Pocket PCs have been keeping us busy these days. Just as we gave you LG KS20, it's time for our one-on-one with the HTC Touch Cruise. And hey, are those workhorses getting sexier or what. As one of our readers sharply observed, those devices just don't have to yell corporate or geek any more. One of the best looking Pocket PCs around, the HTC Touch Cruise will surely turn heads. Besides, its feature set is on par with the attire, which explains our eagerness to put it through its paces. Wi-Fi, HSDPA, 2.8" Touchscreen display and a 3 megapixel camera surely make it one of the most loaded devices around. And, not least, we just couldn't wait to rev up the new TouchFLO.

Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE

3G with HSDPA

400MHz Qualcomm processor

128MB of RAM

2.8" 65K color touchscreen TFT display with QVGA resolution

Integrated Qualcomm GPS receiver

TomTom satnav software pre-bundled, one free map included

Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g

3 megapixel camera with autofocus

Sleek design

Enhanced HTC TouchFLO interface

Jog-wheel D-pad

Great picture gallery

Retail package is rich in content

Good battery life

No hardware keypad

Inadequate video playback capabilities

Paint starts to peel off very quickly

Display image quality is a bit disappointing and is practically illegible under direct sunlight

Photo processing issues

HTC Touch Cruise is surely one of the most interesting Windows Mobile Pro devices to hit the shelves recently. It features the new version of HTC's TouchFLO interface and one of the heaviest feature sets in the PocketPC class. It is very close in terms of specifications to the omnipresent HTC TyTN II, except for the hardware QWERTY keyboard. However the Cruise is incomparably lighter and thinner and - as we see it - much better looking. Not that looks are the first thing about a PocketPC.

The retail box of HTC Touch Cruise is one of the largest we've ever come across and we were quite eager of course to see what it holds. To our greatest disappointment a microSD card was nowhere to be found. However there was a whole bunch of other niceties.

The list begins with a handsfree and - quite naturally - a DC charger. A miniUSB cable was also there along with a spare stylus.

Next we came upon the carrying pouch, which evoked mixed feelings around the GSMArena team. For one thing, it is too tight and putting the phone in and taking it out is some feat. Furthermore, it easily gets dirty, even the smallest particle of dust easily seen on the black suede surface.

A screen protector and a hefty amount of paper and CDs complete the retail package contents. It seems there is a manual for everything about the HTC Touch Cruise.

In terms of dimensions the HTC Touch Cruise is right among the compact PocketPCs on the market. It stands at 110 x 58 x 15.5 mm and weighs 130g, which is far not the smallest gadget around but it won't tear a hole in your pocket either. Compared to the TyTN II, the Cruise earns points on both slimness and weight.

In all fairness, the Touch Cruise is far from the LG KS20 and the HTC Touch but those are just the exceptions that confirm the rule.

The earpiece is situated at the center of the top part of the front panel. There are two status LEDs on each side, while the video-call camera is in the right corner.

The right LED glows in green and amber to indicate data transfer, message receipt and network status, as well as battery charging. It also blinks in red when the battery level drops below 5%. The left LED serves as a Bluetooth-on notification, and emits green light for Wi-Fi status. When both Bluetooth and Wi-Fi are enabled, their lights flash alternately. It also blinks in amber for GPS status.

Below the earpiece it's all display. The 2.8" touchscreen display is to receive its deserved attention a little later in our review.

Under the screen we see the Call and End keys on each side of the navigation wheel. The latter has four directions and confirming action, topped with a jog-wheel functionality. The two remaining keys on the front of HTC Touch Cruise are the GPS button and the Internet Explorer button, used for launching their respective applications.

Turning the handset over we see the 3 megapixel camera, which is located just under the GPS antenna connector. A self-portrait mirror is located just under the lens, while the loudspeaker grill is in the top right corner.

