HTC Touch Dual Review

The HTC Touch Dual is a smartphone similar to the popular HTC Touch, but with a sliding keyboard added. In addition, there is a brand new U.S. version that includes Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional.

This device actually comes in two versions: one for Europe, which is tri-band GSM and single-band 3G, while the new U.S. model is quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G, and has a newer operating system. There's also a difference in the keyboard, noted below.

The Dual is only sold in unlocked versions, meaning that it can be used on any GSM carrier such as AT&T and T-Mobile in the U.S., Rogers in Canada, or virtually any international operator.

Design and Construction

The Touch Dual has pretty much the same styling that the older Touch models do, with one big exception. It has a split casing with slide mechanism, similar to the sliding keyboards found on many of HTC's other units. Unlike those, though, the Dual doesn't slide horizontally, it slides vertically.

As I said earlier, there's a slight difference between the North America and Europe/Asia versions of the Dual as far as the keyboard goes. The E.U. version can be bought with either a 16-button keypad, which uses standard T9 text input on its ten numerical buttons, or a 20-button extended keyboard: not quite full QWERTY, but halfway between that and T9, somewhat akin to the predictive text input found on some newer Blackberry models. The U.S. version is available only with the latter 20-button system.

I've found myself ambivalent to the keyboard style. It's not as intuitive as QWERTY, but it lacks the standardization of T9. While you can get used to it, it remains an ugly stepchild-kind of solution, seemingly enacted only becaus