We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900; GPRS/EDGE) HTC Touch in San Francisco using Cingular/AT&T service, and call quality was OK. We could hear a slight background hiss when we talked to friends; not enough to prevent us from having a conversation or interacting with our bank’s voice response system, but enough to be annoying. On the other hand, our callers reported excellent sound with crisp audio and little to no interference. Unfortunately, we didn’t get great results from the speakerphone; voices sounded far away and echoed on both ends of the conversations. We were able to pair the Touch with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset with no problems.

Armed with a 201MHz TI OMAP850 processor and 128MB ROM/64MB RAM, general operation was a tad slow. With about 12MB of free program memory, there was often a few-second delay when opening applications. At first we thought our device just didn’t register our touch commands, but it was really a performance issue. Launching any of the multimedia functions really did a number on the Touch, as the screen sometimes froze midway between the music player and menu screen. This happened on a number of occasions, and got to be quite frustrating. Listening to music through…