HTC Touch Dual, Give or Take

At first glance, it looks almost like the HTC Touch, but compare it side-by-side and you'll see that the Touch Dual is slightly longer, wider & just a smidgen thicker. But that little extra bulk does give you a slide out keypad keeping most of the other features intact. Like the Touch, it's powered by Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional, and while it retains the intuitive TouchFlo interface, it skips WiFi that's there in the cheaper Touch. If it were priced the same as the Touch, I'd say that it is ok, but being priced at almost 28k is why it loses out on 100% rating.

With that out of the way, let's get on to the niceties. It has a 400 MHz Qualcomm processor (up from 200 MHz TI OMAP in the Touch), 128 MB RAM, 256 MB ROM and puzzlingly, a smaller 2.6-inch touchscreen (compared to 2.8-inch in the Touch). While it does offer 3G capability, it doesn't affect us much, at least until we get the much-awaited next-gen services in the country.

It retains all the multimedia capabilities of its sibling: 2 MP camera, MP3/video player, Java and Bluetooth. Battery life is good considering the size of the device. It has an 1120 mAh Li-ion battery and keeping the brightness at mid levels will net you a day or two easily (with 4 hrs of continuous talktime). The device is not as snappy as you'd expect from a 400 MHz processor and 128 MB RAM, but 'out of memory' errors are rare. And I like the Touch overlay on the Today screen that instant access to a lot of features.

I don't think it's worth upgrading from a Touch, simply because we don't have 3G yet. Overall, I'd say that it's a good buy for some- one who wants a smart and slim business phone and is happy with only a numeric keypad and no WiFi. For around the same price, if you want a capable Windows Mobile device, you should also consider HTC's own P3300 (with GPS and WiFi).