Thinking of HTC Touch Enhanced

[Guest spookydownunder]

I am thinking of buying an HTC Touch Enhanced, but have a few questions, that I hope people can help with. I realise that there are a few threads already started but they didn't seem to answer my questions specifically.

1. The enhanced version only seems to be avaiable with a HK warrenty. Living in the UK, is this going to be a big problem.

2. The keyboard size seems to be an issue on the original, is it still on the advanced? I have seen add-on virtual keyboards, such as the Touchpal by CooTek, are these worthwhile (ie can they be set to be the default keyboard or do you need to keep swapping evrytime i want to write something.

3. The touch has Wifi, but on my 8310 it was always painfull. I had to put phone onto flight mode to ensure browser didn't use gprs instead. Does the touch naturally use wifi first, then resort to gprs if no network? And back again if there is?

4. I am with Vodafone UK, and when I first got my 8310 it was a real pain to set up wap, gprs, mms etc. Vodafone could not give me over the air set up, and their written instructions were not correct. It took a long time to get it sorted. Am I going to have the same problems with an unbranded touch?

5. The phone would be unlocked, but if it is a straight HTC phone, presumably that would mean it will be pre-opened (not right phrase) for installing programs, such as virtual keyboard?

6. Last one, on my 8310, and the little brother i had before, the media player was next to useless volume wise, even at full whack, you really couldn't go outside as it was too quiet. Is this the same on the touch, and if so is there an easy fix, to remove whatever limiter is in place? Ps, i really don't try to deafen myself.

7. Is the call quality any good? I often seem to have problems, with phones being quiet, fuzzy, whatever!

I guess at the end of the day, my big question therefore is basically, is the touch enhanced worth having. Cheers for any help. Steve

[Guest dunc]

I am thinking of buying an HTC Touch Enhanced, but have a few questions, that I hope people can help with. I realise that there are a few threads already started but they didn't seem to answer my questions specifically.

1. The enhanced version only seems to be avaiable with a HK warrenty. Living in the UK, is this going to be a big problem.

2. The keyboard size seems to be an issue on the original, is it still on the advanced? I have seen add-on virtual keyboards, such as the Touchpal by CooTek, are these worthwhile (ie can they be set to be the default keyboard or do you need to keep swapping evrytime i want to write something.

3. The touch has Wifi, but on my 8310 it was always painfull. I had to put phone onto flight mode to ensure browser didn't use gprs instead. Does the touch naturally use wifi first, then resort to gprs if no network? And back again if there is?

4. I am with Vodafone UK, and when I first got my 8310 it was a real pain to set up wap, gprs, mms etc. Vodafone could not give me over the air set up, and their written instructions were not correct. It took a long time to get it sorted. Am I going to have the same problems with an unbranded touch?

5. The phone would be unlocked, but if it is a straight HTC phone, presumably that would mean it will be pre-opened (not right phrase) for installing programs, such as virtual keyboard?

6. Last one, on my 8310, and the little brother i had before, the media player was next to useless volume wise, even at full whack, you really couldn't go outside as it was too quiet. Is this the same on the touch, and if so is there an easy fix, to remove whatever limiter is in place? Ps, i really don't try to deafen myself.

7. Is the call quality any good? I often seem to have problems, with phones being quiet, fuzzy, whatever!

I guess at the end of the day, my big question therefore is basically, is the touch enhanced worth having. Cheers for any help. Steve

I am going to try and change your mind here, having spent the past week with a Touch Dual II (20-key version). It is truly a brilliant phone which I got to replace my Tytn. Tytn was beginning to drive me mad, running its battery down for no reason and sometimes taking more than 10 seconds to respond to button presses on the phone screen.

I am also on Vodafone and also UK based, so some of your more generic questions I can answer anyway.

So...

1. I purchased the phone from Handtec.co.uk. It was nearly £100 cheaper than anyone else out there and is a UK firm so fully protected by UK rights. I have Voda insurance, but have cancelled it after ensuring that I am covered by my household policy (I am), making me wonder why I was paying £7.95 a month to Vodafone. Of course, with Voda you get a new phone next day when there is a problem which almost certainly will not be the case with my household insurer, plus excess on policy is £100 not £25. I have told my wife not to leave her new phone on the side of the bath while bathing the kids quite as frequently as she previously had (her Tytn was replaced 4 times last year after going swimming at bathtime).

2. Keyboard on touch Dual gives you best of both worlds - full QWERTY hardware keyboard, or on screen. Must admit have not used the onscreen version that much (but no problems when I have), but the hardware keyboard is a breeze to use once you have got your head around the XT9 text recognition.

