The HTC Touch Pro II Coming With Only 49 Keys
Wait a minute, this can’t be right! How can HTC develop a much larger device in the new Touch Pro II, code (Rhodium) and yet still lose 8 keys! Here are the specs on both the Touch Pro and Touch Pro II. Check it out:
Touch Pro: 51 x 102 x 18.05 millimetres
Touch Pro II: 59.2 x 116 x 17.25 millimetres
So now here is the goods, look at the picture below and notice the difference:
One really nice looking synergy on the Touch Pro II is the Caps and Shift Button on the fourth row of keys has now been combined. To me, this seems like a great idea to free up some real estate to enlarge the keys for Fat Fingered Fellows. Rows one and tow that formerly had 11 Keys have now been whacked down to 9. No extra symbol keys have been added. On the third row of the Touch Pro II you’ll notice that the missing Caps Key at the front is missing, and as mentioned before will be assimilated into the Shift Key on the Fourth Row. On the Fourth Row begins the consolidated Caps/Shift Key and missing again is a dedicated symbol key. Lastly, the Fifth Row also looses two more dedicated Symbol Keys which brings the grand total up to 8 keys lost on the Touch Pro II. I am kinda torn on this one. I have really gotten used to the Fuze’s Keyboard which is identical in Key Size to the Touch Pro, but laid out differently, but I think larger buttons would be a welcomed change. Of course proof is in the pudding, so I guess I will just have to get my hands on one to know for sure! LOL
The real question is what is AT&T going to do with the Keyboard? All of the other US Carriers opted to stick with the HTC Touch Pro Keyboard, will AT&T stay with the same ol’ playbook and keep the symbols over the numbers? Will AT&T Get the Rhodium? And, what will it be called? The suspense may kill us all!
Don’t turn that dial because we will keep you posted on all the of the latest Touch Pro II news and
what the US Carriers (AT&T, you got your ears on?) will be calling it.
Thanks to Bryan in our forums for the heads up!
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Comments
Reluttr If you look back at the phone list leak from a while back “the one that originally mentioned the dream2 and tp2″ you would see at&t will be getting the tp2… However the keyboard will be a light green color which I didn’t care for at all 
Also it appeared to have the default layout.
Dr. Steve This is one thing that annoyed me. The keyboard on the Fuze is perfect, and this one sounds horrible. And it doesn’t even have a matching colour scheme! Why is it grey!??! What the hell?!
Really when my contract is up there better be the Fuze 3. And I want a front facing camera too.. why does America get rid of them again?
TVDinner To be honest, I don’t plan to get rid of my Fuze anytime soon. I see no reason to switch.
NexusFour I’ll second that, TVDinner.
There is much (much) more we can all get out of the Fuze.
And the new keyboard, dare I say it… looks ugly.
Adam The Fuze BY FAR meets my needs for a phone and a PDA for work. No reason to spend $500 just for a cool speakerphone feature.
Cameron On the topic of keyboards is anyone aware of a way to redefine keys on the fuze? I’d love to make ‘caps’ into ‘tab’ and assign specific programs for the shortcut keys at the bottom left. I’d be happy with a registry key.
Proto732 I think the AT&T keyboard layout is much more useful. I find myself using the symbols far more often in email and text messages, than I do the numbers.
I think I will also be sticking with my Fuze for another year. I like HTC phones, but no Dpad? Seriously? I have to swipe the screen for everything now? That might work for TF3D, but as soon as you hit a native WinMo screen you are going to be lacking.
dave s I’m holding my fuze-breath til a winmo 7 device with a DECENT chip
I don’t care too much about hardware revisions. What I want is a responsive device, and if tp2 is somehow responsive, then the good folks at xda can make my fuze responsive as well. To be honest, this seems LESS of an upgrade than the tilt->fuze transition.
Kelvin K I like the new Touch Pro 2 keyboard. My current issue with the Fuze keyboard is that there are too many and it’s more cumbersome to type than the Tytn II. Personally felt that the Tilt made more efficient use of they keyboard layout. One particular function that I miss from my Tytn II is fn+spacebar changes the symbols. Pressing the fn+spacebar and then hitting the screen is not efficient.
Also agree with Proto732. I love the idea of the no dpad but unless the OS supports it natively, I can’t see it being a good experience for the users. That being said, I foresee the XDA-Developer community actively developing workarounds should WinMo 6.5 not launch with a native touch friendly UI
BigPoppaPunch Did you guys see on the following site they have a leaked “roadmap” of sprints upcoming phones.it says the touch pro2 is gonna be a GSM/CDMA combo, because it says that people when they go out of the country(USA) they have to rent a GSM phone and this will make it a worldphone I guess, but here is the LINK, you can also click on the left side for other phones coming out.on sprint
http://news.softpedia.com/newsImage/Sprint-039-s-Roadmap-for-2009-Leaked-6.jpg/
I have used just about every phone with a real physical keyboard and I have to say that I like the FUZE’s set up the best by far. Once you use it for a while it really is functionally better then the Touch Pro or other physical keyboards in my opinion.