HTC MOBILE: HTC Cruise

HTC Cruise

The HTC Touch Cruise continues to run Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional Edition, so you get the same productivity suite and e-mailing capabilities as well as some extras, including the Opera mobile Web browser, a dedicated YouTube app, and MP3 Trimmer for creating your own ringtones.

The biggest draw, of course, are the built-in GPS and navigation abilities. The North American version of the Touch Cruise uses CoPilot Live for turn-by-turn guidance instead of TomTom's navigation software, which is still available on the European version. While we've experienced ease of use and accuracy from TomTom, CoPilot is no slouch in the navigation department, and in fact, it offers a couple of helpful extras.

CoPilot Live's user interface is intuitive and attractive. The menu pages offer large icons with clear identification, so most people should be able to pick up the device and start navigating right away. The application offers text- and voice-guided directions as well as 2D and 3D map views, day and night map colors, detour routing, and support for multidestination trips. It includes a fairly comprehensive points-of-interest database, including all the major categories and more specialized interests (e.g., event facilities and marinas). In addition, you can conduct local searches. For example, you can simply type in "pizza," and the app will look for pizza places close to your location. You can also do this with the Map Search tab on the TouchFlo interface without having to launch CoPilot.