Design
At 112 x 59mm and 19mm deep, the TyTN II is no shrinking violet. There's no denying the weighty TyTN II handset lives up to its name with its somewhat "titanic" proportions, but this is offset to a degree by the muted colour scheme and rounded corners that together make the TyTN II quite a stylish device. Much to the relief of CNET.com.au's resident A/V specialist Ty Pendlebury, only the upper half of the TyTN II's slider form is finished in the fingerprint-loving piano black he loathes so much. The underside of the handset and the QWERTY keyboard are made from a much more finger-friendly matte-black soft-touch plastic.
Although, it's not the piano black finish where fingerprints are going to drive you crazy. The TyTN II sports a large 2.8-inch QVGA (320x240) touchscreen display, which is adequate but not excellent, and smears like crazy. Perhaps we've been spoiled recently, but after using the i-mate Ultimate series VGA (640x 480) resolution displays, we think Windows Mobile devices, more than others mobile phones, require the higher resolution graphics to help navigate the complex user interface. In comparison to the i-mates, the HTC display appears slightly duller and, obviously, less sharp.
One area where the TyTN II excels over the equally hefty i-mate Ultimate series handsets is the inclusion of a full QWERTY keyboard under the slide. Unlike a lot of QWERTY keypads we see on mobile devices, the TyTN II features one that is very easy to use. The soft-touch keys are slightly raised off the surface of the pad providing important definition between the keys and making "two-thumb" typing a breeze. With the slider open the screen can also tilt forward to roughly a 45 degrees angle, turning the TyTN II into a tiny laptop. While this is a nifty touch, we actually found this made the top line of keys harder to access and preferred using the keyboard without tilting the screen.
Features
It seems Windows Mobile PDA-phones are becoming uniformly complete devices. When exploring these smartphones lately we've found ourselves scanning the devices, not to discover what features are available, but to locate which features were missing. The TyTN II runs Windows Mobile 6 and has HSDPA and Wi-Fi for data transfers. It also supports all mobile network frequencies, all popular e-mail protocols, as well as AD2P stereo Bluetooth, and has a built-in 3-megapixel camera. In addition, the TyTN II has an onboard GPS chipset and is apparently bundled with CoPilot 7 navigation software, although our test unit was lacking the software and we had to resort to Google Maps to test some of the GPS functionality.
Similar to other HTC products, the TyTN II features the standard HTC Windows Mobile interface shell and HTC's patented TouchFlo technology. Now while this means the TyTN II's interface looks like the Touch and the Touch Dual, the funky "spinning cube" menu from those phones is notably absent. This won't affect the TyTN's performance, it just means it lacks the "wow-factor" you'd otherwise be able to show off to your mates.
Performance
The TyTN II runs on similar hardware to the HTC Touch Dual; a 400Mhz Qualcomm processor with 128MB of RAM. Predictably, the processing results are very similar to the Touch Dual; which are definitely useable but not outstanding. We found navigating the TyTN II's "Today" menu to be fast and responsive, but once we started to open a few applications or settings menus, and required the device to multitask, we started to see noticeable processing lag.
Web browsing on the TyTN II is a joy with the HSDPA data speeds. A jog-wheel on the side of the TyTN II makes short work of scrolling over long text-based sites , and hyperlinks are easily selected using the touchscreen. Our only criticism of the browsing experience is the mobile Internet Explorer browser itself, although we look forward to this being remedied by the next generation of freeware mobile browsers from Skyfire and Firefox.
Our main concern with the TyTN II is poor battery life. This is a common problem with Windows Mobile handsets at the moment and we noted a similar problem as being a major short-coming of the i-mate smartphones. Given light usage the TyTN II seems capable of a standby battery life of about three days. Any heavier use, about an hour of Web access for example, and the battery barely lasted a day before needing to be charged again. If you imagine using the GPS for turn-by-turn directions while your push e-mail updates frequently, and then add standard calls and messaging, we can foresee the need to carry the charging pack around with the phone.
Overall
For business users looking specifically for a Windows Mobile device the choice between handsets is much harder than in other areas of mobile phones. Most have the best connectivity options available, most have the most popular input options, including touchscreens, and most are on the wrong side of enormous and suffer poor battery life. Moreover, with the majority of these PDA-phones priced between AU$900 and AU$1,100, the choice may come down to aesthetics alone.
There is quite a lot to like about HTC's TyTN II. The inclusion of GPS should turn a few heads in its direction, although, if you can do without the QWERTY keyboard, you may want to wait for the smaller, GPS-enabled HTC Cruise which is expected to be released in Feb/March 2008.
Altron64
14/05/2008, 01:21 PM
rating
5/10
After reading the reviews, I wanted to get a few of the phones for work. Then when I check on the repairer for HTC, Phonetec, I got a pretty bad overall image. There are plenty of negative comments about Phonetec on the net. I think I might get i-Mate or Nokia instead.
Pros: Looks like a great PDA phone
Cons: Poor service and repair reviews
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nierajue
10/05/2008, 03:28 AM
rating
9/10
a gr8 PDA..!!!
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Philby
20/04/2008, 08:42 PM
rating
9/10
This is a brilliant phone - firstly I've hacked it a bit and am running Dittes 6.1 Version of WM6. This is a great OS responsive and pretty fast - I have a Jas-jam before this and hated WM5 - which as an OS is 100% rubbish. The update onto WM6 is impressive BT works fine, no need to soft reset time and time again, also have an 8gig micro SD card with maps of the world (Ausi, Guam, HK, Singapore, UK & IE roads and USA) running Tom Tom 6.03 which I found better than Copilot 7, which came bundled with the device.