Opening the battery cover proved surprisingly difficult. We had to really force the cover open and we did fear breaking it. Under the cover lies a 1350 mAh Li-Ion battery. Talk time is said to be 7h, while the stand-by is quoted at 450 h, which is more than promising on paper. In reality, the battery will last for about 2.5 - 3 days of moderate usage (a few calls, half an hour of using the wireless and about as much using the other phone applications a day).

We have to note here that although it seems the SIM card can be handled without removing the battery, this is not true. There is a special lock mechanism that renders such actions impossible.

We would generally call the build quality of HTC Touch Cruise passable. The materials used are of high quality and no creaks were heard while handling it. However, the paint is way below that level. It started to peel off after less than a week of use. Otherwise the phone feels great in hand and is easy to operate with one hand, which is not that common for PocketPCs.

We find the 2.8" 65K color TFT touchscreen of the HTC Touch Cruise acceptable. It's on par with most PocketPC screens out there, which unfortunately includes the usual low legibility under direct sunlight. It gets even worse when covered in fingerprints. Topped with the small system font of Windows Mobile, it doesn't even come close to providing adequate sunlight legibility.

It seems the right place to make a necessary remark about the display colors. 262K-color support is not native to 32-bit processors, so manufacturers are limited to choosing between 65K or 16M colors. However, displaying 16 million colors would probably be too demanding on some systems, compromising performance and/or battery life. And even though some manufacturers claim that their PocketPCs have 262K color displays you can be sure that they still show the same 65K colors many are grumbling about. Still we don't really believe there will be much difference to the human eye between 65K and 262K color displays on most occasions.

No need to remind you that HTC Touch Cruise is a mobile phone before anything else. Performance in calls is therefore extremely important. Luckily, it is completely up to the task. Calling is trouble-free as you would expect. The Phone application is in charge of all call-related features. Custom-made for HTC, it has large virtual keys that allow easy one-hand operation. In the upper right corner there's the Backspace key, below it is the Video call key and, finally, the Calls Log key.

The thing we like most about Windows Mobile devices is that you hardly ever need to open your phonebook in order to dial a contact. You just open the Phone and use its built-in Smart Dial feature. As soon as you've punched a few digits, it automatically filters the available contacts by their numbers and their names. It uses the letters assigned to each number key for that (much like T9 when writing) - but unlike a feature phone, it checks all the available combinations. Smart dial even searches in your recent calls list.

Audio quality during calls is also at a very high level and you will have no problems on either end of a call.

Windows Mobile 6 Professional has been available for quite a while now, so everyone interested in PocketPCs has probably long since come to know it. Essentially, any PocketPC is just a software platform which you can expand according to your needs, thanks to the multitude of available applications.

So we acknowledge that any current PocketPC user would hardly need a review of the default Windows Mobile applications that come preinstalled with the device - they are always the same. The reason why people change their PocketPC with new ones is only the hardware equipment - they simply want snappier and more user-friendly hardware to run their favorite applications on.

So as a rule, PocketPC fans and users will only be interested in the hardware part of this review. This particular PocketPC is powered by a Qualcomm MSM 7200 chipset platform. A primary 400MHz Qualcomm ARM11 processor runs applications, while a secondary 274 MHz ARM9 microprocessor is in charge of radio equipment. Other hardware specs include 128MB of RAM and 256MB of ROM, which are both decent numbers.

We also need to mention that even if some manufacturer comes up with an ingenious application of their own, the hard-working PocketPC scene will take care of passing it on to older models. We saw it happen with the first version of the HTC TouchFLO technology already.

So really, buying your Windows Mobile device is just the start - much like your desktop Windows. You hardly ever think of the built-in functions of your desktop OS, as long as you use it to run useful applications on it. We think that should've made our point. Anyways, we'll still give you the most interesting traits of the software for people new to PocketPCs, as well as for those interested in what they get right out of the box when buying the HTC Touch Cruise.

The first thing you'll notice when you power up the HTC Touch Cruise is the custom HTC home screen. It's an add-on that simply comes preinstalled (same goes true for the TouchFLO for that matter) and we have to say that it's a really handy one, as it offers five separate tabs with frequently used functions.

