iPhone? no HTC Touch Cruise

A few weeks ago I went for a new smartphone. I had a look at the iPhone, but that wasn't an option. In Belgium you're not allowed (due to the law) to bundle the physical device and the mobile contract itself. So there're no official iPhones in Belgium yet. Some people have a "hacked" version, but I didn't want to go for that.

The main features I want in my smartphone are:

• Mobile phone (surprisingly)
  
• Agenda
• Contacts
• GPS Navigation
• Wifi
  
• Easy synchronization with my MacBook Pro

At the end of 2006 I bought an HTC P3300 and I really liked it (see blog post). I could have kept that one, but I decided to have a look which new devices HTC had available. In a years time a lot should have changed. I saw some good reviews of the HTC Touch Cruise (P3650), the follow-up of the HTC P3300, so I decided to give it a try.

I bought it and I really like it. I had some problems with it in the beginning, finally called support and they told me I had to go for a new one. Went to the store, got a new one (excellent service!) and it had the same problem. The big clock (HTC Home plugin for the Today screen) wasn't showing although it was installed. HTC Support told me to do a hard reset, but that didn't help. Finally I found it myself; if you install that HTC Home plugin manually again, it works flawlessly. I guess the first device would have worked too ;-)

Even if the iPhone was available in Belgium, I think I would still go for the HTC Touch Cruise as I prefer to have a navigation system (gps) in my mobile phone. I was really impressed with the iPhones touch screen, but HTC has something similar, it's called the TouchFLO, so I can navigate with my fingers now too. The HTC Touch Cruise has a nice big screen and also supports 3G. The full spec you find on the htc website.

To synchronize my contacts and calendar with my MacBook Pro I use Missing Sync for Windows Mobile. It works really well. My iCal, Address book and Tasks get nicely synchronized.