Touchy-Feely with the Sprint Touch

The enticing Sprint Touch is sexy, all right, what with its touch-screen display and iPhone-like appearance. I got some hands-on time with Touch here at CTIA, and while the initial 3D menu is certainly tap-worthy, I was reaching for the stylus once I got to the standard Windows Mobile interface.

The 3G-capable Touch ($250 with a two-year contract, available November 4) is definitely a sleek phone; it's small and slim enough to fit in a jeans pocket, and nearly featureless save for the nearly three-inch touch screen, a navigation pad and the twin soft keys. Hit the power button and you get the "TouchFlo" interface: a 3D cube that gives you quick access to the Touch's main functions (namely messaging, Web browsing, and multimedia), as well as favorite contacts. You can get to the TouchFlo cube any time by touching the Sprint logo just below the screen and swiping upward, while swiping left or right swivels the cube around; strangely, though, this "cube" really only has three sides (for apps, multimedia, and contacts), and there's nothing on the top or the bottom of the cube. Still, it's a cool-looking, clever interface, and I got a kick out of swiping and tapping it. Especially nice is the contacts pane; just click an empty box to add a contact, which appears as a photo (provided your contact has an image associated with it).

Pretty nice, but once you get beyond TouchFlo, you're left with...the pro version of Windows Mobile 6, a decidedly fingertip-averse interface. To be fair, HTC (the manufacturer of the Touch) has clearly done its best to make Windows Mobile at least a bit touch-friendly: for exampe, the home page features a handy tabbed app that gives you a quick view of your various inboxes, as well as the local weather, a program manager, and ringer profiles. The mobile Outlook also features a modified virtual keypad for tapping out messages; however, instead of getting a full set of virtual QWERTY keys, you get a pseudo-QWERTY key layout spread over 14 keys (similar to the SureType keypad on the BlackBerry Pearl). I tried typing out a few messages, and it was a tedious process; I had to press relatively hard for my taps to register, and the phone's predictave text software seemed a little twitchy (or at least it was on the demo model here at CTIA). I wouldn't be too eager to compose a lengthy e-mail on this thing.

Of course, the Touch comes with a stylus, so you'll be able to access all the other Windows Mobile 6 features with a few taps of the stick: Internet Explorer, the mobile Office suite, Windows Media Player, and other WM apps are present and accounted for. You also be able to watch streaming Sprint TV videos and download full music tracks from Sprint Music, which is always a nice bonus. That said, as I've noted before, the Touch lacks Wi-Fi, and I've yet to hear any mention of GPS.

So, does the Touch measure up to the iPhone? In my few minutes with the Touch, I'd have to say that its touch UI can't hold a candle to the iPhone's intuitive, easy-to-tap interface. But if you're looking for document editing, full Exchange support, and full-on streaming video (none of which are possible on the iPhone, save for its streaming YouTube app), the Touch could make for an interesting choice—provided you're not composing massive e-mails on the road. Now, if the Touch had a slide-out QWERTY keypad...well, that would be another thing altogether.

Related:
Sprint's Touch to Take on the iPhone [Yahoo! Tech]