The Home tab displays info about the time and date plus status indicators for unread messages, mail or missed calls. The Favorite people tab allows you to store quick dial shortcuts to people in your contact list that you call frequently (their images get shown too). The Weather tab is rather self-explanatory - it even gives you a weekly forecast. The Launcher tab stores several configurable shortcuts and, finally, the Sound tab offers quick setup of ringing profiles and your current ringtone. Furthermore, a little tweak allows you to change the number and order of the tabs according to you preferences.

Now, for those of you that are not familiar with PocketPC, we should probably explain that those handsets have no "main menu" the way feature phones or Symbian devices do. Instead, here you have the Programs menu and the Settings menu - they are almost all you need to access the PocketPC features.

They are both accessible through the Start menu which, like the one in the desktop Windows, is a user configurable list of shortcuts to some favorite applications. However unlike the desktop Windows, the Home screen is not necessarily a place for your applications - instead you usually use the Start menu to access them. There is an interesting option on the Touch Cruise, which enlarges the start menu to make it easier to read and navigate by touch.

The Communication Manager is where you turn all the connectivity features on or off, such as Bluetooth, WLAN, Data connection and even telephony. The HTC Touch Cruise has a nice custom skin for the application making it much better looking and user-friendly.

Windows Mobile 6.0 offers elaborate multi-tasking to the extent that it makes it quite hard to shut down open applications. The OS is designed in such a way that it should remain fast and stable without having to close running applications. Those of you with longer experience with this OS however, will surely agree that it does not always work this way, especially in the case of particularly heavy applications when the available memory seems to drain rather fast.

The Task manager for the currently running processes is hidden deep in the Settings menu so you would normally need quite a number of clicks to reach it. Luckily, HTC have preinstalled a third-party application on the Touch Cruise to facilitate the access to it. A quick press on the upper right corner on the Home screen opens a list of the currently running applications. No system processes are shown, so you won't get confused by all those enigmatic names you've probably seen in the desktop Windows Task Manager.

Another proprietary HTC plug-in provides easier access to the icons placed on the top bar of HTC Touch Cruise. Once you click the bar near them a pop-up with the same icon appears, but this time they are of much larges size and far easier to press with a finger.

Windows Mobile traditionally offers customization through themes but they only change the color scheme. You can of course change the wallpaper on the Home screen too, but that's pretty much all you get. In order to apply some more advanced customization, you would need a third party application. Those kinds of applications however usually eat up your RAM. Besides, the HTC custom home screen looks good enough, so you are very unlikely to want to change it.

We called the HTC TouchFLO in the HTC TyTN II a nice touch. Now with the HTC Touch Cruise, the new version has much more to offer. This is probably the most important plug-in on the device and it is even better that it comes preinstalled. The new TouchFLO technology greatly improves the user-friendliness and pretty much sidelines the stylus for navigating your PocketPC.

The TouchFLO technology is basically a software enhancement that allows the touch screen to recognize the difference between using the stylus and using your finger. It enhances user experience by allowing smooth scrolling with fingers. Without it, finger-scrolling of lists or web pages would've been impossible, leaving the side scrollbar as the only option.

Furthermore the Touch Cruise is much more sensitive and easy to control than HTC Touch for example. A slight touch on the screen is now more than enough and you no longer need to squash the surface to get the device to accept your command. All in all, the touch experience with the HTC Touch Cruise is second only to the Apple iPhone.

The Windows Mobile OS has an unlimited contact list with a vast number of available fields for each entry. Synchronization with MS Outlook is simply seamless.

There is also a letter-by-letter search available in the phonebook so you're not going to get lost even if you had hundreds of contacts.

Sending and receiving messages is done through the centralized Inbox. It has separate folders for SMS, MMS and email. SMS length is virtually unlimited, as well as the memory available for received and sent messages. Inside the multimedia editor you will find the useful option to create multi-page messages containing more than one slide with a melody, image or text of your choice.

