Courtesy of HTC, I received an HTC Touch yesterday afternoon - being in Canada I was a bit behind schedule from most other sites - but I'm happy to bring to you a video of the HTC Touch being unboxed, along with a running commentary from yours truly, shot on a Canon HV20 (man, what a camera!). My commentary was so...comment-heavy, I blasted right through the 10 minute limit on standard YouTube accounts, and even though I thought I had a Director account without that limit, after uploading the 99 MB file (which took a while), and waiting for YouTube to process it (which also took a while), they rejected the video for being too long. So I went back and edited it into two pieces, re-uploaded, waited for processing (two hours for both parts), and finally, here we are with part one:
[somehow it's missing the intro text, I'm not sure what happened there]
Here's part two:
YouTube quality is just horrific, isn't it? Remember how I shot it on the Canon HV20? It worked quite well with Vista, minus some driver issues - look for a review on Digital Media Thoughts. The YouTube videos have the black bars on top and bottom because I shot it in 16:9 format. I was initially hoping to upload a nice wide-screen high-definition video, but even after converting it to 1280 x 720 at 6 mbps WMV, it was still huge (567 MB).
I experimented with a few formats, and ended up picking a wide-format 720 x 480 video at 3 mbps as the compromise format. The file in question is still 297 MB in size, but the quality is quite good [go full screen when watching it]. If you have the patience to wait for the download (our server should be up to the task), go ahead and download it.
As a side note, I'm curious to hear what you think of me using video to review a device rather than writing about it. On the plus side, these one-take videos can be cranked out faster than a 3000 word review. On the negative side, they can be a bit tedious of the reviewer in question (me) starts to ramble or says "Uh" too many times. I'll definitely be doing another video to show how the HTC Touch actually functions (it's quite impressive), but moving forward I want to know what you think about video as a method of presentation. Yes? No? Suggestions for improvement?
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Good Job Jason
Very nice flow of thoughts on unboxing of Touch. I have HV20 and it is marvellous. What is the screen size of Touch? It looked it is more than 2.8".
Waiting to see Touch in action.
Thank you.
Good video!
You did mention that this device can't listen through headphones and charge at the same time. On the other hand you could have mentioned that there are accessories that let you do exactly that.
Of course too bad HTC did not included it in the box like they did with the tytn/8525.
I enjoyed the video a lot. Looking forward to seeing the next one. This device is beginning to intrigue me a lot, thanks to that video. Until I saw it in your hand, I didn't think I would be interested. I like the size, and love the thin-ness. Wouldn't have gotten such a good idea of it just from a text.
what a bad handset....no qwerty, no gps, the audio port is horrible.....how is this thing suppose to compete with the iPhone....it can't.
I could say the same thing about the iphone as compared to my treo 700wx. no hardware keyboard, no 3g data, only available on at&t, locked, rumours of a buried sim card, lack of 3rd party software.... how is the iphone supposed to compete... it cant...
see that was easy :twisted:
In all fairness, the iphone does look interesting, but no way I or many others will switch to cingular for it. Ill keep my $5 evdo high speed network :P
Also the HTC looks pretty interesting as well. I want to see more of it. As far as the video goes, I like it, especially if you offer higher quality downloads. Of course dont forget about the screen shots
what a bad handset....no qwerty, no gps, the audio port is horrible.....how is this thing suppose to compete with the iPhone....it can't.
I could say the same thing about the iphone as compared to my treo 700wx. no hardware keyboard, no 3g data, only available on at&t, locked, rumours of a buried sim card, lack of 3rd party software.... how is the iphone supposed to compete... it cant...
see that was easy :twisted:
I totally agree, sometimes looking at the pure specs isn't enough to judge a device. The Palm Treo 7xx series is very popular/successful and it is by no means the most powerful Pocket PC you can get - with 32mb RAM and 300MHz processor in earlier units. We also have to keep in mind that different devices are aimed at different types of buyers. Pocket PCs - as with anything else practically, have lower-end models for more budget-oriented users and higher-end models for those of us wanting more power, a simple concept not very hard to master :wink: . Not every new Pocket PC released will contain cutting-edge power. This is called price discrimination where a firm attempts to capture more of the market by catering to different needs/price ranges. A prime example is why Microsoft markets like 3-4 different versions of Windows XP.
And, the video was fantastic, I thoroughly enjoyed the unboxing. I think video reviews and written reviews each have their pros. The pro of doing a video review is that you can see everything hands-on while the pro of doing a written review is that the numbers/graphs and data are right in front of you and it's easier to scan through quickly. 8)
Actually I'm in favour of the quick 'n' dirty YouTube videos. The big advantage of the video is to see the device in action, even if it's just turning it over, turning it on, and doing a few things with it. As a previous reader said, it wasn't until he saw the live video that he became interested in it. This is especially true of a device like the Touch which has the gesture recognition.
Even though I have a broadband connection, I'm not really interested in a half-GB download just to look at a phone. And of course, you've just excluded anyone on dial-up or Shaw Lite from being to see the phone.
If you want high-quality images, why not save those for a few high-res photos of specific details?
Your time, which is valuable, which you took to create the high-res video might have been more productively spent in setting down some thoughts and specs in print to accompany the quick look video (though undoubtedly this was a bit of an experiment for you and had some value for that alone).
Video reviews are the way to go, the viewer can get a much better idea of the size and feel of a device with someone actually showing and explaining the device rather than just showing pictures and writing about it.
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HTC Touch Video Unboxing
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