It's a tough job overcoming the failings of Windows Mobile, but HTC has done a better job than most in recent times with its seriously sexy and potent smartphones. From the well-engineered Touch and Touch Dual to the all-singing, all dancing TyTN II, it has a strong record. But times change, and with the iPhone 3G just around the corner, can HTC keep it up?

The Touch Diamond, with its new TouchFLO 3D interface, tries as hard as any handset out there to mimic the iPhone's sleek, swish, multi-touch design. And unlike many other Windows Mobile devices, TouchFLO 3D completely replaces the Windows Mobile’s front end, making the traditional list-based design of the Today screen is a distant memory. Even our favourite Windows Mobile shell enhancement, SPB Mobile Shell, doesn't go as far as that. 

The Touch Pro has done away with the Touch Diamond’s gloss finish for its battery cover though, and instead has a far more tasteful matte black plastic with slightly rubberised finish. The battery cover still has the same multi-faceted design no doubt intended to evoke the appearance of a cut diamond and this creates a problem. With the keyboard slid open, the uneven battery cover means that the Touch Pro won’t lie flat on a level surface and instead tilts back to rock on one edge of the case. This makes it awkward to type with the Touch Pro sat on a desk, so you’ll have to hold it in both hands for two-thumbed typing instead.

HTC has paid some attention to the mechanism that the two halves of the case are attached to and the keyboard slides open with a pleasing, well-sprung snap. It’s also difficult to foul the mechanism by pushing just one side of the open keyboard to close it (unlike on the HTC TyTN and TyTN II) – a small point, but a useful one that makes one-handed use of the Touch Pro a mite easier.

The keyboard is small with closely packed keys, but it works surprisingly well. Each key has just enough of a profile to feel distinct under the fingers and the extra-wide Enter and left Shift keys are welcome touches. We think this is also the first smartphone we’ve seen with dedicated Ctrl, Tab and Caps Lock keys, though these probably won’t see much use in anything other than the various Pocket Office applications.

There are also shortcut keys on the keyboard for the web browser, email and SMS applications, but there isn’t a Windows key to open the Windows Mobile start menu. The two usual Windows Mobile physical ‘soft’ keys are also missing, so you can’t control the Touch Pro by keyboard alone and you’ll have to interact with the touch-screen at some point. Fortunately, as with the Touch Diamond, the screen does sit flush with the front panel, making it much easier to use with a fingertip than most other Windows Mobile smartphones.

The Touch Pro uses the same slick TouchFLO 3D UI as the Diamond Touch, but as we noted in our earlier hands-on video, it is a later version – 1.2.34591.1-1813.6, rather than 1.1.34571.0.1630.38. A minor revision it may be, but HTC has certainly fixed something and TouchFLO 3D on the Touch Pro runs much more smoothly and with far less lag than on the Diamond Touch.

Both smartphones have the same type and speed of processor, so this is definitely a software fix. Hopefully future revisions will make the UI smoother still since it still has a way to go before it’s as responsive as the iPhone’s UI. Incidentally, Touch Diamond owners should be able to download the latest ROM (complete with new TouchFLO3D software) from the HTC support site.

Installed software on the Touch Pro is the same as that on the Touch Diamond, so we’ll point you at our earlier review for the full details rather than repeat them here.

One small difference is that opening the keyboard with any TouchFLO 3D application active causes the display to change to a program launcher screen, though we’re not quite sure why.

Despite the physical keyboard, the Touch Pro still comes with a choice of on-screen input methods – the usual Windows Mobile selection, plus three larger, more usable HTC-created keyboards (phone, compact Qwerty and full Qwerty). As on the Touch Diamond though, these take up a lot of screen space and don’t leave much room for typed text. Shrinking the default Windows Mobile text size helps here and characters are crisp even at the lowest setting, thanks to the comparatively high resolution 480 x 640 screen.

Although its specification is broadly similar to that of the Touch Diamond, there have been a few changes with the Touch Pro. Gone is the 4Gb of onboard flash memory, replaced by a far more useful microSD card slot. The ROM has also been increased from 256Mb to 512Mb, and RAM is up from 192Mb to 288Mb.

The Touch Pro’s battery has also been beefed up to 1340mAh – the Touch Diamond made do with 900mAh. Claimed talk-time increases to 419 minutes as a result (330 minutes on the Touch Diamond), but the claimed standby time is lower – 367 hours, compared to 396 hours on the Touch Diamond. Still, it would be churlish to complain – this still equates to 15 days.

We’re no fans of Windows Mobile, but we’re more tolerant of this fiddly, inconsistent mobile operating system when it’s hidden behind a nifty user interface and coupled with a great keyboard. No surprise then that we rather like the HTC Touch Pro and we certainly prefer it to the Diamond Touch. But it’s still not perfect – we’d like that glorious screen to be a little bigger to make better use of its VGA resolution, and we’d prefer a better loudspeaker than the hopelessly inadequate one tucked away at the back of the device.

We’d also prefer a lower price. The Touch Pro may be an awful lot of smartphone, but £495 is an awful lot of money for contract-free model and we fail to see how the addition of a keyboard (not to mention the loss of 4Gb of onboard storage) warrants a £65 price increase over the Touch Diamond.

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