The Outlook Mobile email client supports POP3 and IMAP accounts. You can have multiple accounts and you can set the client to do automatic checks in regular time intervals. It has full support for sending and receiving attachments. There is also support for Direct Push.

What Direct Push support basically means is that instead of checking mail at regular intervals, your messages are delivered to you immediately once they are received by the mail server. The only condition is that your company's Microsoft Exchange server supports Direct Push. Windows Mobile 6.0 offers some upgrades to the email client over Windows Mobile 5.0 - now you have integrated search, plus support for HTML emails.

There are several text input methods with the HTC Touch Cruise, all of them based on typing on the screen. The classical on-screen QWERTY keyboard is available and there is also handwriting recognition. The Block Recognizer allows handwriting with single-stroke characters and gestures, so you have to learn how to write that way (writing is done in a special on-screen box). The Letter Recognizer offers a more natural way to write, as you can input normal characters (writing again is done in a special box). With Transcriber you can write wherever you want on the screen in whatever style you may wish.

There are also two virtual keypads available to the Touch Cruise's users designed by HTC themselves. One is a 12-key phone-like layout, the other is an implementation of the RIM's SureType, with 2 letters per each key in a QWERTY layout. These are quite convenient to use with the keys large enough to be easily hit with either a finger or a stylus.

The built-in file manager of the HTC Touch Cruise is the standard Windows Mobile variety. It does a good job finding the files you are looking for. The File explorer as the application is called, can create new folders, copy and move files, set tracks as ringtones or simply send files to other devices.

The Picture gallery of Windows Mobile is an application called Pictures&Videos and, as the name implies, you use it to browse the multimedia files in question. As far as pictures are concerned, you can zoom in and out, as well as preview them in landscape mode. The files are shown as either thumbnails or as a plain list. There's a shortcut that allows you to turn on the camera directly from this application. You can even do some basic editing on the images.

However HTC Touch Cruise has a second and much improved picture gallery. It is accessible through the TouchFLO cube and supports various gesture controls. It allows natural controlling of the pictures with various gestures acting as commands for zooming in and out, panning and changing the currently selected picture. The Navigation wheel can also show its full potential here. It too can be used for zooming in and out, as well as for changing pictures and panning. Not a bad effort at all and here is a small video showing the tricks this HTC can pull.

The primary multimedia player of all Windows Mobile devices is the preinstalled Windows Media Player. Besides music, it allows watching video and streaming TV. You can sort tracks by artist, album or genre and you can create custom playlists.

HTC have additionally installed the Audio Manager music player. It is a strange name for a music player but it does allow you to manage your music files easily - you can sort tracks by artist, album, genre, or composer. You can create an unlimited number of custom playlists and the interface is optimized for finger operation.

The Streaming Media application is another HTC touch to the software package of the Touch Cruise. It allows you to watch or listen to streaming content. It follows the same stylus-free design of the Audio Manager.

To our greatest disappointment, the HTC Touch Cruise, much like the HTC TyTN II couldn't play movies at near-VGA resolution smoothly. We were forced to convert those to near-QVGA in order to play them properly. This doesn't speak highly of the 400MHz processor, as those kind of limitations used to apply to 200MHz PocketPCs such as the old but trustworthy Qtek 9100 (HTC Wizard).

We installed a TCPMP player and the needed codecs to play DivX and XviD video files. Playing movies at near-VGA resolution on the Cruise is impossible, unless the GDI mode of the player is used. In this mode the dropped frames are considerably less and the film is almost possible to watch.

There seems to be a long history behind this problem, as the HTC users are guessing that the problem lies in the lack of video drives for the newest HTC devices. According to the official specs of the Qualcomm MSM7200, it should include dedicated video acceleration hardware but the video playback performance suggests nothing like that. So HTC users that own any of the HTC devices based on that particular chipset are guessing that the recent HTC devices are not making use of the hardware due to a simple lack of drivers by HTC. Here you can find out more about the problem.

