HTC Touch (Alltel)

There's an often ignored yet brilliant buying rule for technology, get last year's product. Unless you're a voracious power user, the tech will likely be good enough to fulfill your needs, and it will come at a lower price than a brand new, cutting edge gadget will. If you're a Windows Mobile fan, the HTC Touch for Alltel is a great example. This Touch looks just like the Sprint model PC Mag reviewed last year.

It's a small (4 by 2.4 by 0.6 inches, 4 ounces), easily pocketable slab with a soft touch plastic case and a 2.8 inch 320 by 240 pixel display. The only physical controls are a cursor pad, phone pick up and hang-up, camera buttons, and a volume rocker.

A stylus tucks into the upper right-hand corner, and there's a 2 mega pixels camera on the back of the handset.

Powered by Windows Mobile 6, the Touch doesn't run the latest WM 6.1, but most of the changes that came with version 6.1 were for non-touch screen devices anyway.

(Alltel says it will offer an upgrade to WM 6.1 for current device owners in the future.) When you turn on the phone, it serves up HTC's custom TouchFLO home screen, a finger friendly screen that offers a big clock and message and weather alerts along with your chosen apps.

Swiping your finger along the screen gives you access to your favorite contacts, music, videos, and popular programs, which is a good thing. But ultimately, this is just a skin. Dig down another level into the UI and you get Windows Mobile's tiny interface elements, which aren't very finger-friendly, so you'll be pulling out the stylus frequently.