BUSINESS MINDED

Our correspondent tries out two phones that make both work and play a pleasure

Our correspondent tries out two phones that make both work and play a pleasure

HEAVY ON STYLE
FROM the first instance,the HTC Touch Pro screams business. I am fairly familiar with HTCs TouchFLO 3D user interface by now and the Touch Pro was as easy to use as the Touch Cruise and Touch Diamond before it.
No issues there,though I was a little taken aback by the Touch Pros size and weight. At a rather heavy 165 grams,the beefy handset is like two Touch Diamonds fused into one.
Many of us are familiar with the Home screen,which displays the time,missed calls,call history and calender appointments. One scroll down is the contacts menu,followed by Messages that seem to fly into and out of view,and Mail.

Next up is the Internet browser and with the Touch Pros excellent screen along with 3G,hopefully soon,browsing the web on-the-move will only get better. You can create bookmarks for one-touch access to your favourite websites and turn the phone sideways to see webpages in landscape view.
Then there is the Music menu. Unlike the Diamond which didnt have a slot for microSD memory cards and used a comparatively paltry 4GB internal memory,the Touch Pro does have memory card slot and is compatible with upgrades of up to 8GB.
Suddenly,the extra girth doesnt look so bad. And you can also load up on your favourite songs.

After that comes the Weather,Settings and Program menus. While the Settings menu just makes life so much easier,the Programs menu,my favourite,lets you add on and access any feature of the handset in the quickest possible way. All this,without even venturing into the Windows Mobile operating system!
The similarities with the Diamond end here. The Touch Pro has a 3.2-megapixel camera and flash,although a weak LED one,but a flash nonetheless.

The front,and to a certain extent its back cover,also remind us of the Touch Diamond. But slide out the five-row QWERTY keypad and the Touch Pro really comes into its own. In this mode,a new home screen with eight icons offers quick access to text messages,mails,the Internet and more.
The keypad may look a little cramped,but like the icons on the touch-screen,which are easy to use even when youre not using a stylus,the QWERTY keypad is easy to get used to. SMS and e-mail junkies will love it. And no one is talking about weighty issues any more.
The Touch Pro is indeed a pro and an ideal accessory for the work-hard-party-harder crowd.
The handset is available for Rs 36,000.

HTC Touch PRO
Processor: Qualcomm MSM7206A,528 MHz,OS: Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
Memory: 512 MB ROM,288MB RAM,microSD memory card SD 2.0 compatible
Display: 2.8-inch,480 x 640 pixels VGA TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen,TouchFLO 3D
Keyboard: Slide-out
5-row QWERTY
GPS,Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR,Wi-Fi,HTC ExtUSB
3.2-megapixel colour camera,auto focus and LED flash

SNOOTH AND EASY
MAYBE the E in E71 stands for easy. Right from the word go,using the handset was a breeze.
I set up my Gmail account and was reading e-mails in no time. I am no big fan of the Nokia user interface but the E71s home screen had me baptised in no time. With Messages,Nokia Maps,the Internet browser,file manager and WLAN scanning option all a scroll away and four dedicated one-touch keys for Home,calendar,contacts,and e-mail,the E71 is probably as good as it can get as far as ease of use is concerned. A shortcut to the camera completes the picture.

Story continues below this ad

And thats before one takes in the solid build quality and sleek chassis of the E71. If its steely looks are eye-catching then its full QWERTY keypad will have you texters frothing at the mouth. The keys may look confusing,but even the fainthearted will take to the E71s keypad. The slightly raised keys are easy to use and,like most other phones with QWERTY keypads,this handset too has predictive text input. If that is not enough ease for you,the E71 uses a NaviKey that provides accelerated scrolling across the various menu screens.

The E71s 2.36-inch screen gels well with the keypad and provides good space for working on e-mails,documents and browsing the Net. Even though its 240 x 320 pixel resolution is not great,it has an excellent display,capable of 16 million colours using an Active Matrix LCD for good visibility even in moderate sunlight.

The E71 is a business handset and is well equipped for both e-mail and text messaging. The handset supports IMAP,POP and SMTP e-mail protocols,as well as Nokia Intellisync Wireless e-mail. The Quickoffice application lets you view and edit Word,Excel and PowerPoint documents. The phone is also fully equipped for security,with encryption for all data.

All work and no play would make us really dull and boring,so the E71 comes equipped with multimedia features as well. The 3.2-megapixel camera has autofocus and flash and can also record video. RealPlayer can be used to playback video.
The music player can handle all common formats. A secondary front-facing camera is available for video calling. The handsets built-in browser can handle XHTML,Javascript,stylesheets and Flash,and is able to display most websites correctly.

Story continues below this ad

The E71 also has integrated A-GPS satellite navigation and the Nokia Maps application comes pre-installed. The handset offers great connectivity options,with even Infrared making a comeback. WLAN can be used to make VoIP calls.
The handset has good battery life and an internal memory of 110MB,apart from the option of adding up to 8GB of memory via a microSD card.
The handset uses a 2.5mm Nokia headphone socket. Instead of the rather useless profile switch,Nokia could have given us a universal 3.5mm jack.

When youre done with finding out that goodlooks,goodlooks and goodlooks is what matters to you the most,you will find the E71 is also a damn good phone!
The handset is available for Rs 22,949.