HTC Touch Diamond Review

The HTC Touch Diamond is an ambitious smartphone. It is clearly intended to compete head-to-head with the iPhone, and appeal to the average consumer, not the business users that most Windows Mobile smartphones are sold to. To do this, HTC has come up with its own touch-oriented user interface that replaces the standard one.
Its focus on consumers does not mean it has been stripped down; instead, it's loaded with high-end features like a VGA touchscreen, 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, and 4 GB of on-board storage.

The cornerstone of the Diamond is TouchFLO 3D, HTC's user interface that has been overlaid on Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro.
Consumers in general haven't warmed up to the standard Windows Mobile user interface. TouchFLO 3D essentially takes over the look and feel of this smartphone, and aside from a few things like the Start Menu it would be easy to forget that it is running Windows Mobile at all.

The most unusual thing about he design is the faceted back panel. The facets are slightly raised, and although the smartphone feels comfortable to hold, it's going to be a challenge for hardcase makers. Because it's thicker in the middle than on the edges, the Touch Diamond can be rocked slightly on a flat surface.

About the most negative thing I say about the exterior is its shiny surface easily picks many, many fingerprints.

The HTC Touch Diamond emphasizes control through its touchscreen, and therefore eschews many buttons. There are four on the front (Home Back, Place a Call, Hang Up a Call), the volume buttons on the left side, and there's a power button on top.

Also on the front is the Directional Pad. This takes a bit of getting used to, because in order to push Up or Down, Left or Right, you don't actually touch the D-Pad itself; instead you touch the flat area immediately next to it.

In addition, the D-Pad does double duty as a scroll wheel. By spinning your finger around the outside of the central button zooms in and out on the screen. This works in many of the applications on the Touch Diamond, including the web browser.

The touchscreen on this device is beautiful, and its VGA resolution makes everything look very crisp. Naturally there's no bezel around it, so the front of the device is almost completely flat, making it easy for you to touch items with your fingertips.

But keep in mind, this screen is only 2.8 inches, which limits how much text you can pack onto the display before it becomes too small to read. Expect to do a lot of scrolling when reading long emails or documents. It's just large enough for playing easily-viewable video, though.

HTC has bundled the Diamond with a version of the Opera web browser. This is a pretty good mobile browser; better, in my opinion, than Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

It's theoretically possible to do all your surfing with your fingertips, but Opera is one of the few apps where I find myself occasionally having to pull out the stylus in order to tap on links.

This smartphone uses the standard Windows Mobile messaging software, but puts a pretty face on it with TouchFLO 3D, which is a nice compromise.

You can use it to check your email on just about any provider, including the big ones like HotMail and Gmail.

It also supports Texting and MMS messaging. Texts are displayed in threads, so you can see all the messages you've exchanged with each person listed together, both the ones you've sent and the one's you've received. This makes it easy to keep track of conversations.

The Diamond is bundled with two separate music and video players. One of these is part of TouchFLO 3D, and naturally is very fingertip friendly.

The Diamond is a GSM phone that offers 3G high-speed networking. If you're new to 3G, it allows for wireless connections that approach what you get from Wi-Fi. It's fast enough to make mobile web surfing practical.

But there's something that N. American users need to be aware of. The first version of this model that's available now doesn't include the 3G frequencies used in N. America. There'll be a version that includes these released later in the year. You can still use the current one for voice and the 2.5G standard EDGE, though.

In addition to its cellular capabilities, the Diamond has Wi-Fi, so you can connect to a HotSpot to download files even more quickly than you can with a 3G connection.

This smartphone also has Bluetooth, so you can use you wireless headset of hands-free car kit with it.

The Diamond has a built-in GPS receiver, but the standard model doesn't come bundled with navigation software.
HTC has worked hard to design the Diamond so you don't ever have to pull out the stylus. This is a good thing, because the stylus is one of the worst I've used.

HTC Touch Diamond Specifications