networks do. So given that crazytown $350 up front pricing T-Mo has thrown down, why wouldn't we wait to see what the other carriers will charge for their versions of the device?
Good question, huh?
I guess odds are the TP2 - or Tilt 2 as AT&T is supposedly set to call theirs - won't come in much cheaper than $299 or maybe $249, but there's just something really offensive to me about a mobile phone price tag that begins with the number 3 and has two more digits after that. Come on, T-Mo: iPhone, Palm Pre, and your own Android phones are less than two bills ... and you want $350 for a Windows Mobile phone?
It's the best Power User WinMo device out there, but as Seth and Amy would say on SNL's Weekend Update, "Really? I mean, really?"
Oh yeah ... the phone performed very well in testing. The speakerphone is killer and has a hardware mute button that makes it easier to talk smack about the person on the other end of the call without them hearing. Even though it's resistive, the touchscreen works really well and it's huge and hugely high-rez. And it tilts across a near infinite range of increments. The camera is a little above average, the Opera Mobile browser is great (even tho IE is the default), and that QWERTY is fantastic. Touch Pro2 is a huge phone, but it's for power WinMo users, so what'd you expect? I only wish T-Mo had enabled UMA calling on this thing. And, y'know, priced it more in line with reasonable people's expectations.
