Comments on: Touched (or not) by TouchFlo 3D

By: Nikhil

Nikhil — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:23:34 +0000

I, for one, am not able to understand Doug’s penchant for delving into more than 1 layer deep. The oh-so wonderful iPhone is a hit because it has only 1 layer. Actual day-2-day users love it. Only geeks love deep dives. I have the touchflo 3D on the HTC pure and I had the same problem as Doug the first couple of days working with it. Then I decided that no matter what, I am going to stick to the Touchflo 3D interface ONLY. No deep dives into multiple layers. Boy, am I happy with my decision? Once I made that mental decision, It is just as simple to use as the iphone. It is a bit different than the iphone, but it definitely holds it’s own ground against it in terms of user friendliness, with gestures and finger friendly screens. Actually the lack of multi-touch has been replaced with a zoom bar on the bottom of the screen. It is so much better. Now I can use only one hand and one finger to manipulate the screen as opposed to using both hands in order to zoom. HTC is kicking butts of the iphone. In fact I have heard that the iPhone in the near future is going to integrate the HTC Sense UI (similar to Touchflo) into the iPhone.

Oh, and yes by the way, my version of the touchflo 3d has a setting where I can arrange the tabs in the sequence I want. So now I have the home screen, followed by the “Programs” screen, which is like the apps screen of the iphone. This is followed by the “people” screen, and text message and email, and then the browser.

What you also failed to mention is the people-centric approach of the touchflo-3d. Once you are in a contact, you can see all the logs of the 4 means of communication (phone, text, email, facebook updates) that you have had with that contact. Isn’t that wonderful? No need to go searching for a discussion thread for that contact. Everything you said/emailed/texted to that contact is available sorted by time. TOO GOOD. iphone feels dated by this super experience of the touchflo-3d.
And contrary to other users, the TF3D is very very responsive. I have tons of pictures on my storage card and it swipes just as clean and nicely as the iphone.

By: Ben

Ben — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:34:33 +0000

I have my HTC Touch Pro from U.S. Cellular. After a month or two I turned off TouchFlo 3d. It just didn’t do what I wanted to do, as well as I found the “Today” interface faster. (Side note: On the U.S. Cellular’s version of Touchflo 3d the “Browser” button does NOT default to Opera, it goes to Internet Explorer.)

A lot of issues I had with the touchflo programming were with the finger/stylis. I kept getting frustrated when I would “flick” a screen, or try and navigate a list. Instead of moving the items around I would inadvertently “click” something. It would take time for that to load, then it would take even more time for me to get out of what I clicked on just to get back to where I was.

TouchFlo 3d can be VERY sluggish at times too! This is worth mentioning.

I text a fair amount which is where some of my disappointment spawned. The communication between SMS/MMS windows program, and touchflo 3d was rather ruff at times. I ended up doing a lot of opening and closing of the keyboard which felt very redundant! I didn’t care much for the TF3d interface when the keyboard was open.

In my opinion its just a lot of eye candy, and doesn’t deliver the functionality necessary to run this machine quickly and smoothly. Its a step in the right direction but needs more functionality and customization to win the great mobile interface battle.

By: dsgoldrin

dsgoldrin — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 20:02:28 +0000

Yeah, Brian, this review was focusing on the TF3D software. We are still working on a seperate article relating to the phone and hardware itself. Though i will say I love the keyboard on this one. It is a huge step up from the Mogul.

By: Brian

Brian — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:40:30 +0000

I tried this myself as a demo phone for a week and while I like many things about it, it was not enough to move me from my blackjack. Overall WM is not designed to be a finger touch interface and once you get under the covers that is glaring. What this fails to mention is the overall excessive weight of the phone and terrible keyboard. Once I got past the coolness of a touch interface I was happy to go back to my no touch Blackjack

By: Estechco

Estechco — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 09:13:44 +0000

There is a config tool available from xda-developers.com called TF3DConfig which allows you to organize your tabs as you describe. Well everything except add your own new ones anyway!

By: pedah

pedah — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 11:52:22 +0000

Lets face it, the UI is limited, disable it!

By: Sue

Sue — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 08:31:37 +0000

The interface is just…….pretty…..in my opinion. I'm still fairly new to WM (ironic, considering the company I work for) and love the Touch Pro as a whole but I can do without the interface.

By: Dsgoldring

Dsgoldring — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 07:17:22 +0000

If it was more customizable then I really would have liked Touch Flo3D. the lack of customization (adding third party programs, reorganizing tabs, removing unused tabs) sent me back to Mobile Shell. But Lauren has a post coming soon with some helpful tips and tweaks that might make Touch Flo more attractive. Can't wait to see that.

Doug

By: darkcorner

darkcorner — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 05:13:16 +0000

I fiddled around with the TouchFlo 3D for a week before I came to realize that I prefer to use other shells (or even the windows mobile interface itself). The TouchFlo 3D shows a lot of potential, but I'd rather wait for an improved version of it.

By: dsgoldring

dsgoldring — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 02:03:13 +0000

Thank, guys. No marriages or even friendships were harmed during this review. Actually, one of the reasons we decided to do this was that right off the bat it was clear that we had very different opinions on this one. Which makes for an interesting article.