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T-Mobile MDA Touch Plus review

Depends on contract

Manufacturer: HTC

Our Rating: We rate this 4.5 out of 5 User Rating:

By Rosemary Haworth | 27 March 08

The T-Mobile MDA Touch Plus is a 3.5G HSDPA handset running the Windows Mobile OS.

Expert Review
User Reviews
Technical Specs
Our Verdict

A step up from its predecessor the HTC Touch, the T-Mobile MDA Touch Plus is a 3.5G HSDPA handset running the Windows Mobile OS.

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External appearance-wise, the T-Mobile MDA Touch Plus is not far removed from the Qtek PDAs with slide-out Qwerty keyboards that HTC was selling and building for mobile-phone carriers a couple of years ago.

The T-Mobile MDA Touch Plus's soft rubber casing and thick silver band spanning its circumference are certainly familiar, as is the 2Mp camera round the back.

Where the T-Mobile MDA Touch Plus surpasses its forerunner - the HTC Touch smartphone - is with the superb slide-up keypad the central navipad conceals.

From its previous incarnation as a solid but compact PDA with pretensions, the T-Mobile MDA Touch Plus has emerged as a desirable and functional smartphone that offers a range of ways to achieve tasks and to shortcut to items you need.

Where previously you had to depend on the touchscreen functionality, entering characters you intended or accessing menus you were after was all too often a stab in the dark. For the T-Mobile MDA Touch Plus HTC has added actual keys – of a usable size – along with direct access buttons for email and the main application menu, on the slide-up keypad.

General navigation now works better, with an improved meshing of the native Windows Mobile 6.0 interface and the touchscreen overlay that complements its intuitive access to items such as new email and SMS messages.

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The T-Mobile MDA Touch Plus is a quad-band phone (the original HTC Touch was a triband handset) but Wi-Fi has been sacrificed.

As a T-Mobile device (you can also buy it on Orange as the HTC Touch Dual), the T-Mobile MDA Touch Plus comes with Web 'n Walk mobile internet access and we found ourselves getting online and browsing standard web pages pretty satisfactory.

Weekly email updates let you know how much of your data allowance you’ve used and how much remains for the month.

NEXT PAGE: the backstory and our expert verdict > >

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T-Mobile MDA Touch Plus Expert Verdict »

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Post Review

Reviewed by TableBadger on Tuesday 17 March 2009

Duration of ownership: 15 months

Strengths:
Ease of use, access to all my email addresses (internet and POP3). I also have the co-pilot software which is much improved from my previous copy on an MDA Compact III.

Weaknesses:
T-mobile software modifications. Also wish that GPS was built in.

Overall Evaluation:
This product kept locking up, but have now had it 'unlocked' and it works perfect. No freezing, not slow (at present anyway). All told a much improved version when unlocked from T-mobile.

Reviewed by Jockytt on Monday 01 December 2008

Duration of ownership: 6 months

Strengths:
A PDA that you can use as a phone, without a stylus and still not look stupid. Size, shape and feel are excellent and all round build quality is solid. Is not an iPhone (fashion victims note).

Weaknesses:
Windows Mobile 6. Poor design and slow, getting slower. Touch Flo needs tiny fingers. No Wi-Fi. Your ear activates the touchscreen. Selecting contacts is cumbersome. No 3.5mm headphone socket.

Overall Evaluation:
If you must have a PDA then I guess this is a good as any. The phone itself (Wi-Fi excepted) is good and HTC has done its best with what fundamentally is a terrible excuse for an operating system. I wouldn't buy one again.

Quad-band GSM/UMTS/HSDPA 3.5G smartphone
slide-up screen with numeric keypad
Windows Mobile 6.0
TouchFLO touchscreen interface
400MHz Qualcomm processor
256MB RAM
128MB ROM
2Mp camera
Windows Media Player1
Audio Manager for MP3
Bluetooth
Mobile Office
ActiveSync
mini USB
stereo headset
headphone jack
micro SD Card

Build Quality:
Features:
Value for Money:
Overall:

The T-Mobile MDA Touch Plus is a solid and attractive smartphone that belies it PDA design roots, but in a positive fashion, bringing contact management and business productivity tools to a handset with excellent connectivity credentials, a large, clear screen and a far improved usability thanks to the keypad that works as an adjunct to the touchscreen.

There are currently no price comparisons for this product.

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