Pure Review Part 2

 In my last review of the AT&T HTC Pure, I posted on the unboxing and the top level features of the phone. Now, on my second week of using this excellent device, I must report that my impressions are still positive, except for a few rough edges, not entirely the fault of the designer. So, to be fair in this second post, I want to explain--to inform our readers who may not be familiar with Windows Mobile phones--briefly how the software and hardware in a Windows Phone come together and how this relates to experiences with the Pure, especially if you decide to buy one. In this review, I will focus mainly on the user interface, and the browser capability of the phone.

Hardware and Software in WinMo land (and on the Pure)

Windows Mobile is an operating system, much like that which may be running on your home PC or laptop. I know you probably knew that, but it's as important a point to consider when buying a phone, as phones today are expected to do things that were once in the realm of PCs. A phone such as the Pure is designed with a processor (528mhz Qualcomm), storage and run-time memory (some half a GB total), and several other hardware components not ordinarily found on a simple cell phone. Powerful capabilities in a handheld device, which you may not require if all you wish to do is make/receive calls and send text messages. The hardware components of the phone, just like in a PC, must have a software OS with instructions written specifically to access and use them. Devices such as wireless network, camera, etc. all require device drivers and utilities to make them function. The manufacturer starts with the base WinMo OS, and then adds additional software for these features--called a ROM image--a complete tailored package for that phone. In the case of the Pure that I evaluated: Windows CE OS version 5.2.21849, ROM build 2.31.502.4 WWE (World Wide Edition). I loaded very few apps to the phone initially and found over half of the available memory was used up for storing and running the OS. The phone has a microSD slot, which can allow you to expand storage up to 16GB of additional file space.

The phone is configured to load and set up the ROM image when first turned on, and then boot from it thereafter (as in a soft reset). The initial startup time for the Pure was on the order of several minutes (so be patient when you first start yours up), and the reset took at least a minute. The wireless phone carrier (AT&T in my case), has further tailored the phone software by adding additional packages to this ROM (i.e. GPS navigation software as one example). So, to be accurate, Microsoft is the author of the initial base software (Windows CE aka WinMo). The device designer is the author of the tweaked ROM build, and the wireless carrier, the add-on features of the phone (typically related to wireless, and data services). Because of this synergy, WinMo phones like the Pure have certain non-unified aspects. Meaning, the look-n-feel and functionality of the applications are often somewhat different. It can also mean, that some WinMo phones like the Pure are certainly more full-featured than others.

Touch Sensitive Display
The Windows Mobile experience has evolved for many years now (since the late 90s), and this topic is not one I wish to belabor again here, but suffice to say, it was designed early on to support mainly stylus input (as the reader may already know). Meaning an external writing instrument was considered as the primary display input and control mechanism. The Pure with it's ample 3.2" touch sensitive, high-res screen is much more flexible in this regard (however, not unique certainly), as it supports both touch gestures and the use of a stylus. The zoom bar at the bottom of the screen that allows quick and accurate zooming is a unique feature that greatly enhances many applications like web browsing, and picture viewing. The Pure is a blend of old and new in this regard--it still has a stylus embedded in the base of the phone--the stylus has not yet been completely abandoned in the Windows Mobile operating system.

WinMo UI differences and TouchFLO

The Pure's TouchFLO interface, which is not exactly new, is a marked improvement in ease of use for WinMo devices, but there are differences notable in the layout and capability of the various screens in the user interface. TouchFLO is a Today screen plug-in (see above), and if you are more of a WinMo purest, you can easily disable it in the settings applet.

The underlying OS windowing from Microsoft--Menus, scrollbars and tabs within applications--has not changed that drastically since early WinMo days, though the honeycomb, touch-friendly Start Menu replacement and revamped Today screen plug-in are new additions in 6.5. Both should be lauded as touch-enabled steps forward for the WinMo operating system, but any version of Microsoft OS and apps (mobile and otherwise) still rely heavily on the use of menu controls.

Small pull-down menus, tabs and scrollbars on a small screen in apps like mail and messaging, for instance, hearken back to the stylus days. The complaint of users is most often in the viewability, consistency and ease-of-use across multiple applications. For a phone like the Pure to be fairly evaluated, it must not be evaluated by only the merits or detractors of the base OS. MS relies on third-party developers to add these unique capabilities in add-on apps, and thus does not tightly control the UI as much as say Apple controls development for the iPhone. The design of the ROM from HTC makes fairly noteworthy advances to the base OS. The TouchFLO user environment helps much in this regard, but cannot cover every such situation. The default WinMo user interface also has a number of similar updated enhancements, but some apps and settings panels retain much the older look-n-feel.

Starting  and Managing Apps

The Pure interface IMO, can confuse one just a bit due to the multiplicity of functions, though I understand that many Windows users like the ability to access features through multiple paths. For instance, take the simple action of launching apps...

