HTC Touch HD – flogging a dead platform

I’ve been using the HTC Touch HD long enough now that I feel qualified to discuss it’s various foibles. I’m surprised by how it’s frequently placed on a platform and compared with the iPhone as an alternative. It isn’t. Not because it doesn’t do the same sort of things, it does, but because the target audience is entirely different so much so that if you’re considering one, it pretty much discounts you from the other.

The iPhone’s really only has three big ideas:

1. Touch-screen UI based on a finger and not a stylus
2. Capacitive touch-screen instead of resistive, which allows the first point.
3. One-click installs with a fully integrated ‘App Store’

To be fair there’s also a fair amount of incremental improvements such as Safari being a really quite good web browser, bundling decent qualitify inclusive applications like the mail client and incorporating a better quality operating system which has things like proper International language and input system support as standard.

The confusion arises, I think, when people look at this nice stuff and say hey I could really use that and it’s true, we can all use that including people who want a proper hand held computer. The iPhone isn’t that though, it’s an Apple appliance. The fact it can only run one app at one time is a cataclysmic deal breaker, likewise the complete lack of a clipboard. Just as much the absolute humongous pain in the arse it is to get stuff onto your device due to everything being locked down.

So then, let’s look at the HTC Touch HD’s main selling points over the iPhone:

1. Spectacularly better screen – 480 x 800 is absolutely Godly
2. Proper multitasking hand-held computer with wide open access
3. Ease of getting files and goodies onto the device  – no Apple lockdown

Clearly only some people actually care about this points. Unfortunately I fall into that camp. It might be better illustrated through examples. I like to run Google maps with GPS all the time, so I can flick to it and see where I am. I also like to have a language application open to a particular feature/word etc, communication applications like Windows Live Messenger, IRC, and I like to read proper documents and even comics on the phone.

If I was to try this on the iPhone I’d be shutting down applications every time I switch, they’d have to try remember their settings/place, so when I switch back they come back. Often they don’t. You can’t run background applications doing communications at all on the iPhone, switch away from your instant messenger client and you’re logged off. Also the screen is too low resolution for documents, particularly comics, and getting documents and comics onto the phone is an utter pain in the arse – often you use a sort of web browser hack to download the stuff you want which your apps can then access.

A couple of days ago on the train I was reading an academic essay, the original PDF, full screen horizonal so I only needed to scroll down the page to read it. The resolution of the HD Touch is Godly and allows this. Also if, as you’ll see from my other blogs, you’re doing any asian language character work – the HD Touch’s resolution is once again Godly. Now to be fair I’m using simplified Chinese which just about works on the iPhone and the input system is great, but if you were using traditional Chinese (like Taiwan, Hong Kong and others), they’ll just be a mess.

Getting the document onto the phone was as simple as plugging it in to USB. A standard USB port, I plug it in to any computer anywhere and it charges and I can either use the proper sync application or just mount it as a drive to copy stuff onto it. I can’t even copy a little video onto the iPhone through iTunes unless it’s on the ONE computer allowed to sync to it. That’s so needlessly irritating it’s ridiculous.

So is life with the HD a nerd’s dream? Partially. I’ve really enjoyed getting apps on there, messing about getting my favorite asian true-type font on there and so on. However life has also been full of a vast amount of pain and limitations which really need to be solved for Windows Mobile to survive in the face of the iPhone and Google Android. Here’s a list:

