HTC tips Touch smart phone with built-in GPS

High Tech Computer Corp. (HTC), a Taiwan maker of Windows Mobile-based smart phones, this week unveiled the Touch Cruise with built-in GPS for personal navigation and 3G technologies for high-speed Internet access.

The HTC Touch Cruise has built-in GPS for personal navigation and 3G wireless connectivity for high-speed Internet access. It is the third of HTC's Touch smart phone line, which also includes the touch screen-only Touch and the Touch Dual with a combined touch screen and keypad.

Like the other models, the Touch Cruise contains HTC's TouchFLO technology for navigating through the phone's menus with a finger swipe. This makes it easier to scroll and browse Web pages, documents, messages and contact lists. The iPhone contains similar technology developed by Apple to fulfill many of the same functions.

Like iPhone, only 3G
The Touch models also have a "home" screen that resembles the iPhone's home screen, which displays one-touch access icons for e-mail, text messages, calendar, contacts, weather and others.

But HTC's smart phone is a better choice for anyone that requires high-speed Internet access. In addition to Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, it contains High Speed Downlink Packet Access, a 3G cellular technology that typically offers downstream data rates of up to 1Mbit/s. As a comparison, the iPhone's EDGE technology offers downstream data rates of up to 200Kbits/s.

What makes the Touch Cruise different from the other HTC models is its built-in GPS feature for finding driving directions, locating restaurants and other services and creating alternate routes when there's traffic. It also comes with mapping and navigation software from TomTom, a GPS systems provider.

The Touch Cruise uses Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6 Professional OS with Outlook "direct push" enterprise e-mail. Other features include a 3Mpixel camera with auto-focus, FM radio, MP3 player and a microSD memory card slot that supports up to 128Mbytes of RAM.

The smart phone will be available starting this month. HTC didn't disclose pricing information.

- Elena Malykhina
InformationWeek