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First Day with Touch Dual from Graphite


Guest monkeygadge

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Guest monkeygadge

I've done it!

I've taken the plunge from a mobile phone to a fully fledged PDA! Last week my Graphite decided to die on me forcing me to look to pastures new, a choice between the HTC S370 and the HTC Dual. Well after a visit to the Orange shop :D I handled both :( and Dual it was!

Once she arrived, I fiddled around with the finger flicking for a while and then decided to get down to the real business of seting up my email etc on the device. Windows Vista Ultimate found the device straight off, WMDC gave me a lovely picture of the Touch Dual, and away we go - but wait! I don't want all that email and attachments on my device do I? That's when I discovered the 'Use storage cards where possible' option for messages - something the Graphite and other Smartphones don't have (come on Microsoft) which meant fiddling around with registry keys, 'storage card.bak' and other full stop nonesense. I used to dread having to reset my Graphite :D Point scored to Dual.

After that checkbox well and truly ticked I went for a full on sync with server, nice and smooth, half an hour later we are up and running.

Right then, a few finger flicks later and I discover that the goddam pictures and video options on the touch cube point will only point at the Device, not the Card. Wait no - I can change the Camera to save on the card - then the pictures appear in the Album - aha, the Photo's on the Storage card are stored in a different folder - they are no longer in My Pictures, or My Video, the are now in DCIM>100MEDIA. Quick copy and paste from one to the other and hey presto! All my pictures and now available in finger flicky mode.

That brings me to the key issue - set your touch keyboard options to the 12 key setting by choosing touch keypad. This is the same as the slide keypad (almost)

To make you touch look smooth and plain readable try choosing cleartype from the Screen options and have the text as large as possible.

To keep the Dual running quickly try choosing the 'End programs by tapping X' option in the task manager.

Well at that point I thought about bed, and set my alarm. Repeat Alarm eh? That really is a joke! So a fix was required. Can I choose all the sounds in the alarms options - No - that's because it will only allow WAV format as alarms. Quick fiddle with the Graphite to produce attached file - save it in your Windows folder hurrah! No sleeping in now!

Seriously though, the Touch Dual is a nice device to use, although in my opinion not as 'intuitive' as I'd hoped. I really doubt this is a serious contender for the iPhone as it does not have the appeal to draw people away. It is in the end the little things that count, and the Touch Dual simply doesn't flow straight out the box. You have to work your way through it, which is probaby too much for most users who don't use forums such as these.......

Points to fix;

  • Touch keypad is replaced by touch keyboard in some menu's? Eh? Did I ask you to do that?
  • Wake up you little devil! Why must I press your buttons? Shouldn't you have a secret swipe to activate your screen?
  • New email from the 'quick menu' - not quite!
  • New email arrives - it's rubbish! Were's the quick delete button?
  • Select a contact - no touching now, use your buttons.
  • Select a contact - use that handy keybored
  • Comm manager, push email, switch on or off. Why Why Why switch peak and off peak? Can I not choose either or both?

Well I really hope I'm being a dumbass and you guys can help me here, and maybe down the line we can solve some of these little but important things. For now, I'm of to stroke my new toy a little more to see what comes out of it.

MG

Alarm_WakeUp.wav

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Guest pbarclay

I agree: the Touch Dual is great but by no means the finished article. As with most Windows computers, it still takes a little setting up so not for a granny who can only just about manage a basic Nokia.

I have used Pocket Informant for many years. PI8 (released earlier this week) is specifically designed to interact with touchscreen mobile phones and, so far, works very well. Worth trying as it may help some of your irritations about contacts.

Hopefully, HTC will release a new ROM that addresses some of the irritations you mentioned: not sure how often HTC has done this in the past.

I feel that this is the first truly pocketable WM phone that does everything I want, so I wil cut it a little slack for the next 16 months when hopefully the 2009 version will totally blow it away!

Edited by pbarclay
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  • 1 year later...
Guest ninjaap

I don't know if you are still around, but thanks very much for the wav file. I was looking to convert the alarm_wakeup.wma file to wav for my Touch Pro, but you've made it easier for me. ;)

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