The HTC Touch Pro

After having used the Motorola Razor for about two years I decided it was time to switch phones. I mean it was nice have a sleek stylish phone, i say this because it was at the time, that could fit in my pocket without being obtrusive. Lets be honest the battery life left something to be desired from this little flip phone, but in the end, the functionality and size won out. This is all pre apple releasing the market changing iphone, because once this occurred I was left in the dust of non touch screens and a severe lack of multimedia power. So here I am, trying to decide what phone would fit my needs the best, allow me to grow with ever changing techno field of cell phone features and still feel cool carrying it around. There were many choices, as anyone who has walked into a cell phone store will tell you, I chose the HTC Touch Pro.

This phone in one word is outstanding. That being said I would like to talk about the negatives first. Battery life, one would think that after living with the Razor for so long that I would have gone running to a battery that was also a phone, but alas that was not as sexy looking as the HTC. The battery life for moderate use will take you through an entire work day of talking, texting, web browsing, and emailing. However, should one find themselves on the phone for extending periods of time, one can extend your battery life by changing the settings for wifi and other features. That being said, some have commented that the build of the phone leaves something to be desired. I have not found this the case, when compared to other sliders on the market, it is snaps to its position, has very little movement and generally feels as though its put together well. Now that being said, this is still a phone with two basic pieces that slide together. The only other real arguments are about the software, rather than the hardware. This is something that is hard to really say one way or another; the market for smart phones is basically windows based or the iphone. In the end, as with most things electronic, its the battle of two titans, Microsoft or Apple. In my case I chose Microsoft's Windows Mobile v6.1 over the iphone because I felt like it was going to allow me to grow with the changing freeware applications, as well as any new truly revolutionary software developments, ie google voice or nuevasync. While the iphone generates greats apps, meaningful apps, and all kinds of games, I wanted something a little more business-like, thus choose the HTC Pro.

Since we have gotten most of the bad press out of the way, let me introduce the greatness that I have found HTC's newest flagship to be. First, I cannot stress enough the influence the sliding full five row qwerty keyboard played into my decision to purchase this phone. Given the newest and greatest of choices in smart phones like the blackberry, iphone, and the G1, non had an answer the natural, spacious feel of the HTC's keyboard. After getting passed the keyboard the intuitive opporating system just drew me in further. The TouchFlo menu is perfect, allowing for smooth transitions between menus. After that, the feature packed phone, fills every want and need with an application or intuitive menu. Sliding out the keyboard will automatically transition the phone from vertical to horizontal modes, and the working function keys add just a little more joy to using this phone.

Having played around with this phone for a little over a week now, I can safely say that the battery life is not much of a problem for me and more over this phone is proving to be more powerful than my six year old desktop computer. Now you may laugh at this statement as being abvious, but lets seriously look at this, my tower is big, beautiful, and still trucking through the webs and tubes, but now I have a pocket device that stores all my contacts, links my gmail and hotmail accounts, surfs the net, and will tell me exactly where I am in the world using google maps. I submit the stunning devolpments in technology are just to awesome for words.

Making calls on this phone is no small task when you first start using it, but after a couple of calls, I find it very easy. I have two contact list, the favorites and the total contact list, both are easy to get to, and each contact is fully customizable with ringtones and pictures. The camera function is to be expected for a phone camera, though this camera is 3.2 megapixel camera, it takes pictures and works great. Its still not an end all be all inclusive phone, camera, computer, but its definately an outstanding integration of phone and computer. This phone comes with word and excel already loaded an ready to go, which will allow you to view and edit those files. Not that these applications will apply to everyone, it is nice to know the phone is capable of cut, copy, and paste.

The pinnacle of the coolness to this phone is the silence ring feature. Should one find themselves in a meeting and the phone should, by merely turning it over on the table will silence the ringer. Its as though HTC thought back to what made the really old phones of the seventies and eights, whcih was the ability to express your physical anger by slamming down the phone on the receiver. As we progressed towards wireless technology, I couldnt slam the phone down anymore, but what I can do now is look to see who is calling and maybe decide that they are not worth talking to quite yet and in a very elitist way turn them off. Just a personal way of turning down the crazy girl calling again, a more gratifying way to silence the ring rather than pushing a button.

As I said earlier this phone is awesome. It is feature packed and the ease of use may rival the iphone. In a bigger turn, the key board and features unbounded put this phone as the best choice for me. I feel like this phone will grow with the market and with the amount of texting and emails that I send out, it will be a seamless addition to my wireless life.