Build Quality Issues with HTC Touch Pro 2

It looks like HTC might be running into some build quality issues with the Touch Pro 2. Forum member MightyMike over at PPCGeeks has posted some pictures showing the battery door starting to bulge out on the sides of his Telus Touch Pro 2. If you look carefully, you can make out where the battery door is not sitting right. It’s hard to see in the pictures, but it is much more noticeable in person. This isn’t a “one-off” either, 2 of my co-workers are running the Touch Pro 2 and have noticed this very issue on their devices. It’s not clear if this is a heat related problem, or if it has something to do with wear and tear on the device. Mind you, wear and tear shouldn’t be something to be concerned about on such a new device. It almost looks like a heat related problem, but the phone doesn’t tend to get very warm.

It’s also not clear which devices are experiencing this problem. All the devices in the office, as well as the one posted by MightyMike, are Telus branded. So it could be an issue limited to that particular model. We won’t know if AT&T’s version is affected by this until after it’s launched and people have had a chance to run with it for a little while.

Hopefully the fix for this won’t be anything too involved. Perhaps a simple replacement for the battery door is all that is required.

HTC Announces First Windows Mobile 6.5 Phone

We don’t normally post news items here at MobileJaw; we figure people are already inundated with repetitious news. However, since this is the first device announced to be available with Windows Mobile 6.5 I figured we can get away with it.

The HTC Touch2 is a relatively small Windows Phone that will indeed ship with Windows Mobile 6.5 onboard. It is meant to be a simple and affordable (I’m assuming here) device with fairly generic features. Those features include a 528MHz processor, 512MB ROM, 256MB RAM and a 3.2 megapixel camera.

The screen is a 2.8 inch touchscreen but is only QVGA. I guess that’s not surprising but compared to so many other devices it is a rather anemic resolution. I enjoyed using my HTC Touch (first gen) and was fine with the screen but now that I have been using the Touch Pro (VGA screen) it would be hard to go back to QVGA.

One of the nice things announced with this device is that it’s browser, an IE 6 variant that comes with Windows Mobile 6.5, will support flash. That should make for a decent browsing experience.

The HTC Touch2 seems like it will be targeted to the budget-conscious or first time Windows Mobile users. It looks nice, if fairly uninspiring and will probably be a nice low end smartphone.

You can read HTC’s press release here.