PocketPC are probably bottom of the food chain when it comes to camera performance. And, believe us, it's not about the megapixel count. At least, not only about it. It's just that their photos hardly stand comparison to what other devices on the market deliver. HTC were obviously addressing this issue and have released a few devices with some serious photography power recently. The HTC TyTN II's camera was probably the first and now the Touch Cruise was supposed to follow the trodden path. As it turns out though, the second attempt wasn't as successful as the first one.

As you probably imagine, the 2.8" TFT display is a really nice camera viewfinder to have. The Touch Cruise camera can be operated as a regular digital camera - a half press on the shutter key locks the auto focus and exposure, while pressing the key all the way down takes the actual shot. However, the camera key requires a severe amount of pressure in order to take a picture. This is probably something you will get used to but we simply don't see the reason for such a difficult-to-push button. It resulted in quite a number of missed shots for us the first few days.

On the other hand, there is a nice camera menu, which is easy to operate with your fingers only. White balance can be either automatic or custom set to daylight, night, incandescent or fluorescent. You can apply several color effects (Grayscale, Sepia, Cool, Negative) and use the special camera modes such as Panorama, Sports and Burst.

There are several shooting modes including Burst and Sport modes. The Panorama mode allows the camera to take three slightly overlapping images and automatically stitch them to create a panoramic shot. However, each individual shot is taken again at VGA resolution only. There is also a self-timer and exposure compensation. The camera can also apply Date stamps to your photos. Should you choose, you can also use the front video-call camera to take pictures and video.

As you will notice, the image quality is not really on par with the best 3 megapixel cameraphones such as the Sony Ericsson K800, for example. The images suffer in terms of dynamic range. The colors are spot-on on most occasions and the macros come out just fine thanks to the auto focus.

However, the strange pattern we saw in the top right angle in the photos produced by HTC TyTN II was also visible here. Furthermore, the situation with the Cruise is much worse, as it appears all over the pictures - on every low contrast bit. It's most clearly visible when the pictures are viewed on a computer screen with zoom. It is really a software issue, showing that the photo processing algorithm is messed up but nonetheless the result isn't pleasant at all.

An intriguing feature is that with some registry tweaking you can make the device store GPS information in the EXIF of your snapshots. It comes handy, as you can later upload them to a GPS-enabled photo sharing portal and it will accurately report the location where the pictures were taken.

The HTC Touch Cruise camera captures MPEG4 video in QVGA resolution (320x240 pixels) at 30fps, which is acceptable. Alongside white balance and color effects, you can also set the Flicker adjustment, contrast, saturation, hue and sharpness.

Probably the feature that matters most with PocketPCs, connectivity is logically one of HTC Touch Cruise's elements. Direct USB connectivity allows seamless PC synchronization of any kind (email, contacts etc.). Bluetooth 2.0 and Wi-Fi are also present to take care of the wireless communications. Speaking of wireless communication, we should mention there is no Infrared port but that is not really that big of an issue nowadays.

For network data transfers you can rely on the UMTS and HSDPA support. There are also GPRS and EDGE, to give you a full package of connectivity options.

The Touch Cruise comes with two web browsers preinstalled. Internet explorer and Opera Mobile are both available on the device straight out of the box. Our personal pick is undoubtedly the latter for its superior page rendering. Topped with the generously sized display, which makes even the finest print readable, the user is in for a great browsing experience. The Internet Explorer is really second-choice with not as user friendly interface and not the best page rendering. Some more complicated pages do look a bit odd with the IE.

The HTC Touch Cruise gets its name from the built-in GPS and navigation software. It goes without saying that the handset also supports Assisted GPS. It uses the QuickGPS application that comes preinstalled to download initial positioning data, which the GPS receiver can later use for quicker acquisition of satellite lock. The integrated Qualcomm gpsOne chipset is not as efficient as the SIRFStar III-based receivers we've used, but it's still good enough and perfectly adequate to cope with the most common tasks.

