Last week I got the ‘reasonably’ new HTC Touch HD smartphone on contract from Orange here in the UK.  It’s an extremely impressive phone despite a specification that initially underwhelmes.  528MHz Qualcomm processor, 512Mb ROM, 288Mb RAM and Windows Mobile Professional 6.1 on board.

The presentation when you open it is of a highly desirable, luxury item.  The build quality is second to none but it’s the screen that impresses most.  The resolution of 480 by 800 is more than double that of the iPhone and it’s far brighter.  Indeed I’m looking forward to the next visit by my friend Duncan as he’s got one and I’ll write a side-by-side review at that time.  The phone also has an ambient light sensor that automatically adjusts the screen backlight.  This feature is a little disconcerting at first but will no doubt extend the already hugely impressive battery life.

Setting the phone up is a breeze, it took me only a few minutes to configure it and install Windows Live, for synchnonising with my contacts and email but, sadly, not yet my calendar, and the new Facebook application that’s been back-ported from Windows Mobile 6.5 beta.  HTC’s TouchFlo 3D interface is gorgeous, but you don’t have to dig very deep before discovering the true ugliness of Windows Mobile underneath.  It would be nice if more of the common features, managing contacts and email for example, were subsumed into the TouchFlo interface in the way program management, photos and music have been.  Suffice to say this phone is nowhere near as user friendly as the iPhone overall and not for non-technical users.

That said it’s still much more powerful than the iPhone and that high-resolution screen makes browsing the web extremely pleasing.  Opera Mobile 9.5 is bundled and it’s a powerful browser.  I’ve been able to view websites fully zoomed out when the phone is turned sideways, an accellerometer automatically rotates the screen when you do this, and still read the text.  Zooming in means either a quick double-tap on the screen or the easy to use zoom bar along the bottom on the screen.

One thing I was looking forward to was working on spreadsheets in Office Mobile.  Sadly this has turned into something of a disappointment because, while the apps, Word, Excel, Powerpoint and OneNote are all present and powerful, the screen rotation won’t work with them.  This can make working on a spreadsheet, that traditionally extends sideways, difficult.

There’s a proper 3.5mm headphone jack which is good to see and while the music player isn’t anywhere near as polished as the iPhone, TouchFlo still makes it a joy to use.

Other features include Assisted GPS, though my phone didn’t come with Google Maps as the phone does in some countries, Wi-Fi b/g, quad band and my phone was supplied with a free 8Gb micro-SD card.

On the failings I’ve discovered a glaring one I’m not happy with.  To perform a soft-reset on the phone, which only empties the memory and shuts down any running programs, you have to remove the back and the battery and poke the stylus in a small hole.  To perform a hard, factory, reset however you only need to press a specific three-key combination on the outside of the case.  I can’t help thinking these should have been the other way around.

Finally, the 5MP camera, while lacking a flash, has produced some very impressive pictures for me so far, even indoors.  I’d say that they’re just as good as the ones I got from my last phone, the Sony Ericsson Cybershot K800i which had a better lens and xenon flash.

I’m extremely impressed by this phone however and could go on for ages about things like the highly addictive supplied game, Teeter, for instance.  Suffice to say that if you’re after a touch-screen smart phone and you’re a technical user then this is the one to get.