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HTC TouchFLO review August 16, 2007 [Pocket PC phone] | By Edward J. R. Here we present a detailed review - video, descriptions and many photos - of this new revolutionary technology from HTC! By now present only in HTC Touch, this new technology will be available very soon commercially also in other new phones from HTC, including HTC Kaiser and others.. 
First, let's take a look at a video review of HTC TouchFLO: HTC TouchFLO is a technology used by HTC in some of their Windows Mobile phones. It discovers whether user is touching touch screen with finger or with stylus and reacts appropriately. Amazingly it works also in all Windows Mobile applications - standard and 3rd party - so it is not limited to HTC-made applications but works everywhere! TouchFLO makes it possible to use applications naturally by touching the screen with finger and moving the content. Apart from that it offers "grab and throw" gesture where content keeps on moving (and slows down) even after user lifted the finger! If your phone has HTC TouchFLO technology inside then in Settings/System a new icon appears - called "TouchFLO": 
... where you can configure TouchFLO: 
TouchFLO is working with additional applications from HTC such as home screen plugin: 
... and HTC Cube (a kind of 3D launcher, that is pulled when user moves finger from bottom to top of the screen): 
TouchFLO is used also in a kind-of task manager that is accessbily in upper-right corner of home screen: 
... because apparently this task manager is designed to be invoked and used even with imprecise touches of finger. Also (video + still photo) camera application is especially designed for use with TouchFLO: 
... because user can pull up the buttons by using down-to-top finger movement too! It is difficult whether it also is related to TouchFLO but several applications from HTC are especially designed to be used with fingers, like for example this one (communications manager): 
The only main serious issue with TouchFLO is text entry, because instead of having a virtual keyboard especially designed to be used with fingers, still a classic Windows Mobile -specific virtual keyboard is used (it was designed to be used with stylus, not fingers): 
The HTC's answer to this is: offering phones with slide-out QWERTY keyboard and TouchFLO in one. Since some phones don't have QWERTY keyboards or some users don't like physical keyboards, this answer is not acceptable in long-term and either HTC or some 3rd party developers have to solve this issue. Here is official information about TouchFLO from user manual of HTC phones: 
... and here is John Wang from HTC who invented and designed TouchFLO: 
See also: audio interview with inventor of TouchFlo - from HTC corporation. Conclusions: TouchFLO moves forward Windows Mobile phones by taking maximum advantage of touch-screens - so that they can be used comfortably also with fingers and not just by stylus. To improve it even further one would have to add hardware support for multi-touch, but since multi-touch is not supported (yet) by Windows Mobile hardware, clearly TouchFLO is the best Windows Mobile can offer now in finger-based user interface! Adding virtual keyboard especially designed for finger-based usage could improve TouchFLO however. Apart from that HTC clearly has introduced a revolutionary technology, that is more than just a gimmick but a very useful tool that improves user experience significantly.  Post your comment (free registration is required to post, but if you register you can edit your posts later) [ 4 Comments ]
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