This is all based on initial impressions. Some of this may change as I get to know the device a little better.

The Good

The graphics are awesome. Once you go VGA, you’ll never go back. The sharpness and smoothness makes reading so much easier. Graphic performance on the Fuze also seems quite excellent compared to the Tilt. As some may know, the Tilt is well known as having crap video drivers, so apparently HTC finally got their act together for this newer series of devices.

TouchFlo is very nice. This TouchFlo is not like the old version, which had a 3D Cube that rotated in space, but is a series of “tabs” on the home screen.

The on-screen keyboard by HTC is very similar to the iPhone one. It’s way better than the standard WinMo on-screen keyboard. And by way better, I mean “usable”.

The camera seems to make nice images. It has true mechanical autofocus, which allows it to take very good close-up images of things, as well as distance/landscape shots.

The UI of all the HTC software is gesture-based. You can sweep across the screen to navigate and scroll.

The main round physical button on the device is “touch” sensitive like the click-wheel of the iPod, and the area surrounding the button also acts like a click-wheel, in that you can move your finger in a circle to zoom or scroll. In camera mode, merely touching the button will focus, and then you press the button fully to take a picture.

So far the radio performance seems on-par with the Tilt, but again this will take some time to learn more.

The Bad

The Fuze is a super ultra fingerprint magnet. OMG, WTF. There is just no way to keep the surface of this device clean, other than to put it in a protective case. I actually prefer the rubberized surface of the Tilt.

Compared to the Tilt, this thing has almost no buttons on it anywhere. I’m used to having about 5 different ways to click “OK” on the Tilt, where on the Fuze I basically always have to click the OK on the screen, or if I have the keyboard open, there is a dedicated OK key.

It’s damn expensive. I paid the non-contract price of $500. For me this is not a concern, because the cost will be reimbursed by my employer, but even if you want a contract, it’s not a cheap phone.

Unknowns

Battery life, I expect to be poor. But I won’t know for a while yet.

WiFi works, but I got some strange results where I had 54Mbps Tx and 1Mb Rx speed, which made no sense. I will have to experiment more with that and see if it has to do with my home network or if it’s something else.