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Thoughts On The HTC Touch Diamond

The HTC Touch Diamond has been out for about a month on Sprint, and I recently got to spend some quality time with the touch-screen smartphone. The smartphone is a very slick and attractive Windows Mobile touch-screen smartphone, but is it all style and no substance?

Design

I think the Touch Diamond is a gorgeous handset that's sure to get some stares on the subway or on the street. The phone is quite compact (3.98 by 2 by .6 inches), feels good in the hand, and fits easily in your pocket.

Most of the real estate is taken up by the 2.8-inch touch screen, but there are also four hard keys and a bit of a concave center button (which I barely ever used). The screen is gorgeous and crisp, but the face is glossy, so be prepared for a ton of smudges and fingerprints.

The volume rocker's on the left and a stylus with a much-appreciated magnet is tucked into the bottom right corner of the phone. There's an accelerometer in the phone that automatically adjusts the orientation depending on how you hold it. But I found this to be very hit or miss, and wound up holding it in portrait mode for the vast majority of the time.

The OS and UI

I think that Windows Mobile gets a bum rap. Most of the time it's a powerful operating system that's just a bit clunky. But, I had some awful times on this phone with lockups, crashes, false "memory full" alerts, and more. Most of those problems were eliminated with a hard reset, but it was a pain in the neck.

Fortunately, the Touch Diamond's home screen has the TouchFLO 3D user interface layered on top of Window Mobile 6.1 and it's quite intuitive. Essentially, it makes the phone finger-friendly with swiping gestures for navigation (you can "swipe" to advance to your next photo, or make trace a circle with your finger to zoom in). It did take me a few days to get used to, but it really makes the normal Windows Mobile interface look dated and, well, boring.

Windows Mobile has its advantages though, as the Touch Diamond is rocking the 6.1 Professional Edition with full Mobile Office suite for viewing and editing Word and Excel files. There's also integrated support for Microsoft's Direct Push Technology for real-time corporate e-mail, and other productivity features like voice recording and calculator. Additionally, the iPhone's App Store gets a ton of the attention, but there are tens of thousands of Windows Mobile apps out there too.

Messaging

For any text input, you have the option of multiple-sized virtual QWERTY keyboards, and none of them are big enough to accurately and quickly fire off messages. Even with the full-sized mode, I still found myself having to carefully peck out messages (and I don't even have fat thumbs). One could use the included stylus for more accurate messages, I suppose.

It's a shame too, because you can easily get Web-based and POP3 e-mail on the handset. There's also a downloadable IM client with AIM, Yahoo and Windows Live Messenger. Don't get me wrong, it's not impossible to send off e-mails, texts or IMS, it just takes a lot more time and concentration than it should.

Phone Calls

Ah yes, these things are still used as voice communication devices, and the Touch Diamond was impressive. I made calls in San Francisco and could clearly hear the other end with little to no static or hissing. Most could tell I was on a cell phone, but they said the voice quality was "good" or "excellent." I did manage to accidentally hit the "end call" button with my face once though, so you may want to consider a Bluetooth headset or using the adequate speakerphone.

Photo taken with the HTC Touch Diamond.

Thankfully, the Touch Diamond comes preloaded with Opera Mobile, so there's a fantastic mobile browsing experience. It's not quite the joy that the iPhone's Safari browser is, but it's quite close (and light years ahead of Pocket IE).

If you're in Sprint's EV-DO Rev. A network then be ready to have zippy speeds that can get up to 1.4 Mbps. This is very handy for updating your Twitter account, reading news, using the fantastic built-in RSS reader, or whatever you like to do on the mobile Web.

Don't fret if you're not in the 3G coverage area, as there's also integrated Wi-Fi. It works well, but it's a little buried under some menus - I prefer a dedicated Wi-Fi button like the Palm Treo Pro if possible.

Multimedia

The Touch Diamond does a lot of things right on the multimedia side, but it also makes a few blunders. On the positive side, there's support for multiple video and audio codecs with Windows Media Player mobile, integrated YouTube player, and it's quite easy to download podcasts over the air. The handset also comes preloaded with Sprint's entertainment services.

I had absolutely no interest in the Sprint Music Store, where you can download tracks over the air for about a dollar a piece. But, the Sprint TV service was actually a lot cooler than I thought it would be.

The TV service lets you watch clips, programs, or live streams from the likes of CNN, Fox Sports, Comedy Central and more, and it was very useful during my morning commutes. I doubt I'd pay for it by itself, but it's included in the company's Simply Everything plans.

With all this cool multimedia stuff, it's a darn shame that there's no standard headphone jack. Instead, there's a mini USB port on the bottom and you have to plug in a bulky, ugly adapter, or use the included headset. Even though it's par for the course on HTC phones, this design choice continues to flummox me.

The second gripe I have is that there's no expandable storage. Truthfully, it's not the end of the world that I only have the on-board 4 GB for my files, but I always like the option of a microSD slot (preferably not behind the battery).

Other Features

It was a breeze to pair the Touch Diamond with the BlueAnt V1, and it has good range.
Because it's Bluetooth version 2.0, you can use stereo-Bluetooth headsets, as well as transfer files. I was able to quickly and easily transfer a picture from the handset to a printing kiosk at the grocery store.

Speaking of pictures, the smartphone has a 3.2-megapixel camera that can record video. There's no flash, and the zoom's kind of limited in my opinion, but there are multiple resolution and quality settings. Along with the crab picture above, here's another example of the photo quality of the handset:

Battery life was okay, as I'd still have power at the end of the day despite much Web browsing, music, e-mails, texts and photos. Your mileage may vary though, so think about a second charger for if you pick up this smartphone.

Overall

If you're a power user, I'd suggest sticking with a BlackBerry or maybe waiting for the HTC Touch Pro for your mobile messaging needs. I found the Touch Diamond's virtual keyboard far too cramped and frustrating for those purposes.

But, if you're looking for a touch-screen smartphone's that's attractive and capable of some work applications, the Touch Diamond is a very worthy choice.

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