We needed to replace one of our ageing HTC PPC6700 series mobile phones due to its reliability heading south.
The CDMA carriers up here recently introduced the HTC Touch Pro.
It is a Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional phone with a full slide out keyboard. Big thumbs means the keyboard is a prerequisite.
It has pretty good reception, though it struggles a bit more in enclosed areas such as a basement or server closet than the old HTC PPC6700 did. The PPC6700 gave warning that things were not working as they should with the way it behaved. The HTC Touch Pro gives a quiet snapping sound in the ear and the call is gone.
The high resolution screen is nice. Everything is crisp and clear, though at night there is a noticeable pulsing dim-bright-dim-bright cycle with the back light. So, this particular unit may end up heading back to the store for a replacement.
Add to that a 3MP camera that takes reasonably good pictures. Low light seems to cause a bit of a struggle, but that is expected with a built-in camera like this.
Integration into our existing SBS 2003 R2 Premium Outlook Mobile Access was quick and painless with the first sync taking under an hour to pull everything down.
The Touch Pro is noticeably quicker than the old PPC6700. That is refreshing as the stalls in between tasks on the PPC6700 were painful at times.
After adding in an 8GB SanDisk Ultra Micro-SD (Class 6) into the mix, we were good to go. The Class 6 level means the card will transfer data around 6MB/sec. Not nearly as fast as a USB flash drive, but will do in a pinch.
Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro has the ability to encrypt the entire contents of the storage card which is valuable for us when we need to move client data about.
The Touch Pro has a USB HDD feature that, when enabled, allows the phone to be plugged into a PC and be seen as a USB HDD with access to the storage card. This is a good thing to have because the Windows Mobile Device Center would otherwise be trying to sync with the phone.
The Touch Pro Bluetooth integrated with the HHR's in-car hands free system seamlessly. Once out of the car and then back in after a client visit, the Touch Pro recreates the connection with the car very quickly. The PPC6700 needed a call in or out to reestablish a connection with the in-car Bluetooth hands free.
All in all, the HTC Touch Pro is a very nice phone that will do the job for us.
Philip Elder
MPECS Inc.
Microsoft Small Business Specialists
*All Mac on SBS posts are posted on our in-house iMac via the Safari Web browser.
Hi Philip,
ReplyDeleteI have been using the Touch Pro for the last few months against both SBS2K3 and upgraded to SBS2008. works a charm with a Godaddy cert.
The only issue I hae with it is the screen size, it can get very smlal very quickly. My older phone is a HP IPAQ hw6915, larger screen and even that seemed small at times. So maybe I'm a screen hog!
Lovely clarity on the Touch Pro's screen, great for visually impaired.
As you said works great with my in car bluetooth kit.