Photo gallery: HTC Touch Cruise (2009)HTC's first Touch Cruise was an interesting value proposition: a smartphone with A-GPS (rare for a phone at the time) that came bundled with a car mounting kit to display the screen for easy reading while driving. This update, almost exactly a year later, will feature improvements, but are these updates in the right areas?
Upside
The good news is that HTC will keep the car kit bundled with the handset. This is a very good start and should appeal to the family-orientated driver as much as the road warrior salesperson. Every GPS-centric handset should feature these accessories.
The 2nd-gen Cruise will also feature a nice bump in power due to the increase in processing speed and RAM over its predecessor. The Cruise will run the same processor as the recently released Touch 3G and the same TouchFlo interface mod on Windows Mobile 6.1. This combination worked a treat with the Touch 3G, so we're expecting good things here too.
While the TouchFlo interface is the same, the Cruise will include a new menu item called Footprints, a geotagging software for locating landmarks or retracing your steps along a previous journey. Location data is stored on photos taken with the built-in camera and each footprint can be viewed on pre-installed maps or messaged to a friend. We're looking forward to testing the usability of Footprints; an integrated location-based service on the Cruise could make it irresistible.
Downside
Our major disappointment (with what we know so far about the Cruise) is that the screen size hasn't increased since the previous version. The new Cruise will feature a 2.8-inch 65K colour display. After seeing the Touch HD's 3.8-inch WVGA resolution display, it will be hard to go back to a handset with a smaller viewing area.
Second to this, the Touch Cruise needs dedicated navigation software pre-installed. In Australia last year, the Touch Cruise shipped with Co-Pilot 7 maps, and this was the last time an HTC handset shipped with maps in this country. To make this sales package truly mouth-watering, HTC needs to include a subscription-free navigation software with turn-by-turn directions, though there's been no word on an official mapping software partner at this stage.
Overall
The new Touch Cruise looks great, but HTC needs to make sure its navigation phone is capable of turn-by-turn navigation straight out of the box. Having the carriers pre-install a subscription-based mapping service would be a real shame.
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