HTC Touch Diamond

CNET editors' review

We don't envy the HTC Touch Diamond. There's a lot of pressure on this little smartphone; HTC executive Cheng Hui-ming has called it "the most important product for HTC this year," and of course, the Touch Diamond has been compared to the Apple iPhone. Now, we're still a few months out from seeing the U.S. version of the Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone, but we couldn't wait. Thanks to Dynamism, we were able to get our hands on an unlocked version of the Europe/Asia HTC Touch Diamond to try out. Now, to be clear up front, since this isn't optimized for use here in the States, we're not going to knock it for the lack of U.S. 3G support or the fact that's it tri-band. However, we will ding it for its sluggish performance and subpar call quality. It was really quite disappointing, especially since we think it's an incredibly sexy device and the new 3D interface is so cool. As is, we wouldn't really recommend shelling out the $700 for an unlocked version, but hopefully, some of these issues will be resolved once the HTC Touch Diamond is released in the United States.

Design
You may have seen pictures of the HTC Touch Diamond and thought it looked beautiful, but the images simply don't do it justice. The smartphone is that much more stunning in person with its sleek mirrored face and the prism effect on the back. It's also smaller than we originally thought at just 4 inches tall by 2 inches wide by 0.4 inch deep and 3.8 ounces, so you certainly won't have any problems slipping this compact handset into a pants pocket. The overall shape of the Touch Diamond reminded us of a smaller Microsoft Zune.

You'll largely use the HTC Touch Diamond's TouchFLO 3D interface to operate the phone, but there are some tactile buttons below the screen.

The smartphone is outfitted with a gorgeous 2.8-inch, 680x480 pixel resolution touch screen. With the VGA quality, text and images looked amazingly crisp and vibrant. Plus, the Touch Diamond is equipped with an orientation sensor, so it will automatically switch the orientation of the screen whether you're holding it vertically or horizontally. While this is all well and good, we think it may be the new TouchFLO 3D interface that really catches your eye. It builds on the TouchFLO interface that was first introduced on the HTC Touch, but the look and feel is completely different. The Home Screen now just displays a larger clock and your call history and calendar, but along the bottom of the screen, you'll notice a toolbar where you can move left to right to launch other applications, including e-mail, music, the Web, a customizable weather page, and the settings menu. In several of the programs, more specifically e-mail, the camera, and music, you can go through your files and messages by swiping your thumb/finger up or down the screen, all with a cool animated, 3D effect.

In all, the TouchFLO 3D interface is very cool, and we think it certainly goes a long way toward making the smartphone more attractive to consumers with its less businesslike look. However, it's not the most intuitive and has a bit of a learning curve. More specifically, it's not always clear which finger swipe actions work in which applications. As for text entry, you can use the onscreen keyboard, which you can switch from full QWERTY to compact QWERTY to phone keyboard or other format, depending on your preference. Most of the time, we used the full QWERTY mode and though it looked fairly cramped, we found it pretty easy to use and didn't have too many mispresses. On the other hand, when you have the keyboard open, it takes up about half of the screen, so if you're entering text into any field on the bottom half of the screen, it's covered up. It's actually quite annoying.

Below the display, you get some tactile controls. There's a Home key, a back button, Talk and End keys, and a directional keypad with a center select button. With the exception of the select key, which has a slight concave shape, all the buttons are flush with the phone's surface, and they're fairly easy to press. And while it's not apparent at first, you can press the navigation keypad up, down, left, and right, In addition, it's also touch sensitive, so in certain applications (multimedia album, camera, Opera Mobile, and Word and Excel Mobile) you can use your thumb or finger to make a clockwise or counterclockwise circle to zoom in/out of pages.

On the left spine, you will find a volume rocker, while the stylus and USB port/headphone jack are located on the bottom of the unit. We're disappointed that the Touch Diamond didn't come with a 3.5mm headphone jack; heck, we'd even settle for a 2.5mm headset jack, but instead you're pretty much limited to using the uncomfortable earbuds that are included in the box, unless you get a headset adapter. There's a power button on top, and the camera is located on the back.

Just like the smartphone itself, the packaging for the HTC Touch Diamond is sexy.

The HTC Touch Diamond comes packaged in a very sleek box with the following accessories: a travel charger, a USB cable, an extra stylus, a wired stereo headset, a software CD, and reference material. For more add-ons, please check our cell phone accessories, ringtones, and help page.

Features
Behind all the flash and pretty looks, the HTC Touch Diamond is at its core still a Windows Mobile smartphone. It runs the latest Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional Edition. Since the Touch Diamond uses the TouchFLO 3D interface, you don't get the new Getting Started menu on the Home screen to set up e-mail, Bluetooth, and the like. It's still there but you'll have to go under the Windows menu to access it. Here, you'll also find your standard productivity tools, including a PDF reader, a task manager, a voice recorder, a Zip manager, and a calculator. Of course, you also get the Microsoft Office Mobile Suite for editing and creating Word and Excel documents and viewing PowerPoint presentations. As for memory, the Touch Diamond has 256MB ROM and 192MB DDR SDRAM and 4GB of internal storage. While we appreciate the large storage capacity, we're disappointed that there are no expansion capabilities, so keep an eye on this, especially if you like to store a lot of pictures and music on your smartphone.