3. Wifi...are you sure you want this? By its very nature this is phone - a mobile device - so surely the important thing is that you can connect to the phone network and fast. On Vodafone you can get the data bundle (£7.50 per month for 120MB) and you would have to be going some to get through all that. Furthermore, using WIFI knocks the battery life massively. 3G and HSDPA work great for me, the latter being blazingly fast.

4. I haven't tried MMS (more likely to send pix by email than MMS), but the WAP/GPRS settings worked straight out the box - the phone went through an automatic set up routine, asked me to confirm my network was vodafone and did its merry thing in about 2 minutes.

5. You can install anything you like, the phone is pretty branding free as well with just one tiny little HTC logo in the bottom corner.

6. Media player volume is fine - but there are always third-party players if you are unhappy with it.

7. Call quality is fine. Sometimes when I am outside in really noisy traffic I struggle to hear the other party, but generally it is light years ahead of my previous PPCs.

On a separate note, the bluetooth firmware/software seems to have been dramatically improved - I had problems with the TyTn tethering to my Parrot 3100 in the car and also GPSlim BT GPS receiver - all those issues have disappeared with new phone.

In short - although I have never owned the Touch Enhanced and I am sure it is great - if you can set aside the Wifi requirement I would really look at going for the Touch Dual II it is a truly fabulous device and even my Iphone-owning, black-poloneck-wearing Machead friend looked at it and had to begrudginly admit that it was a worthy competitor to his locked-up, GPRS only, storage-limited device.

I don't know if you can achieve this, but it may be of interest. I have a private mobile phone dealer who is able to extract cash from Vodafone for upgrade codes. What this means in practice is that he tells Voda that he has upgraded me and they send him his subsidy cheque as per my upgrade code (this time round it was £170. for the service, he creams off a few quid (£20) and gives me a cheque for £150. Certainly helped to make the phone a lot cheaper. I then traded in 3 working TyTns with Envirofone for a further £50 each. Bid of admin involved all round, but suddenly the £660 bill for 2 phones was halved. Good day's work in my view.

Be interested to know what you think...

[Guest chucky.egg]

1, Dunno, but generally they have an international warranty - does it specifically say "HK Only", or is it just coming from HK?

2. Keyboard is still the biggest issue for me. I use the standard Keyboard, but have also tried the HTC 20-key Keyboard and Keypad. The standard one is a little small (although still the one I use by default) and the HTC ones take up a little too much screen space. Personal preference really.

3. Touch will use WiFi first (even with GPRS connected) if it's available

4. No, this is the greatest "behind the scenes" thing IMO. The device will detect your network and country and configure itself!

5. HTC branded devices are not application locked or SIM (network) locked. I'm not sure any Pocket PCs are TBH.

6. Dunno, dont use Media Player.

7. Call quality is fine, better than some I've had, worse than others. I wouldn't say it's quiet or fuzzy.

I love my Touch, and the Enhanced is slightly better (more memory), so I can't see why I wouldn't love it - I can't say whether you will!

[Guest chucky.egg]

By the way... the Touch (and variants) are Pocket PC touchscreen devices, not Smartphones

It's not a problem, but it's not the right area of the forums to post this question if you want to get the most responses.

One of the Mods can move it for you

[Guest Monolithix]

Done :)

[Guest spookydownunder]

Thanks guys.

Strangely I have just popped out and got my hands on a working touch at carphone warehouse, and although impressed, even with the 3 or 4 different onboard keypads (it was a ted baker, so not sure if these have been added since the original) I was suprised at how hard I had to press the screen to do anything. Maybe this is something that you get used too.

While I was out though, I also got my hands on a dummy touch dual (I think only the 16 key version) but was suprised that it wasn't as bulky as I though it was going to be from the dimensions. I realise that the weight would be different because of it being a dummy, but otherwise it is actually a really good looking phone.

So, now I am more confused. I do like the idea of wifi, especially if you go abroad, where using the net on a roaming tarrif would cost a fortune. But I do take the point about, is it really needed.

Maybe I will look at the cost of the 20key dual. Is this the same size handset as the 16, so I gues the keys get smaller, and is it really necessary to have the extras?

I know there is a thread with complaints about the dual, maybe I will have another look through that.

The dual and the enhanced do have the same increased memory though, right?

[Guest Monolithix]

Yep same memory. The Touch's screen was ok for me, a little less responsive than i'm used to maybe, matter of opinon though tbh. I think you already mentioned CooTeks keypad, i use that on my Kasier, its one of the best apps i've come across!

