During my holidays HTC officially announced the HTC Touch Pro, as follow up of the HTC TyTN II. A few websites managed to have their hands-on a (pre-production) unit, so let’s have a look !!

The first pictures of the HTC Touch Pro, codenamed HTC Raphael, were taken on a T-Mobile event. In the meanwhile PhoneMag managed to shoot an impressive gallery as well as a nice video. Sometimes it’s even said that it’s simply a HTC Touch Diamond with an added hardware keyboard. [ref06] However this is not true since:

1. The 5-row qwerty keyboard has the CRTL key on it, and hopefully this is the way to a full desktop experience with loads of shortkeys, not just the copy-paste function. [ref01]
2. From the pictures on the HTC-website it seems that the TouchFLO 3D version on the Touch Pro seems an itterated version of the HTC Diamonds TouchFLO 3D. So let’s wait what improvements HTC has in mind with this version.

After comparing the specification sheets I was really surprised that this device is almost as powerful as the HTC x7510, which is the flagship and “powerhouse” in the Windows Mobile family. With this device one really has a powerhouse on pocketsize. Also the TV-out / VGA-out seems to be a really high end option, and hopefully it can be very helpful when connecting the device to a beamer.

Branding:

The first picture of the HTC Raphael was the T-Mobile version called MDA Vario 4. Besides the pink T-Mobile branding in the software and the logo on the casing, this type has another significant optical difference. The backcover is flat compared to the Diamond shaped back-cover of the HTC branded version. Also the O2 version, which is shown in the review of the::unwired has a flat back-cover, and the famous blue O2 branding in the software. If I follow my personal taste I prefer that latter, but there is another remarkable feature, which hopefully follows the XDA Touch Diamond. O2′s online shop states, that compared to the other Diamond incarnations, the O2 branded Diamond is bundled with TomTom Navigator 7, and hopefully this will be also the case with the HTC Touch Pro.

Finally and in addition to the different branding it’s also cool to compare the HTC Touch Pro with upcomming devices like the Sony Xperia and the Samsung Omni. the::unwired.net has shot some real nice comparison pictures of those devices (each having its own pro’s and con’s). The reference of PhoneMag is highly recommended !!

Reference list:

1. HTC Touch Pro product page
2. MOBILEBURN: Live Photos of HTC’s Raphael – the Touch Pro
3. PHONEMAG: HTC Touch Pro Hands on images and video
4. PHOTOVIEW: Hands-on with the O2 Xda diamond pro Windows Mobile Smartphone
5. VIDEOVIEW: Hands-on with the O2 Xda diamond pro Windows Mobile Smartphone
6. Phonescoop: Comparison pictures HTC Diamond / HTC Touch Pro