The bottom line is that the HTC is a great device run with MS exchange server for work e-mails, the fact you can hack the OS with new versions is great all seem to run fine.
Have bluetooth headset which runs fine with the HTC sound quality is great better than the Jasjam which skipped when playing back the music - that and an 8gig card allows room for plenty of music.
Pros: To many to be specific, GPS fix is fast bluetooth works well and no soft resets.
Cons: Poor battery life - you will need an in car charger to use GPS it simply kills the battery - to be fair so does my wife's Navman S90i
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cy
10/04/2008, 07:32 AM
rating
7/10
Hi, my LCD cracked by placing it on carpet. Support stated it won't be warranteed, that the LCD cracked from behind. I escallated the issue and HTC won't budge, same song and dance. I litterally didn't do anything but put my phone on the floor, pick it up a moment later, tried to use it and found the LCD busted/all scrambled. This is the 2nd LCD from HTC that has cracked on me - each time they blame me instead of recalling the phone due to lack of stability, manufacturer defect, etc. I highly recommend that anyone considering an HTC phone seriously consider other vendors based on support and warrantee. The $800 phone has cost me over $1K...
HTC bites!
Pros: Phone has additional features from TYTN I, a bit faster but not worth the $800 retail.
Cons: HTC support/warrantee (even escalated) is worthless. This is my 2nd HTC phone and I will not purchase from them again.
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Dogrobber
27/03/2008, 07:56 AM
rating
10/10
Great phone, with everything. frustrated to see some moron on here claiming there is no GPS!
The battery life is not bad considering you're carrying around processing power equivelant to an early 90's home computer! if you connect a car charger whilst using SatNav you shouldn't really have any battery issues, I regularly use all the office apps, the media player for both music and video, Wifi and bluetooth. To make battery matters worse I use a bluetooth headset connected with A2DP - BUT>> very rarely use a wall charger, a car charger to and from work keeps it alive indefinately.
As for the many complaints on here about the software... just change it!
I'm running several SPB programs and TomTom 6 and still have 112mb storage memory and 65mb program memory available.
If you get this handset from Orange UK they try their best to ruin it with their software but you can delete or at least just not use it! A great program to find is 'KaiserTweak' which manages registry changes to free up lots of options and settings hidden from the user (just google it, thats all I did - Its free too)
In summary a very powerful handset that with a big enough SD card capacity EASILY relplaces the laptop for weekends away.
Pros: WM6 syncs and works properly with vista.
Good quality 3MP camera (if a little slow)
Slide and tilt screen.
Handles any software I've thrown at it so far.
Cons: Camera can be a little slow to take images.
Network supplier software!
Size.... but hey, get bigger pockets- it's worth it!
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Pollyd
17/03/2008, 07:44 PM
rating
10/10
I love it. Takes excellent photos, easy keypad use. The copilot live has rescued me on numerous occasions.
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Stewart
01/03/2008, 04:00 PM
rating
9/10
I bought one to replace an ancient, venerable XDA II. It does all it says on the box. It does need a larger battery (3000 mAh batteries are available on the WWW) and a larger micro-SD than 1GB to be able to store lots of music.
Pros: feature packed
GPS
Cons: battery life
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Caeper
27/02/2008, 03:33 PM
rating
10/10
I dont have one as of yet. Currently i have an iMate Jasjam and until now, i have had no problems with it. that is until i dropped it a couple of dozen times. The differences between the jasjam and the TyTn II are gonne be huge. believe me, i ave used the jasjam for the past year and a half and use / love every feature on it. needless to say, that is why i am waiting for the time where i can puirchase the TyTn II
Pros: Dunno yet, but i bet it has more pros than Cons.
Cons: If there is any, i probably wont be abloe to see them as i will be in love with this phone
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alison
26/02/2008, 02:03 PM
rating
9/10
ive never had a pda phone before, ive always had the everyday nokia phones, however when it came time to upgrade i decided i wanted something a bit more modern so i did some research and decided to get the tytn, and im very glad i did, im not good with computers but i find the tytn very easy to use, everything works so well and is at the touch of the stylus, im amazed at how much you can do with it. the software comes with it and is very easy to install all you need to do is plug ure phone into the pc and it syncs itself with whats on ure pc its all you need to take with you anywhere u go, even on holidays. if ure used to the average phone and ure thinking of upgrading but you want something that is user friendly with all the mod cons i would recommend the tytn definately.
Pros: wi-fi, gps, active sync with pc, applications, keyboard, touch screen, camera, audio manager, storage, easy to use even for people like me who are computer illiterate it actually has made me into a computer nerd as i cant stop playing with it.
Cons: battery life
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tech181
19/02/2008, 11:30 PM
rating
9/10
I have had this phone for about 4 weeks and have found it to be a much better performer and actual tool than my previous phone (838 pro). The existing functions and Windows mobile 6 is a definite improvement (Activesync works so much better with it) and the GPS a bonus if you use it.
Pros: A very complete tool incorporating PDA with full qwerty keyboard, Phone, GPS, push email and associated extras.
Cons: Battery life (to be expected, it does do alot), I am used to charging at the end of each day.
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