Of style and convenience

GIZMO GALLERY

The HTC Dual Touch and Palm Centro are mobiles whose designs can leave one awestruck and on functionality too, they pass muster.

Aesthetic looking smartphones are back and Palm and HTC should be credited for the same. HTC's Touch Dual, for instance, is so attractive that when you pull the phone out, people ask: "Is this Prada?" or "Is that a new designer model by Samsung?"

The most significant improvement in the HTC Touch Dual is the responsiveness of the phone and the TouchFLO interface. The Dual Touch seemed to work much better than the previous version of HTC's Touch.

It still can't match a full-QWERTY phone for productivity but Windows Mobile fans looking for a mostly-touch device will be happy with the improvements HTC has made. HTC should be appreciated for adding hardware keys on the Dual.

When we flicked our finger from top to bottom, the TouchFLO overlay came up just as it was supposed to - about nine times out of ten.

Backed by Windows Media 6, the HTC Dual Touch runs Microsoft Outlook with ease, but it also can access any POP3 or IMAP4 email account. Text messaging and emailing seemed smooth, primarily because of the smartly-designed keyboard.

For all the bells and whistles, multimedia on the Dual Touch is quite average. The sound quality was about average for a smartphone "� heavy on the tweeter, non-existent bass "� though we suspect the included earbuds were to blame.

On the other hand, Palm Centro users would certainly need tiny fingers. The new Centro has been shrunk down from the Treo's original size. It retains all of the QWERTY keys on the Treo, as well as the function keys, but everything is much smaller.

Resulting in difficulty to type complete sentences without error. As always, the Palm Operating System runs a smooth, stable layout that couldn't be more intuitive. Power users can find third party applications (both free and for a fee) that will allow them to do just about anything with their device.

As we have seen on the Treo, the SMS application on the Centro allows threaded messaging. This is a wonderful feature, and allows text messages to basically become instant message conversations . We are not sure why more phones don't incorporate this feature given the popularity of text messaging.

A more serious missing capability on Centro is the "Back" button that returns the user to previously displayed screen. One has to look for the "Cancel" button on any given screen to return to the previous screen.

Sometimes, that button wasn't available, such as in the video camera and music player applications. Then, the least frustrating way to return to a previous screen was to hit the Home key, reopen the application and renavigate to the desired screen.

It is obvious that HTC and Palm have not accented on the multimedia functionality. In contrast to some Nokia smartphones, Touch Dual and Centro cannot be competing in the cameraphone marathon.

Palm has loaded a 1.2-megapixel camera with a 2X zoom while Touch Dual has a 2-megapixel camera for the users to be contend with. But the Touch Dual lacks a flash, a surprising omission for a smartphone of this calibre.

Perhaps Centro's strongest media capability is PocketTunes applications that plays music. This application provides a lot of flexibility in terms of playing tunes by, for example, artist or genre or even moods.

Its interface, though, can be a bit confusing to navigate in the beginning. When compared to competitors like the RIMPearl 8130, both Palm and HTC phones look weak opponents. Blackberry has a better web browser, better music player, and uses a 3.5mm headphone jack while the Centro is still stuck with a 2.5mm port. Also, the Centro lacks GPS though Google Maps is included. The HTC Touch Dual is available at the retail price of Rs 29,900 while Palm is retailing the Centro at Rs 13,990.