1. The interface isn’t touch-screen – sure there’s slapped-on front ends like HD Touch 3D but even that is an utter ballache and doesn’t scroll properly with finger strokes as an iPhone does. For most stuff you’re forced to get a stylus out and this completely destroys using the phone when you’re walking, for example. I can’t even do an SMS when walking, I could do that on my goddamn N95 for Christ’s sake.
2. Resistive screen. Look, it sucks. I hate the way that the stylus actually feels soft on the screen. I hate how hard you have to press. I understand the arguments about accuracy but I think that’s a software issue that’s been nailed. The resistive screen has to go.
3. The OS is flakey: Applications break the OS. You get locked files, mysteriously gobbled resources. All the sorts of things you get on a desktop computer which really have no place on a mobile device. If an app misbehaves, it should be utterly killed off and have no repercussions for the rest of the apps running and the OS. This is not the case with Windows Mobile 6.1 – I’ve had to reboot my phone a lot.
4. Quality of internal applications: There’s no other way of putting it, Pocket IE and Pocket Outlook are utterly, totally, comprehensively gash. I don’t understand this, Microsoft is a software company – this is the stuff they should have nailed. Opera is barely decent browser which ships with most of these devices because Pocket IE is so shit. Enjoy Opera’s hilarious retiscence over where you actually meant to click a link or zoom in or something, and then there’s the retarded zoom SLIDER. Then there’s Outlook, it’s fucked. There’s no native Gmail application. Even third-party commercial applications like Flexmail are riddled with issues and once again are completely oblivious to the idea of a finger-usable UI. Even contacts and the act of picking up the phone etc is horrendous. Windows Mobile devices are abominable as communication devices.
5. An application store. Once is announced, why has such an obvious idea taken so long when MS have vast experience of this kind of thing with the Xbox? An easy commercial marketplace makes everything better. Better for the user, which creates demand, which creates a market, which means developers come BACK to the WM platform from the iPhone. It’s just vital.

So the next question must be, is there any realistic chance that MS will address this and turn around the Windows Mobile platform? I don’t think so.

Why? Well, it’s a long laundry list and Microsoft is not a nimble company. They have been responding to the iPhone at a glacial pace, announcing an application store for the new ‘Windows’ platform (Windows Mobile 6.5) and a front-end which is finger friendly. That application store is very late now, and since it isn’t actually on the millions of WM phones out there… it requires people to download it. The finger UI is top level cosmetic which is exactly what the manufacturer’s have been doing anyway with stuff like HTC Touch Flow. This is a retarded decision, MS should not reinvent what everyone else had to do because of their incompetance, they should fix up the critical stuff that deeply sucks about the platform which people are not fixing adequately, like the browser, the mail client, and the general quality of the OS.

It would be churlish to suggest they’re not doing some of that as well, but they’re not actively talking about it (except for a new Pocket IE version… which I’m sure will all of a sudden be fantastic) which is telling enough.

The bottom line is that the list of things for Apple to fix is much shorter although at least half of this stuff is philosophical decision choices which we’ll have to agree-to-disagree on, which means it wont get fixed because Apple folks aren’t regular human beings like us, and I’m sure there’s a really compelling business argument for utterly fucking you around when it comes to just getting a goddamn file on your phone.

The cat amongst the pigeons is Google Android. They has all the good stuff from Apple while actually being a proper computer that you can enhance and extend, coupled with the power of the best web services company in the world ensuring that all their honest-to-god killer applications are delivered with the absolute best, most integrated, solution. In other words, we have the ideal mobile platform with all the correct decisions being developed right now, it’s launched and all the hardware manufacturer’s are working on Android devices.

What we have is a three-horse race. The tortoise, Microsoft, is out front but isn’t even going slow, it’s only just realised there’s a race on and has stopped to (slowly) put on it’s trainers. The hare, Apple, started life as a mean lean racing machine, everyone in the stadium is chearing it on as it whizzes around, lapping up the attention. The hare doesn’t intend to run the full race, it’s got the adulation it desires. Meanwhile the ostrich, Google, knows exactly what needs to be done. It might look a little goofy but it’s out the gate and intends to actually finish the race.

Fortunately the HTC Touch HD is quite a desirable device right now and should still be at the end of the year when I dump it and pick up an Android phone and most likely that’ll be HTC too, so they’re not losing out. Apple isn’t necessarily the loser here too, because there’s an iPod Touch in my bag too. Anything that appears on it which is genuinely cool, and doesn’t require Internet connectivity, I’ve no qualms with buying it on that platform. Microsoft though, what will I choose to use of theirs? I can’t think of a single thing if given the chance.

Microsoft’s old mentality of making something crap, then improving it gradually until it’s pretty good, only works if you’re the only guy who’s making the thing. If you aren’t the only guy, and if the other guys have more ideas, faster development and some genuine USPs of theirown… well then. The real question on my mind is… in ten years time maybe Google will be scratching their head about the possibility of an Android successor to the desktop. I think you’d have to be an idiot to believe that this wasn’t Google’s long-term play all along.

Maybe Microsoft isn’t that dumb after all. When I look at the Windows 7 tortoise, it looks to me like it’s down the gym and is on a diet. Maybe the next race will be closer?