Hands-on with the HTC Touch Pro

We have the HTC Touch Pro in the office at the moment, but we thought we’d give you taster of this new Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone before we publish the full review. Available now for £494.99 contract-free from Expansys, the Touch Pro is essentially the same smartphone as the HTC Touch Diamond, but with one important difference – a keyboard.

The Touch Pro is a little fatter than the Diamond as a result, but it’s a compact smartphone. The keyboard slides out from under the screen in the same fashion as that on the HTC TyTN II and although the keys are small, they’re quite usable.

Actually, there is another difference. The TouchFLO 3D UI on the Touch Pro is a later version than that on the Diamond Touch we reviewed (v1.2.34591.1-1813.6 on the Pro, v1.1.34571.0.1630.38 on the Diamond) and it’s much improved, speed-wise. It’s still no a patch on the iPhone in terms of responsiveness, but it’s now actually usable rather than useless. Let’s hope that future updates fix things still further.

We’ll publish our full review in the next few days, but here’s our hands-on video in the meantime.

We also shot a web browser comparison video to show how the Touch Pro’s Opera Mobile 9.5 fares against the Apple iPhone’s Safari. Both smartphones were connected to the same Wi-Fi network (honest!), and while the iPhone still has the edge, there’s really very little in it.