HTC Touch Cruise 09

Written on 2/14/2009 04:22:00 PM by poison_ivy

HTC Touch Cruise 09

So HTC has a new mobile on the market, the HTC Touch Cruise 09. HTC has had a lot of products since their first release of the HTC Touch Cruise, so is the 09 version worth upgrading to? Here's my take.

Design

The HTC Touch Cruise 09 still features a 2.8 QVGA screen. At first glance, I thought the Touch Cruise 09 has a slide out keyboard but no, unfortunately, it's only touch screen. What I didn't like about the design of this product is that HTC opted for a 2.8 inch screen when they could have made use of the whole front of the screen and went 3-3.2 inch by removing the useless hardware keys. Other than that, the HTC Touch Cruise 09 seems like a real solid device to hold

Features and Performance

I'm glad that HTC isn't taking a step back and decided to incorporate the processor and memory of the Touch Diamond on the Touch Cruise 09. This device has a 256MB of RAM, and a 528MHz Qualcomm processor. It seems that the Touch Flo 3D has really matured ever since it was first introduced on the Touch Diamond. The TouchFlo 3D on the Cruise 09 is overall a smooth experience although there are still lags when you switch to the standard windows mobile interface but I blame that on Microsoft.



Now the main feature of the Touch Cruise 09 is the feature called HTC footprints. Basically, it's a pumped up version of the geotagging feature on some cameraphones. HTC Footprints lets you take pictures and then tag your location, add some notes, or add a voice memo. The tagging feature is actually pretty fast. Although I wonder if the HTC Footprints is just all gimmick. I mean, I'm not a social networking nut and I hardly use the geotagging features on my Omnia so I don't really see myself buying the Touch Cruise 09 just for the HTC footprints. However, I guess there are some people who might find the HTC footprints application useful, especially frequent travelers.

My other gripe is that if you're selling the HTC footprints for geotagging then you should have put a better camera on the device. The Touch Cruise 09 doesn't seem to have a LED flash so HTC probably used the camera technology on their previous HTC devices which mean it's good for outdoors and daylight shooting but quality in low light conditions and indoors is not so good.

Speaking of light, the screen of the HTC Touch Cruise 09 has 65k colors and a 240x320 resolution so the screen is all washed out when used in direct sunlight.

Conclusion and Outlook

The HTC Touch Cruise 09 has improved in terms of the TouchFlo interface but aside from the HTC footprints, it doesn't seem to offer anything new. If you just want a smart phone that works this might be a better choice over the Touch Diamond but if you're looking for better graphics and don't mind tweaking your phone to get the best out of it then you're better off with the Touch Diamond, Touch Pro or Touch HD as they offer better features than on the Touch Cruise 09.

Posted in Other Mobile Phones, Windows Mobile |