You can get to the main WinMo Start screen using the hardware assigned button on the Pure's face (or via stylus by tapping in the upper left corner on the Windows symbol). Or you can opt to use the various TouchFLO app launcher options built into the home screen. All programs and settings can be accessed via the Start Menu, as in all versions of Windows (icons here are essentially program shortcuts like on your PC desktop). The downside being that most apps are not essentially sorted or grouped in any fashion (save for games and some vendor provided apps). You can find a simple hack here for making your own program groups, which should also work in version 6.5. By contrast, in the TFLO user environment, the AT&T-added applications have a specific "AT&T" panel, and yet another app launcher is separately provided in the TFLO panel series/set (last panel in the series). Your favorite app shortcuts can be added here. The various TFLO screens appear in serial fashion and can be quickly rifled through with a swipe of a finger or stylus drag (simply dragging your finger along the slider bar at the screen bottom is a very quick method). Even the Start and close areas of the screen are responsive to an index finger selection, but still constrained to the cramped WinMo Title bar.

I found that finger gestures in many cases were more responsive than stylus input on the Pure, and sometimes the auto-scroll gestures (up/down through long lists of items) could be jerky. TouchFLO adds a default task manager pull-down to the title bar for killing apps, and the device settings can be tweaked to set the operating system to kill apps completely when exiting (a common complaint of older versions was that apps continue to run when closed).

Much like Android, selecting the title bar presents a full-page notification window that also acts to inform you of phone status, etc. TouchFLO does a very good job of re-tooling an app's menu features by presenting a large pop-up, easily selectable window. The enhanced default WinMo UI in 6.5 also offers an expanded gesture-capable home screen menu, allowing you to gesture between pix, play music, and preview multiple mail accounts--all of which provide a similar but simpler capability to the TouchFLO interface. .

TouchFO probably shines the most in the interactive widgets featured in the various panels of the home screen. You can browse through messages/pictures and even play music in this manner without leaving the main screen or opening  separate apps, though many actions will re-direct you to the WinMo interface.

While gestures can still be used in the native apps, many aspects are obviously legacy in implementation. Most  native apps will respond to gestures (file explorer, etc.), but the dreaded WM scrollbars often appear on the right side of the screen.

As the phone is equipped with a motion sensor, you can tilt it to change the viewing aspect of the screen in some apps, but sadly, you cannot tilt the phone and have the home screen and all native apps shift to landscape. I could not find a setting in the various control panel applets to manually configure a landscape mode, and only limited apps like Pocket IE, mail, etc. appear to support tilt features (Office apps do not). Individual applications, like the excellent Mobibook reader, can rotate the screen via a manual setting, but returning to the home screen will reset back to portrait mode again. I have much the same complaint with the iPhone or iPod touch--essentially that not all applications support viewing in landscape. Tilting is great, but I think a manual mode is also required.

Logon and Security

The WM OS provides security features and a logon interface for the phone, and consequently, the input field is still very small in text size (even with phone fonts adjusted to max size). The internal keyboard provided by WM requires a stylus for any degree of accuracy. The Pure has a Touch Input keyboard replacement to aid in this, and it is quite similar to the iPhone soft keyboard (but still a bit cramped). In some aspects it is a little better, as long-pressing provides quick access to shifted characters, symbols, etc. An enlarged view of each key selected will appear as typed, so that finger input is possible. Login via password or simple pin is supported in WM, but I could not locate any encryption features or automated device wipe on the phone itself, so I take it that this space is probably left for third-party apps and/or corporate/enterprise phone and data services.

Browsing

   
Probably the single greatest criticism of past versions of WM centered around the web-browser (or lack thereof). Pocket Internet Explorer was designed in the early days to support simple stripped-down mobile websites, and as phone browsing became more popular and needed to be more robust, PIE fell behind the pack in regards to support for JavaScript, Flash animation, etc. Finally, MS has responded with this release in the form of a new mobile IE version that better supports modern web page elements like embedded video. Several 3rd-party browser options have been available for WinMo for some time, and the Pure also ships with Opera mobile installed (an excellent tabbed browsing experience). Both the new mobile IE and Opera have good zoom and pan features, very much like iPhone (double tap to zoom, and gesture scrolling/panning), as well as dynamic tilt support. I found Opera to be the slightly more robust of the 2, especially in the area of page loading, but it is obvious that MS put considerable effort in updating IE mobile.

I was able to browse to mobile YouTube and play videos directly from the site using the mobile IE browser. Opera required me to install a flash player, or simply connect to the stream version (which opens the built-in streaming player application). For some reason I kept getting an error with the streaming player, but it could have been due to network problems at the time of my testing, and the fact that I was A/S connecting and disconnecting to get screenshots?

Conclusion for Part 2

Well, I will have to save e-mail, texting, GPS, games and multimedia features of the Pure for my next post as I've probably rambled on enough for one installment. The Pure is proving to be the most reliable WinMo device I have used to date, though for some reason I could not get it to connect via ActiveSync to one of my Vista machines (which could have been a problem with my laptop). It has connected without incident to my XP laptops, and I have also used it as a cell modem to connect my work computer to the Internet. When connecting the phone to the computer a screen appears prompting you to either mount it (like a hard drive), use Active Sync, or tether it as a cell modem. The first time I tried this it didn't work as I had the cell network turned off (duh). After a few minor tweaks, it worked fine and I even used VPN to securely connect to my work network. On a recent business trip, I was also able to connect to hotel WiFi (the Pure supports 802.11 b/g connections) and to quickly and easily get on-line. The Pure is currently available from AT&T for $149.99 (with rebate and 2-yr contract). Tune in next time for my final wrap-up...