T-Mobile launches HTC Touch Pro 2, sticker shock sets in
T-Mobile has officially launched the HTC Touch Pro 2 in the United States … we hope you’re sitting down when you see the price.
HTC’s latest handset, the Touch Pro 2, is a nifty little handset powered by Windows Mobile. ’Nifty’ as in that when you slide out the keyboard, you can tilt the touch screen up so you can set it on a table or desk and be looking at it like you would a laptop. The question now is how much you would be willing to pay for something like this?
$199 has become the average price you can expect to pay for a smartphone these days, with a two year contract of course, but it seems that T-Mobie feels that you should be willing to pay more for such a feat of engineering, say something like a $150 more. That’s right, folks, not only do T-Mobile users have to pay $1.50 for printed copies of their bills now, but they also get the honor of paying $349 for the HTC Touch Pro 2, with a two year contract, of course.
Surely for that price this phone has some other magical features beyond a tilting screen … right?
- Full-QWERTY slide-out keyboard
- Tilting 3.6-inch WVGA (800 x 480 pixel) display
- TouchFLO 3D (customized version of Microsoft’s Windows Mobile operating system)
- 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus and video capture
- Stereo Bluetooth
- 3G
- Micro SD memory slot
- Music player
Now, I’m no iPhone fanboy (I carry a BlackBerry Tour, actually), but seeing as the iPhone 3G S does the same things in pretty much its own way, i.e. not WinMo or needing a Micro SD slot, how can T-Mobile possible rationalize charging $349 for this device? This is also a limited exclusivity release, are we to believe that once all carriers have this they will also be charging $349? Doubtful at best, so we’ll see T-Mobile cut the price at that point and early adopters will once again feel used.
There is no question it is a nice phone, but in this day and age, $349 is just insanity.
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