Design
The most obvious cosmetic feature of HTC's Touch Cruise is actually the absence of a feature. Like PDAs of old, the Touch Cruise is the first in the current line of HTC products without a mechanical keypad. The official product code for the Touch Cruise is the P3650, which makes the Cruise phone the successor to the HTC P3600i, another keypad-less PDA smartphone.
Gone are the rounded piano-black surfaces of the P3600i and in their place is a sharp, modern looking handset with a mixture of matte black rubber and stainless steel finishes. The Touch Cruise is a very attractive smartphone indeed. At 15mm thick the Cruise is (marginally) the thinnest in the HTC family, and at 110 by 58mm we had no problems transporting the phone in our pockets.
The centrepiece of the Cruise is a 2.8-inch QVGA touch display. Below the screen is a basic panel of mechanical keys and a jogwheel for navigation. This jogwheel turns too easily for our liking and moves from selections too quickly, so we've found it much easily to navigate most menus using the touchscreen, either with our fingers or with the stylus.
Volume adjustments can be made using a spring-loaded switch on the side of the phone, but we found the switch difficult to move and often deferred to the touchscreen for volume control as well. The microSD card reader is on the opposite side of the handset, alongside the dedicated camera button. Our test unit came bundled with a 1GB SD card with Co-Pilot 7 navigation software pre-installed and a windshield mount and car charger in the retail sales pack. Having dedicated navigation accessories is a very nice touch.
Features
Taiwanese smartphone manufacturer HTC has been playing a clever game of specs juggling lately. In the last few months we've seen the Touch Dual, TyTN II and now the Touch Cruise. Each runs on similar hardware and Windows Mobile 6 so the basic smartphone experience is constant, however, each features a differing list of included technology.
The Touch Cruise is perhaps the most complete of the recent releases. All popular connectivity options are covered with HSDPA, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth with A2DP stereo audio profile. In addition the Touch Cruise lives up to its name with a GPS receiver built onto the Qualcomm processing unit.
Similar to the Touch Dual, the Cruise also features HTC's Touch Flo technology and funky interface shell. One of the major complaints about Windows Mobile 6 is how unintuitive the interface is. The HTC shell sits "on top" of Windows Mobile and gives quick 'one-touch' access to many regularly used menus and applications, like the organiser and phone profiles, without having to dig deep into the menus system.
Performance
It's difficult to say for certain without having the previous phones in the Labs, but it appears the Touch Cruise may be slightly laggier than the other HTCs we've seen lately. Like the Touch Dual, the Cruise runs on a Qualcomm 400MHz processor with 128MB RAM, and while it's adequate for most tasks, you can expect the Cruise to pause for a moment or two between menu selections and the applications opening.
Likewise, battery life is adequate but not extraordinary. During our tests we used the Web frequently and made moderate use of voice calls and standard messaging, and found each battery cycle to be approximately two days. When testing the Co-Pilot navigation software we needed to charge the phone at the end of the first day.
Those issues aside, the Touch Cruise is a star performer. Reception for voice calling is strong and the internal speaker is loud and clear. The HTC interface shell includes large, finger-friendly soft keypad options, so typing with the touchscreen has the potential to be fast and accurate.
Overall
When casting an eye across the HTC brood the Touch Cruise definitely jumps out. Its sharp looks and impressive list of features make it the pick of the litter. The Cruise also compares favourably to many of the other smartphones on the market. Next to i-mate's Ultimate 8502, the Cruise lacks performance but makes up ground by being a very attractive and easy to use PDA phone, and this is more than enough to earn a recommendation from us.
The best PDA phone of the market. Better than the iPhone v2 except for the iPhone's good user-interface and thinness and screen size.
The good: Has nearly every feature. Works very well. Quite a few more features than iPhone v2
The bad: CoPilot live is not very good, and often can't be relied on. Much worse than Nokia Navigator. Thicker than iPhone, and user-interface not as good. Backlight doesn't come on until phone is unlocked, so very difficult to see buttons to unlock phone during daylight.