Like other Windows Mobile devices, the Touch Diamond offers Microsoft's Direct Push Technology for real-time e-mail delivery and automatic synchronization with your Outlook calendar, tasks, and contacts via Exchange Server. You can also access your POP3 and IMAP accounts, and HTML e-mails are supported. Using the Getting Started utility, we configured our review unit to access our Yahoo account and also synchronized our phone with our PC via Microsoft ActiveSync 4.5. Both processes went off without a hitch.

Phone features on the HTC Touch Diamond include a speakerphone, voice dialing and commands, and text and multimedia messaging. The address book is only limited by the available memory (the SIM card holds an additional 250 contacts) and you can store up to 12 numbers for a single entry, as well as home and work addresses, e-mail, IM screen name, birthday, spouse's name, and more. For caller ID purposes, you can pair a contact with a photo, a caller group, or one of 40 polyphonic ringtones. The smartphone also has Bluetooth 2.0 that supports mono and stereo Bluetooth headsets, hands-free kits, file sharing, dial-up networking, and more.

As we noted earlier, we reviewed the Europe/Asia version of the smartphone, so it's tri-band (GSM 900/1800/1900) rather than quad-band. As such, AT&T coverage will be spotty in some places, and no surprise, it doesn't support our U.S. 3G bands. Surfing the Web on EDGE speeds isn't our idea of fun but fortunately, the Touch Diamond is also equipped with Wi-Fi. We should note that the device also ships with the Opera Web browser, in addition to the standard Internet Explorer Mobile. The smartphone offers Adobe Flash Lite 2, but not the latest Flash Lite 2, which offers FLV support (read: YouTube videos). To make up for this oversight, there is a preloaded YouTube app on the Touch Diamond that allows you to watch said videos. The final wireless radio on the Touch Diamond is GPS for real-time tracking and turn-by-turn directions (with the addition of a location-based service or navigation software). With the assisted GPS, the handheld can also use cellular towers and nearby Wi-Fi hot spots to more quickly find your location.

On back of the Touch Diamond, you'll find the 3.2 megapixel camera, which is nicely incorporated into the prism design.

The HTC Touch Diamond is equipped with a 3.2-megapixel camera with up to 4x zoom and videorecording capabilities. There are six capture modes (photo, video, panorama, MMS video, contacts picture, and picture theme). For still photos, you have a choice of five resolutions and four quality settings in addition to white balance and brightness controls. Other tools at your disposal include a photo counter, a self timer, flicker adjustment, and various effects. In video mode, you get four resolutions as well as white balance, brightness, and effects.

We were slightly disappointed by the picture quality, as colors looked washed out. There's also a bit of shutter lag.

Picture quality was OK. For the most part, objects had clear definition, but there was a bit of shutter lag, so we found you had to have a really steady hand (and patience) to get a clear shot. Also, colors weren't very bright or rich. Recorded video clips looked decent, but again, there was some delay between the time we pressed the capture button to the time the camera actually started/stopped recording.

You can also enjoy your personal library of music and video with Windows Media Player 10 Mobile. As always, there's support for AAC, MP3, WAV, WMA, MPEG-4, WMV files, and more. Plus, you can check out shows recorded on your Windows Media Center PC or stream your home's TV programming right to your device with a Slingbox and SlingPlayer Mobile. The HTC Touch Diamond also throws in a couple of multimedia extras, including an FM radio, which you must use with the included headset, an audio booster, a streaming media app, and a utility called MP3 Trimmer that allows you to cut and trim MP3 files and make them into ringtones.

Performance
We tested the tri-band (GSM 900/1800/1900; GPRS/EDGE) HTC Touch Diamond in San Francisco using AT&T service, and call quality was subpar. On our end, there was a bit of a background hiss, but not so bad that we couldn't hear our callers. Volume was good and voices sounded clear; we also didn't have any problems using an airline's voice-automated response system. Unfortunately, our callers had nothing good to report. One friend said we sounded "horrible," as our voice was drowned out by a crackling noise, and activating the speakerphone didn't improve matters, as it only added an echo to the mix. With the Getting Started menu, the Touch Diamond automatically found and connected to both the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset and the Motorola S9 Bluetooth Active Headphones.

Despite being powered by a 528MHz Qualcomm processor, the HTC Touch Diamond felt very sluggish. There was often a lag when just switching between menus and launching applications, and there were a couple of occasions where the delay was long enough to make us think the system froze. In all, we found using the Touch Diamond was a frustrating experience because of the slow performance. Browsing the Web on GPRS/EDGE speeds was painfully slow, so we obviously used a Wi-Fi connection when possible. Multimedia performance was mixed. Music playback through the phone's speakers sounded weak and tinny. Watching video clips was tolerable in short spurts, and audio and images were always synchronized.

The HTC Touch Diamond's 900mAh lithium ion battery has a rated talk time of 5.5 hours and up to 11.8 days of standby time. The Touch Diamond beat the rated talk time by half an hour in our battery drain tests, but we noticed in general use that the cell drains pretty quickly. By the end of the day, the battery level is usually at one and we have to recharge.