HTC's Touch HD2 is impressive if you must have Windows Mobile, but it's a bulky phone

HTC's Touch HD2 is the successor to last year's Labs-winning Touch HD, and this time it makes an even bolder statement. Its huge 4.3in screen is nothing short of glorious, boasting vibrant colours and a high resolution of 480 x 800 - the match of anything in this group and easily besting the iPhone 3GS.

That display also boasts capacitive touch technology, which means that browsing, typing and navigation is effortless - a big improvement over the original Touch HD's resistive screen.

The danger in including such a big showstopper is that other aspects of design could have been neglected. This isn't the case here. The HD2's chassis is super slim, measuring just 12.7mm from front to back, and the screen surround is as narrow as can be.

So, while the HD2 is too large at 67 x 121mm to stuff into a jeans pocket comfortably, it isn't as bulky as it could have been.

That's not all, though, for beneath the glitz and glamour of that screen beats the heart of a beast. The HD2 boasts a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, which ensures that, most of the time, the HD2 feels snappy and responsive. It backs this up with the most complete feature set of any phone on test too.

Highlights include a decent 5-megapixel camera with dual LED flash and touchscreen focus control, and a digital compass.

The HD2 is an impressive piece of kit on paper, but it isn't all bluster; it performed well in our tests as well. The SMH homepage loaded in its entirety in an average of 13 seconds, and the HD2 scored a perfect 100 in the Acid3 standards test.

Business email and Outlook support is second to none, and it's a capable consumer handset, thanks to a handful of social networking apps.

There are two blots in the HD2's copybook, however. The first is that it runs Microsoft's patched-up mobile OS, Windows Phone, and although there's an attractive front pasted over the top of it, it still isn't as easy to use as an iPhone or most Android handsets. The second is battery life, which after 24 hours had only 40% remaining.

These drawbacks stop us from recommending the HD2 this month. However, if you must have Windows Mobile and you can cope with this phone's size, you won't be disappointed.

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