HTC Touch Cruise Cell Phone
Overview
What’s good: small and very pocketable, cool form factor, Footprints, 3.2 MP cam with geo-tagging, D-pad doubles as scroll wheel, TouchFLO, A-GPS, Wi-Fi, bluetooth, 3G.
What's bad: Windows Mobile experience. TouchFLO helps a lot in this regard, but the same flaws still sit under the surface.
Introduction
The Touch Cruise 2009 is a reworking of the 2008 version. When it comes to making calls, managing photos, and sending texts, the phone is quick and simple. It feels great in the hand and pocket. Unfortunately, when digging into advanced functions, or even changing some fairly simple settings, Windows Mobile 6.1 jumps out from under HTC's beautiful skin and rears its ugly head. Nagging error messages and unintuitive configuration are some of my long-standing WinMo complaints, and the Touch Cruise is not exempt. However, if you're comfortable with Windows Mobile, then the Touch Cruise will be a pleasant experience for you.
Design & Features
This is the second time I have opened up the spare stylus in an HTC box because I didn't notice the one holstered in the phone. That says a lot about HTC's style and engineering. The downside is that this resistive touch screen is much more stylus-friendly than it is finger-friendly. I know that a lot of people prefer the stylus, and in my experience they are quite often the business users who absolutely must have Windows Mobile. The Touch Cruise is reminiscent of the old PDA, in a good way, and business users will be satisfied.
Some have complained about the fixed-focus camera, but I actually found this to be a strength of the phone. When you are shooting close-ups or busy scenes, auto-focus can be more of a hurdle than an assist. TouchFLO offers a great gallery experience, and anyone who has used it before knows how lovely the weather, tab navigation, and music control is.
Dedicated hardware buttons for Footprints (an HTC innovation for location tagging) and the CoPilot Live navigation software bring these functions to the forefront of the experience, but I'm not sure I like them where they are. While the features are definitely useful, I can't imagine using them enough to warrant that allocation of real estate. Then again, I'm not sure what I would replace them with. It's all a matter of taste and how you plan to use the phone. If you are big on navigation and geo-tagging, these buttons could be a godsend.
Usability & Performance
It may be laughable to some, but I find Windows Mobile impossible to use efficiently. I am tired of the pop-ups, tired of the multiple locations of similar settings, tired of the look, and tired of the errors. That said, I've spent enough words whining about the OS on this and other reviews. I know some people like the it, so let's move on.
The scroll wheel is a brilliant control to implement in conjunction with a touch screen. HTC has done something similar with a trackball on other touch screen devices, and it's been a brilliant solution to the problem of accurate selection with fat fingers. In the case of the Touch Cruise, it's a solution to the problem of any fingers.
Though you can make your way through the home screen tabs and photos with a digit, the stylus is almost a requirement for anything more intricate. And once you get past TouchFLO and into Windows Mobile, the stylus is your only hope.
Calls are fine, texting and email are OK, and web browsing is...well, nothing special. But the primary functions are all acceptable. I didn't access some of the deeper features because WInMo was playing defense. I just couldn't get into it.
Conclusion
If you like Windows Mobile, the Touch Cruise may be just fine for you. But with a street tag hovering between $400 and $500, you might find another HTC device on contract that you'd prefer. If location-based features and services are important to you, than the Cruise should be near the top of your list. If you honestly won't end up using them, cross this one off.
Read full review » Noah gets the new HTC Touch Cruise, a Windows Mobile smartphone with TouchFlo 3D and turn-by-turn GPS navigation. It even comes with a car mount! Overview What’s good: small and very pocketable, cool form factor, Footprints, 3.2 MP cam with geo-tagging, D-pad doubles as scroll wheel, TouchFLO, A-GPS, Wi-Fi, bluetooth, 3G.What's bad: Windows Mobile experience. TouchFLO helps a lot in this regard, but the same flaws still sit under the surface.
Introduction The Touch Cruise 2009 is a reworking of the 2008 version. When it comes to making calls, managing photos, and sending texts, the... Today HTC announced a new and improved version of the Touch Cruise, which comes with HTC Footprints, a new application that lets users snap personal shots of a special place or moment on-the-go and then store audio notes to help them better remember the occasion.
Photos taken with the Touch Cruise are stored as postcards and auto tagged and named by the Footprints app with the GPS-coordinates of the location of the shot so that you can... Pros: Lots of functions. Built pretty sturdily. Both physical and screen works well. Cons: Clunky. No battery life, dies before completing a days work (7hrs if you work it is all I got). Insufficient memory. Needs to remove battery cover to use SD memory card. Likes to freeze up. Bluetooth works spotty. Slow response. Scrolling and gestures poor. Many functions but no programs to use them. Summary: Not for heavy use unless you have spare battery or you can keep it plugged in. Jack of all trades but definitely masters none well. If you don't need windows for your job don't get it. Not user friendly. Needs faster cpu and more memory. Not for everyday use. Display too small. Wouldn't buy again. Summary: It constantly freeze up. T-mo exchanged my phone twice and all three of them had the same problem. And the funny thing is t-mo tech support told me not to install any third-party software. Than what i am going to do with this powerful phone? Pros: Setting up and adding contacts easy to do, just plug into computer and it automatically updates your contacts and your calender which is also good since you have backup files on phone and computer. Sound quality is great i could listen to music and watch movies all day on it. This phone is really light weight and easy to carry around. Easily customizable and makes this literally your own phone. the screen itself is really durable. I was working and it got dropped straight on a nail and there is Cons: Phone case cracks easily but you can send the phone in for a new one. When i receive picture messages my phone will often freeze up and I will be forced to turn the phone off then back on to look at the file. The boot up process is really slow compared to most other phones I have owned but this one is also a lot more complicated which may add to the lag. Sometimes if I send a message and one is trying to come in at the same time the messaging feature will lock up so I can access anything else Summary: Overall I believe this phone is worthwhile getting if you can look past the minor flaws that this phone contains. I would recommend purchasing screen protectors and maybe looking for like a rubber sleeve that can go over the phone so the case doesn't crack so easily. 1 out of 1 people found this review helpful Pros: Display, keyboard, 3G Cons: UMA (wifi calling support from Provider) Summary: certainly a good phone but missing UMA 0 out of 1 people found this review helpful Pros: Display is great! The apps are terrific and the ease of use. Love the keyboard and the touch screen is very receptive. Cons: The battery life. That is the only thing I do not like! They need a better battery for this device it is a power-user! Summary: I am happy with the phone. Hope they come up with a solution to the short battery life. 3 out of 3 people found this review helpful no its pushed to it its a unlocked phone how could they expect you to get a contract with that featuers Ok, so my contract with t-mobile just ended and my dad wants a phone with GPS because he's planning on buying a GPS but I convinced him to consider the Touch Cruise. What he wants to know is, is it like a normal GPS just put into a phone, that you don't need to pay monthly data plan to get the GPS functions? because if its like a normal GPS that doesn't need a data plan he will get it.
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