HTC Touch Pro2 review: Out with a pro

Applications and more

The HTC Touch Touch Pro2 comes with plenty of preloaded applications – the essentials are already installed, which means you can start using them straight away. There’s the regular stuff such as an RSS Reader, a YouTube application and a Streaming Media manager.

As we’ve come to expect from HTC, their admirable Task Manager comes preinstalled. It blends in with the TouchFLO 3D interface seamlessly and is convenient for switching between open apps or stopping them (not that there’s any shortage of RAM, but still).

The Task Manager is available, as always in the top right corner of the homescreen. You can also access it through the settings menu, which comes in handy since an application’s close button replaces the Task Switcher button. This does hamper its task-switching ability a little and we’d have liked to see a more elegant solution to the problem.

The Touch Pro2 task manager is available on the TouchFLO homescreen

The RSS Hub app is an RSS reader for staying up-to-date with the latest news and content at your favorite web places. The Streaming Media manager allows access to custom sources of streaming audio and video.

The RSS Hub reader • the Streaming Media manager

Another thing that has become a part of the HTC experience is the well-known Teeter game. The game is simple – by tilting the phone, you must guide a ball to an end point avoiding holes along the way. The graphics are polished and accurate vibrations each time your ball hits the walls of the maze make it very fun to play.

The Teeter game is highly amusing and life-like

The YouTube application is here again. It offers a fluid, excellent looking interface – shinier than even the iPhone’s.

The Touch Pro2 YouTube client • video quality settings

Developers have had plenty of time to adapt their applications to WVGA resolution thanks to the Touch HD.

Another application is the rather handy Search software, capable of searching throughout applications and the whole file system. You have the option to set filters so that the application searches only in the places you need.

The system-wide Search application

GPS does matter

The HTC Touch Pro2 features a built-in GPS receiver - it's the Qualcomm gpsOne chipset, which comes along with the Qualcomm 7200A platform.

The Touch Pro2 supports the Assisted-GPS technology, commonly known as A-GPS. It means you can download current satellite data over Wi-Fi or the 2G/3G network for a much faster GPS satellite lock.

The Touch Pro2 A-GPS data download manager

The Touch Pro2 comes with Google Maps. With a more advanced GPS app installed, the handset can easily replace your dedicated GPS navigation unit thanks to the large screen. Given the huge pixel count, a lot more of the map gets displayed on screen at the same zoom level.

Chipset sensitivity of the HTC Touch Pro2 seems to be on the faster side when it comes to getting an initial satellite lock. Overall, we’re pretty happy with the sensitivity of the gpsOne chipset.