HSDPA makes map downloading a matter of only seconds, so there is no chance you will end up in uncharted territory. The Touch Cruise offers TomTom navigation software prebundled and one free map to go with it. Additional maps you will have to purchase separately.

You can also choose alternative navigation software. We installed iGo and Google Maps and they both worked like a charm. In GPS mode, the battery of the HTC Touch Cruise lasted about 3.5 hours of continuous use.

Windows Mobile offers several time-management features and, as we already mentioned, all easy to synchronize with MS Outlook. The Calendar is improved in comparison to the one used in Windows Mobile 5, as now it allows searching for events to come. It offers daily, weekly and monthly and yearly views and you can have the week start on either Monday or Sunday. You can also hide weekends form the Calendar if you use the device for business purposes only.

he To-Do list allows you to add tasks and assign them priority. The Notes also come in handy, as you can either type or directly write the text down on the screen. There is also a voice recorder that can be easily started by pressing and holding the dedicated key.

The Alarm clock has three alarm slots. Each Alarm can have its own repeat pattern. As a frequently used feature, Microsoft should have put more effort into making the alarm clock better. Instead, it's hardly accessible, buried deep down in the Settings menu and not very user friendly. As a whole, this is probably the department where we felt installing a third party application is a must. There really are some better solutions than the Microsoft offer.

Alongside, you will also find the dual-zone clock. The Calculator is another well-known application (with one of the worst designs ever).

The other interesting applications that come with the HTC Touch Cruise are the Office Mobile, ZIP manager, the Windows Live service and the Search application. The Office Mobile features support for viewing and editing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint office files, while the ZIP manager adds support for archived files. The big absence here is the PDF reader, which you will need to install yourselves if you are to use it.

The WorldCard Mobile is a business card scanning application preinstalled for you by HTC. It uses the camera to capture the business card and then does its character-recognition trickery to eventually return all contact details on the card ready for saving. Well, this type of applications is not news anymore and as a matter of fact the one on the Touch Cruise is not nearly the most reliable around. The one saw on the Samsung U600 easily outperforms it.

The Search application is rather useful, as it searches throughout the whole file system and applications. You can set filters, so that the application searches only in places you need.

Windows Mobile 6 integrates Windows Live, which replaces the MSN search and messenger, which we know from previous versions. You can also download the application Live Search for free, that works great with or without the integrated GPS receiver. With it you can find information on local businesses, restaurants, places of interest and even gas prices (the service is currently available only to US and UK). It has nice support for speaker-independent voice recognition that you can use to do your searches.

A Windows Mobile device is a rather versatile gaming platform thanks to the widely-available third-party developed games. Beside Java you also get the games developed natively for Windows Mobile. There is an enormous number of games you can download for you HTC Touch Cruise. These can be played with either the stylus or the keys, or even you finger.

However if you rely on the content you get right out of the box, you will have to make do with only the default Windows Mobile games: Bubble Breaker and Solitaire. Neither is much of an offer really.

HTC Touch Cruise will find quite a number of fans, offering a load of features matched by compact size and stand-out styling. Besides, the touchscreen experience is only second to Apple iPhone, which is a good enough premise for some serious market success. The well performing GPS receiver and the good battery life will also attract users who like to travel a lot. The display issues and the photo imaging shortfalls are of course to be reckoned with, but they don't seem make-or-break in the Pocket PC niche.

HTC Touch Cruise is probably one of the most pleasant to work with Windows Mobile devices ever. The enhanced TouchFLO does make a difference, the friendly feel and stylish exterior undoubted strong points too. The Touch Cruise joins the TyTN II as the HTC portfolio headliners and the two feature-packed performers basically raise a fundamental question: hardware keyboard or not. The slightly more expensive TyTN comes with full QWERTY keyboard and tri-band HSDPA. So basically it all boils down to picking your priorities.