I’ve been given a Vodafone 1605 to evaluate for the next month. This phone is the HTC TyTN rebadged.
So here’s my experience from the start, and some observations along the way.
My current normal phone is an i-mate SP5, so that’s what I’m comparing with as I go along. Both of these phones are Windows Mobile 5 phones.
The packaging is the usual cardboard container filled with all manner of plastic wrapped cables and plugs. This packaging seems to have become the standard way that things get delivered. One of these days I will understand why we have replaced plastic containers with cardboard containers only to wrap everything in plastic bags instead. Is this really better for the environment.
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The two devices are different to each other in the primary role that they are trying to accommodate. The blend between phone role and communications role is different. The i-Mate is primarily a phone, the 1605 (TyTN) is primarily a communication device. To make the 1605 (TyTN) better for communications HTC have provided a bigger screen which is also touch sensitive and given us a push-away keyboard. The i-Mate is quite limited in the number of “feature buttons” the 1605 (TyTN) has loads of them. Even things that you don’t expect to be buttons are buttons.
The 1605 (TyTN) is bigger than the SP5 in every dimension. It’s longer, it’s wider and it’s deeper, but only a few millimetres in each direction. It’s surprising though, how much difference a few millimetres make, this phone feels much bigger and much heavier. I normally carry the Sp5 in my trouser pocket, but I think the TyTN will have to be in its pouch on my waistband.
One of the things that is noticeably bigger is the battery. Considering all of the similarities between these devices, the main drain on the power has to be the larger screen. I’ll only know after a few days whether power is a problem or not.
One of the things that you notice as you unwrap all of the items in cardboard container is that they all use the USB interface; the charger is USB and the headphones are USB. The device itself only has a single USB interface. This leads to a practical problem – you can’t use the headphones while you are charging the device and the first thing you have to do is charge the device.
Having a touch screen the 1605 (TyTN) also comes with a stylus. The stylus is tucked away in the bottom right-hand corner of the device. As a left-handed person who holds his phone in his right-hand this is probably the worst place for the stylus to be stored. This is the corner of the phone that is embedded into the palm of my right-hand. A few times already I have pressed “feature buttons” on the side of the phone while turning it around in my fingers trying to get to the stylus. While we are on the stylus, you have to give it a good tug to get it out. I don’t think there is much chance of it falling out.
My left-handedness means that the thumb wheel on the 1605 (TyTN), which the SP5 doesn’t have, is also on the wrong side, but I suppose I’ll get used to that.
The switching of orientation between landscape keyboard working and normal closed use is really slick. It even switches the orientation of the joystick which I wasn’t expecting, but is logical.
Having a keyboard for messages is fabulous and I’m already much faster (not surprisingly) that I ever was with predictive text on a numeric pad.
I’m not sure what the standard screen colour scheme is for the HTC TyTN when it ships, the Vodafone branded one I have is using grey and it’s really, well, grey.
The SP5 uses mini-SD, the TyTN uses micro-SD memory, so they’ve saved themselves some space there. The other advantage with the TyTN is that the memory is accessible on the outside so you can swap it without turning the phone off. On the SP5 you have to turn the phone off so you can take the back off it before you can change the memory. Unfortunately I don’t have a really large micro-SD card to I won’t be able to test out some of the media capabilities.
The verdict at the end of day – I’m not sure I’ve seen enough benefit yet to make me happy with the extra size and weight that comes with the TyTN. It’s early days (day actually) so I’m sure I’ll come across other things that will add to or detract from my impressions of the TyTN 
.
If you want a more detailed review there are a few:
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Graham Chastney 