Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

Today, the FedEx man dropped off the latest from AT&T and HTC: the Fuze.  After playing around with it a bunch, here is my quick hands on.  I’ll have an in depth video review coming soon, so check back.

Touchy

The touch screen takes a bit to get used to if you are familiar with Apple’s products.  This is more of a “touch and hold”.  I found the touch sensitivity to be all over the place: from very sensitive in the Mobile Opera browser to no-so-much in Windows Settings.  I can’t put my finger on why (and that is my last pun for a while).

What I really liked for some reason is the onscreen keyboard.  I found my typing was near perfect, even on the smaller form factor vs. my iPod touch.  Go figure.

QWERTY

I can already hear you asking me why I am used the onscreen keyboard.  It was easier at that moment.  But I really like the slide out keyboard.  It is huge and super easy to use.  There are keys for everything: directional keys, shortcut keys, function keys; everything you could possible want and then a few more.  Nice work, HTC.

Touch Flo

I loved watching the Touch Flo install after un-boxing the phone.  While I did get nervous when initially greeted with the snooze-fest Windows Mobile home screen, the phone automatically started installing the much fresher-looking Touch Flo.  I like it.  It is pretty smooth, very easy to get around, easy access to what you would actually change.  Being the WinMo legacy guy I am, I found my self falling through the Touch Flo skin into the ugly bowels of WinMo, but most users should be able to steer clear of the underbelly.

Exchange

Like every other WinMo phone, it handles Exchange with the same settings.  Easy.  All your data comes flooding in.  Setting up Gmail was a breeze as well.

Form

Fat and heavy.  While these are relative terms, this phone is the heaviest and on the thick side (the Pantech Matrix and Pantech Duo are thicker, though).  The height is about the same as the Nokia N85.  We’ll see if this weight bugs me as I try to live with this phone over the next week.

All of a sudden, I am not hating Windows Mobile as I was when I awoke this and every other past morning.  We’ll see if that feeling stays.