HTC Touch Pro 2 Keypad
The HTC Touch Pro 2 is an interesting beast. It has a large touch sensitive interface, uses Windows Mobile and looks suspiciously like a Nokia N97 from certain angles. But it is the HTC Touch Pro 2 keypad that sets it up as a business/smartphone hybrid. It aims to blitz the competition in terms of the levels of communication and connectivity it facilitates and at the core of its assault is the innovative design of its keypad.
Phones featuring full QWERTY keypads are not new. Teenagers have been using such devices for years in order to text each other. HTC has previously produced a smartphone with a full QWERTY keypad hidden beneath the main screen. However, not every QWERTY keypad has been particularly well thought out. In the past they have suffered from unresponsive keys, oddly placed controls and difficult to use interfaces. The HTC Touch Pro 2 keypad aims to rectify all of these previous issues.
The first thing you will notice about the Touch Pro 2 keypad is the way in which the keys are organised. There are five rows in total, with numbers sitting along the top and the space bar and other controls along the bottom, sandwiching the main alphabetic keys in-between. The Touch Pro 2 even manages to squeeze in directional arrows which make editing documents and writing long emails far less painful than on other similar devices.
The keys benefit from being well spaced out and the handset itself looks like it has been stretched slightly in order to improve typing comfort, perhaps at the cost of some of its good looks. The keys are also slightly raised, which although a small adjustment improves the typing no end. The final benefit of the QWERTY keypad is that the keys are misaligned, just as they are on a standard computer keypad. This makes typing feel intuitive and natural straight out of the box, with only a minimal learning curve in order to get to grips with the interface. Whilst other full QWERTY keypads often present clustered, difficult to distinguish keys, the Touch Pro 2 is in a different league all together.
Another core strength of the HTC Touch Pro 2 keypad is that it works in perfect harmony with the screen. Other manufacturers have simply included a slide mechanism in order to hide the QWERTY keypad, but here HTC has integrated the slide function into the design in a practical way. The screen not only slides upwards to reveal the keypad, but it also angles itself towards the user. This means that when you are typing on the keypad the screen is at a far more suitable slant. It also means that you can sit the Touch Pro 2 on a flat surface such as a desk and type without having to strain your neck over to look at the screen.
The one minor issue which some may pick up on is the thickness of the Touch Pro 2. It is caused by the keypad, the angled screen and the powerful hardware hidden beneath its skin. The Touch Pro 2 could not really be described as sleek and it is important to realise that this handset is not trying to gain traction in the iPhone marketplace. It is, instead, firmly aimed at the serious business user. Obviously the keypad helps enormously when typing emails, messages and documents and there are other business-specific communication functions as well. One particularly focused aspect of the Touch Pro 2’s design is the Straight Talk function. This is essentially a powerful speaker phone function designed for use in board meetings and it is certainly a nice touch for potential business users.
Tags: htc, htc touch pro 2, keypad