SEVENCLICK
Mobile Technology Evangelists

Last 1st April, HTC hold an event for bloggers to show up their new product lines. Sevenclick was there, and they lend us the fabulous HTC Touch Cruise 09.

After more than a month of daily use of this nice WinMo device, I can affirm that its one of the best HTC devices right now. Here you have the full review.

HTC Touch Cruise 09 highlights an integrated GPS with CoPilot pre-installed, with a direct button for starting it, as well as a car charger and cradle which also starts automatically the GPS software when setting the device on it. So this is the natural evolution of the HTC Find, which already was substituting the original HTC Touch Cruise.

But let´s review all the hardware and software specs and features one by one.

• Hardware

HTC Touch Cruise weights only 103 grams and fits perfectly on your hand. The materials are good, is plastic but the back has a really nice touch.

1. Screen. The screen is bright and clear, 2.8 inch and QVGA resolution. A bit difficult to read outdoors, but that´s the standard on the current screens, will have to wait for AMOLED to fix that. Regarding the touch capabilities, the responsiveness surprised me, very nice for a resistive screen.
2. Buttons and Wheel. Really nice big buttons with metal-look style. There are two direct buttons for CoPilot and FootPrints (see the software review further on). The other two are the old green and red ones. There´s also a lateral double-button for volume. Like other HTC models, zoom is implemented through a useful wheel. It´s not as impressive as iPhone´s multitouch gestures for zooming, but its a really handy addition, miles away from the typical WinMo zooms.
3. Camera. The 3.2 Mpx camera takes big shots, specially on good light conditions, but forget to take photos on night or in poor illuminated places.
4. Speakers, MicroSD. The speakers are just correct, nothing to highlight, they do their function and that´s all. Regarding the MicroSD card slot, is great to have SDHC support, and you can hot-swap cards just by opening the back.
5. Battery. Provided with 1100 mAh, it lasts long enough, altough other HTC models come with a little more power (e.g. HTC Magic battery features 1340 mAh). My experience is that with “just-phone” use (no wifi or GPS) this longs over three-four days of use. Extensive use of Wifi and GPS translates on a double-quick drained battery, lasting about two or less days.
6. GPS. The quality of the antenna was a surprise, it adquires the signal really quick, and gets it from more satellites that my TomTom.

• Software

HTC Touch Cruise brigths by its soft bundle. It comes with a heavily modified Windows Mobile 6.1, based on HTC Touch FLO, with the already commented CoPilot GPS soft, FootPrints which means integrated photo geotagging, and other nice additions like Youtube app, Google Maps and the brilliant Opera Mobile, which works great with the wheel.

1. CoPilot 7. This GPS software is really cool, probably the best I have tried till now. Big buttons, several view types, integrated radar POIs, live traffic info over their own service (requires registration and registry), weather forecast… The included maps for the spanish version is obviusly Iberia (no European maps) which comes in a 1GB MicroSD. Remember that HTC, CoPilot and MoviStar had announced other collaboration agreements lately, including lifetime licenses. It´s a pity that there is only one voice included by default, and also the speakers are not loud enough when you are driving.
2. FootPrints. A nice tool for geotagging your photos, adding sound clips, opening directly CoPilot with the geoposition of the photo already loaded… It was not very useful for me, but its nice.
3. HTC Touch FLO. Well, nothing new here as its the well-know HTC front-end for Windows Mobile. Just highlight that it works really quick, withouth any lags, and integrates fine with the extra software (CoPilot, FootPrints, Maps and Opera. Youtube has to be opened from the WinMo program list).
4. Extra Apps: Opera, Youtube, Google Maps. All work really fast, even over 3G connections, and its great to use Opera with the Wheel (not as great as iPhone multitouch zooming, but its the next better experience out there).

• More Tech Specs

1. Micro and RAM. Powered by a Qualcomm MSM7225 at 528 Mhz and 256 MB RAM, it means forget about WinMo lags.
2. Network. Four-band, HSDPA… talk and navigate everywhere over the globe.
3. Connectivity. Wifi b/g, Bluetooth including A2DP, and HTC ExtUSB (no standard headphones can be used with the Touch Cruise, however, the included ones are nice).

We want to thank HTC Spain for the opportunity of testing this great device.