HTC has enjoyed relative success recently with several of its Touch series handhelds, especially since the Taiwanese company ventured into exciting new territory launching its TouchFlo3D interface.
The previous offering was the S730 which came with both a numeric keypad and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. Today, HTC announced the successor to that model, the S740, with a similar form factor. We had a brief encounter with the handset and walked away with some impressions.
Aside from improved technical specifications, the new S740 sports several distinctive design changes from the S730, one of which is a shorter width (43.4mm on the S740 compared with 51mm on the S730). This makes the new S740 look more like a remote control than a phone. The S740's screen also slides out to the right (instead of left as seen in the S730) to expose the full QWERTY keyboard. The edges of the S740 are generally not as rounded, following more closely to the design philosophy of the Touch Diamond. To put it into perspective, the S740 occupies almost the same footprint as the Nokia E51, but comes with a thicker (16.3mm) profile, which is inevitable due to the QWERTY keypad.
Ergonomics-wise, the numeric keypad and the QWERTY provided an excellent tactile feel, though our thumbs felt a little stretched when typing on the elongated keyboard. The screen is also flush with the surface of the phone. That actually helps to give the S740 a more streamlined feel consistent with the Touch series. The back cover on the prototype unit that we saw had a glossy surface, but we were told that may change to a soft-touch matte finish with the final commercial set.
Other enhanced features on the S740 include a 3.2-megapixel camera with fixed focus lens, faster Qualcomm MSM7225 528MHz processor, GPS with support for Assisted-GPS and 256MB RAM (four times that of the S730).
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