[Guest dunc]

Thanks guys.

Strangely I have just popped out and got my hands on a working touch at carphone warehouse, and although impressed, even with the 3 or 4 different onboard keypads (it was a ted baker, so not sure if these have been added since the original) I was suprised at how hard I had to press the screen to do anything. Maybe this is something that you get used too.

While I was out though, I also got my hands on a dummy touch dual (I think only the 16 key version) but was suprised that it wasn't as bulky as I though it was going to be from the dimensions. I realise that the weight would be different because of it being a dummy, but otherwise it is actually a really good looking phone.

So, now I am more confused. I do like the idea of wifi, especially if you go abroad, where using the net on a roaming tarrif would cost a fortune. But I do take the point about, is it really needed.

Maybe I will look at the cost of the 20key dual. Is this the same size handset as the 16, so I gues the keys get smaller, and is it really necessary to have the extras?

I know there is a thread with complaints about the dual, maybe I will have another look through that.

The dual and the enhanced do have the same increased memory though, right?

With data abroad, I find the best way is to switch it off then just turn it on once a day to pull everything down. Switch it off again and read/reply offline. then switch it back on again to send. that way you get charged only for one block of data a day. Most service providers have a lower limit when roaming of about 20k, so if your device is sending a heartbeat every minute or so to poll the server for new mail they will charge you for 20k even though you are using only 1 or 2k. It sucks but that is the way it is, doing it all in one go saves you a fortune. Don't browse unless you have to and really if you think about it if you are somewhere with a wifi signal, chances are they will have some form of net access to go with it, so you might as well use that.

With regard to the keys question, yes they are quite close together and the question to ask yourself re 20/16 keys is do you prefer an abc style keyboard or a qwerty. I fall in to the latter camp personally. I have read pretty much everything on here about the Touch Dual with regard to complaints and I have not actually suffered from any of them myself. The only thing that bothers me is that when I am on a call and I hang up I often find the clock displayed because my cheek has activated things on the screen. The only way round this appears to be to power down the screen with the on/off button when you make/receive a call but as gripes go this is pretty minor. I missed the ok button from the TyTn, but have now mapped the camera button to be an ok/close which solved that one. I have two good cameras for taking pictures and you can get in to the camera pretty quick via touchflo.

[Guest spookydownunder]

With data abroad, I find the best way is to switch it off then just turn it on once a day to pull everything down. Switch it off again and read/reply offline. then switch it back on again to send. that way you get charged only for one block of data a day. Most service providers have a lower limit when roaming of about 20k, so if your device is sending a heartbeat every minute or so to poll the server for new mail they will charge you for 20k even though you are using only 1 or 2k. It sucks but that is the way it is, doing it all in one go saves you a fortune. Don't browse unless you have to and really if you think about it if you are somewhere with a wifi signal, chances are they will have some form of net access to go with it, so you might as well use that.

With regard to the keys question, yes they are quite close together and the question to ask yourself re 20/16 keys is do you prefer an abc style keyboard or a qwerty. I fall in to the latter camp personally. I have read pretty much everything on here about the Touch Dual with regard to complaints and I have not actually suffered from any of them myself. The only thing that bothers me is that when I am on a call and I hang up I often find the clock displayed because my cheek has activated things on the screen. The only way round this appears to be to power down the screen with the on/off button when you make/receive a call but as gripes go this is pretty minor. I missed the ok button from the TyTn, but have now mapped the camera button to be an ok/close which solved that one. I have two good cameras for taking pictures and you can get in to the camera pretty quick via touchflo.

Cool. Cheers for the advise. I think I have now been convinced towards the dual, and it was just a matter of the number of keys to go for. I have no experience of the qwerty style keyboard, as only really used "normal" phones. I'm not sure i really need the extra buttons as I don't email that much, just check headers, so no need to write long messages. Maybe I'll just go for the cheaper 16 key version, and use it as a phone instead of a dedicated pda. Hmmm

[Guest pbarclay]

The only thing that bothers me is that when I am on a call and I hang up I often find the clock displayed because my cheek has activated things on the screen. The only way round this appears to be to power down the screen with the on/off button when you make/receive a call but as gripes go this is pretty minor.

I found this to be quite a problem until I downloaded the wonderful Slide Action program from xda developers http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=359212. The program locks keys while in call and prevents inadvertent activation. It also hangs up when closing the keypad - best of all, all of these are customisable.