It's a very nice phone. TouchFLO 3D is a fantastic interface, and Opera is a very good mobile browser (at least on the same level as Safari on the iPhone). The keyboard is easily the best smartphone keyboard I've used, and even the on-screen keyboard isn't that bad (though you probably wouldn't want to use it for writing long messages).

And Teeter, which uses the phone's G-Sensor to move a ball around a maze, is surprisingly addictive.

I got my TP just over a week ago, and I'm loving it so far.

One thing that struck me in the review... 10 band graphic equaliser? Where? Not seen that one yet, and I can't find it either.

Bah!

The accelerometer DOES change screen orientation in Opera, you don't need to slide out the keyboard.

Incidentally, Opera is quite buggy and often crashes, sometimes necessitating a soft reset. But that's Opera's fault, not the phone, which is pretty bloody good. My biggest issues with it are Opera's flakiness, and the annoying "Connection Lost" bubble you get when using Tomtom Navigator with the Traffic function on, every time the phone loses the GPRS/HSDPA signal. The bubble causes Tomtom to freeze, so you get no more voice instructions, and it fills the screen so you can't see the map. I've missed motorway turnoffs a few times because of it. This is a Windows Mobile issue though, but I've not found a solution online yet.

Anyway, yes it's a great phone, but if you use it like I do for heavy surfing and 3 hours of music over bluetooth, plus heavy usage of apps throughout the day, you'll just about get a day's use out of the battery. My email gets checked every hour and bluetooth is left permanently on. But I'm used to recharging my phone every night anyway.

This review is a bit short and inaccurate but I agree with the conclusion. It's miles better than an iPhone, with many more features, better resolution and smaller to boot. Highly recommended.

high end handset with a camera that has shit for brains..

sort yourselves out HTC, ill be boycotting this one. had every vario so far and the best of the bunch has to be the vario II

Alas this current vario will be my last

Uugh - nuff said.

The USB port will take a standard mini-USB cable. The extra connections inside are just for the audio and peripheral pass-through on the HTC-specific cable. It charges just fine off standard USB current too.

I've only really found one quirk with Opera which seems to be dependent on the network you are connected to. I switched from O2 to T-Mobile in order to get *actual* HSDPA speeds instead of the 128k I was getting with O2. Since then, I've found that many web sites that require you to login, e.g. Facebook, will often crash the browser right out. No error message. Nothing... just back to TouchFlo. With O2, I had no such problems. A proxy issue perhaps?

Aside from that, the Touch Pro is a fantastic phone. The Assisted GPS feature works like a charm, especially with Google Maps, even without a satellite lock. My only gripe is battery life. With regular e-mail checking over 3G you'll be lucky to get more than a days usage out of the standard battery, but with limited usage I've found I can get two or three days no problem.

WTF is everyone so obsessed with the cameras on phones? If you want a high-end, massive quality camera then go and get a high-end, massive quality camera. I've got a three year old Olympus SP350. It's a shit phone, but it's a bloody great camera... oh hang on, it isn't a phone at all.

Apples and pears, anyone?

After a few years of having slidy out keyboard based phones, I decided this time to have something thinner. While my kids can txt on the keyboard as fast as I can type on a full size, im past carrying a plastic brick around. I now prefer the thinner size and the lightness.

Only thing with the touches is that you have to go over to XDA and get all the hacks to make it run sweet. For example, they have gone down the T9 roter for spell checking, which IMHO on this phone sucks. I was able to get the hack to switch it back to WM5/6 keyboard with the simpler list.

Overall im impressed with my touch, but glad I didn't wait for the pro.

Oh and look 90% rating... thats a suprise, now we see what side the register is swaying ... interesting.... This phone after testing for a week, is slow, and a little buggy, to the point of returning the bloody thing... 90 % sheesh.... its only a touch screen pc-mobile.... wow!.... seriously... £500 :S ... and i thought my jesus phone was expensive....

That's £500 without a contract, you splorkweasel.

How much did you pay for your featureless Jesus Phone off-contract then?

If you were actually happy with your over-hyped over-sized lump of grizzled marketgasm you wouldn't feel the need to criticize other phones.

It's the fact that the Touch Pro pisses all over the whyPhone that makes you comment in the first place. Good old-fashioned sausage-envy.

Nice looking interface, good apps, great keyboard, ok weight.

But, godawfull slow reactions occasionally with up to a 30 second delay with very litle hammering. Previous models had similar issues before their first firmware update though (e.g. 4350). Needed extra testing before release in my opinion, but will persevere.

£500?

No 3.5mm headphone jack?

2cm thick?

Ugly ugly ugly 1980's geometric styling on the back?

4 seconds to take a picture?

If this was an apple product the slating here would be fierce.

Still, at least it's got a proper keyboard.

Andrew! You've hit it on the head. My current contract is up, I have my PAC code ready and waiting, and I'm torn between this and the iPhone. On one hand you have the freedom and applications of Windows (and the expandability, and the replacable battery, and that beautiful screen, and TomTom) without some of the more infuriating restrictions of the iPhone, but on the other you have the incredibly frustrating non-instantaneous response of its interface. I'd dearly prefer not to buy into the whole iPhone meme, but having seen the way competent users can fly around its interface it would be far less likely to be flung out of the window because it was loading up a pointless transition anim.