August 17th, 2009
Goodbye myTouch 3G and hello HTC Touch Pro2
Last week when I posted my first impressions of the T-Mobile Touch Pro2 I stated that I ended up buying the myTouch 3G when I went to visit the T-Mobile store instead of picking up the TP2 as I intended. Yesterday was my ninth day of owning the myTouch 3G, but I made the decision to visit T-Mobile and trade it back in for the Touch Pro2 for a couple of reasons. I actually called six stores throughout the Seattle/Tacoma area and only one had a single Touch Pro2 in stock as all the other stores were sold out. I am not sure how many were in each store, but even with the $350 price they seem to be selling well.
Speaking of the price, the store manager raised his eyebrows when I went to pay the $350 upgrade price for the device and told the store clerk to scan it again because that surely must be too high of a price. I thought it was funny that even T-Mobile employees though the Touch Pro2 price was a bit high. I then told him that just a couple of years ago I was paying $700 to $850 for SIM unlocked Pocket PC phones that connected via GPRS and eventually EDGE so $350 was actually quite a bargain considering the high specs it is loaded with.
I already own a T-Mobile G1 and after over a week with the myTouch 3G I found the device did not offer enough over the myTouch 3G since I already purchased a large 2600 mAh battery and my G1 was rooted so I could install apps to the microSD card. I also found that I just could not live with only an on-screen keyboard on a smaller display device like the myTouch 3G and have QWERTY in my blood. Thus, I decided to keep my G1 for Android testing and use my upgrade for a 3G Windows Mobile device. The best 3G device on T-Mobile is arguably the T-Mobile Touch Pro2 so I decided to upgrade to it.
In addition to the fantastic keyboard of the Touch Pro2, I find the web browsing experience to be top notch and will give you some slick tips & tricks in a follow-up article.
I also found the myTouch 3G to start lagging quite a bit when running lots of apps, that can be addressed by running something like Taskkiller. However, you really shouldn’t have to always quit running apps to use a device and I just wish the processor was better for the job. I find Windows Mobile to be quite stable today and have not experienced any real problems with the Touch Pro2 and am pretty confident we will see a Windows Mobile 6.5 upgrade later this Fall.
Needless to say, I think it is great to see T-Mobile having such a nice selection of 3G mobile phones for customers to choose from today and you really can’t go wrong with either device.
Matthew Miller is an avid mobile device enthusiast who works during the day as a professional naval architect in Seattle. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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