Of course, the Touch screen, TouchFLO and navigation wheel also came in handy for a quick browse through the maps.
The TouchFLO interface also lets you use finger gestures to browse through e-mails, Web pages, messages, music and images.
TouchFLO and the navigation wheel were also useful in other applications. For example, it was faster to scroll through e-mails or the address book as you only had to slide a finger up or down. Additionally, photos were also easier to go through, using finger gestures to rotate and enlarge the photo.
For input, there is no keypad but you get the usual input options from the Windows Mobile operating system as well as one that mimics your mobile phone.
The Touch Cruise includes a Touch Keyboard, which divides the Qwerty board layout into 20 keys, and the Touch Keypad, which is a 12-key on-screen keypad which is similar to the layout of a regular mobile phone keypad, plus additional keys.
These buttons are bigger than the usual Windows Mobile keyboard option, but while I found the Touch Keyboard and Keypad useful when entering short texts, the Letter Recogniser was still my main point of input when it came to longer text.
The Touch Cruise has an alternative to the Windows Mobile Today Screen called HTC Home. The plug-in shows up-to-date information at a glance such as date and time, weather information, new messages or missed calls. It can also be a shortcut to favourite programs and quick settings.
On the other hand, the Touch Cube is also a feature of Touch Flo. With this, I just had to slide my finger across the screen to see the other side of the “cube” and launch my messaging programs, speed dial list, shortcut to my messaging options, browser, task and access to music, photos and videos.
All these features are housed in a sleek, compact casing that’s small enough to slip into my pockets. The Touch Cruise is wide enough to hold comfortably. I can still use my thumb to touch the screen and use TouchFLO with just one hand.
Instead of buttons, you get an etched panel at the front, with shortcut buttons and a navigation wheel that lights up when in use. You can either rotate the wheel to navigate or press it in the traditional four-way direction control.
Besides these controls, there are only the volume control and voice speed dial button as well as the camera button and microSD card slot at the sides.
The one mini USB (universal serial bus) port that’s available is used for charging, syncing, and for headset. However, there is no 3.5-millimetre headphone jack for regular headphones.
The camera has basic functionalities and pictures taken were average in quality. While the automatic focus is a good feature to have in a camera, in the Touch Cruise, the focusing was slow and there was a noticeable lag after pressing the button. The camera is certainly not one of the Touch Cruise’s strong points.
Meanwhile, battery life was between one and three days, depending on the functions that I used.
There were no major complaints on the overall performance of the Touch Cruise but there were times when I thought the Touch Cruise was a bit slow in responding to the screen taps. I had to tap twice or thrice before the option was chosen.
Among all the HTC Touch products, the Touch Cruise offers the best connectivity options, with HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access), quad-band connectivity, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
HTC’s latest Touch phone, the Touch Diamond may offer similar connectivity with better specifications and a smaller and lighter form factor, but it is only a tri-band phone, while the HTC Touch Cruise offers quad-band connectivity.
There may have been some minor quirks but overall, the Touch Cruise provided a satisfactory experience.