Check out Sprint's latest all-touch smartphone with a VGA screen and blazing fast networking in our HTC Touch Diamond review.
Review summary of the HTC Touch Diamond (Sprint):
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_it00.jpg) For whatever else we might say about the HTC Touch Diamond on Sprint, we can finally declare that HTC has gotten the responsive touch interface to feel right. It isn't perfect, no phone is, but the TouchFLO 3D interface that HTC has set atop Windows Mobile 6.1 is unique and delightful, and best of all it's a useful business interface. Multimedia is something of a letdown, a surprise on a phone with 4GB of internal memory and a VGA screen. The onscreen keyboard, too, needs some work on an evolutionary scale, much as the HTC Touch evolved into this Touch Diamond. Most important to us, though, is that HTC hasn't skimped on hardware, and the phone packs power where it counts, especially in the fast networking and Web browsing, the aforementioned dazzling display and the loads of features, including Wi-Fi, GPS navigation and everything we'd expect from a super-smartphone. Release: September 2008. Price: $350.
Pros: Sparkling, responsive interface with useful shortcut features. VGA screen. Fast networking helps the speedy Web browser. 4GB internal storage.
Cons: Keyboard is still a pain to use, which makes messaging and productivity apps more difficult. Reception problems hurt data-intensive services, like video streaming.
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Full review of the HTC Touch Diamond (Sprint):
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Design - Very good
The HTC Touch Diamond is all about the interface, and the TouchFLO 3D interface is a starkly beautiful, minimalist display. HTC doesn't go for flashy colors, most of the screens are black, but this only helps to show off the excellent contrast ratio and high resolution of the Touch Diamond's VGA screen. Yes, that's VGA, as in 640 by 480 pixels, and packing all those pixels onto the 2.8-inch screen gives the Touch Diamond a sharpness that surpasses almost all other phones on the market (definitely the iPhone 3G, maybe the BlackBerry Bold).
The Touch Diamond interface uses a multi-window desktop approach, similar to, but not exactly the same as Sprint's new One Touch application phones, like the Samsung Rant. There is a row of icons at the bottom of the screen, and you drag your finger to select the "Weather" screen or the "Programs" screen. The "Mail" screen will actually show you a preview of new messages, tucked inside an evelope, and you can flick through your new messages. You can play tunes from the "Sprint Music" screen and flick through photos on the "Photos and Videos" screen. It was all very nice looking, but also very functional. There was some lag in using the more advanced visual features, but the phone was usually spot on, and certainly as responsive as the best all-touch phones on the market.
Unfortunately, the HTC Touch Diamond on Sprint looks like a brick. Our review unit even came in an appealing, soft-finish maroon color, which only enhanced the masonry motif. The unlocked and European versions of this phone sport a funky, faceted back, but Sprint decided on a more staid approach. We like that it's understated, like a sleeper car that hides its horsepower under a sedan body. But in this minimalist approach, some of the design elements are muddied, and some are missing. The navigation button, for instance, was unreliable, and we were never sure where to press to move left and right. The music player can use it as a scroll wheel, but that feature doesn't really show up elsewhere, which is a missed opportunity. The lack of an external memory card slot we can forgive, given the wealth of storage inside, but the lack of a 3.5mm phone jack we cannot.
Calling - Good
Calls on the HTC Touch Diamond sounded pretty good on Sprint's network when reception was good. Unfortunately, we had serious reception problems on Sprint's EV-DO network in suburban New Jersey, new New York City. The Touch Diamond lagged behind other Sprint smartphones we have on hand by a couple of bars, and often lost service altogether, while other phones, like our Palm Treo 755p, managed to cling to a bar or two. Battery life was pretty good for such a robust device, and we managed a call that was about 5.5 hours long, well more than Sprint's estimates.
As a touchscreen phone, the Touch Diamond loses one of our favorite Windows Mobile features, the ability to start searching the contact list from the home screen simply by typing on the keyboard. It's a great calling shortcut, and the Touch Diamond could use some new calling shortcuts. The "People" screen offers a picture rolodex for contact, but you can only assign one number per person. So you can't assign two slots for a spouse's work and a spouse's mobile number. The phone features some speaker-independent voice dialing, but it can only handle contact names, it can't dial a number as you speak it, which is a feature we like to have while driving.
As a final nice touch for the Touch Diamond's calling features, we liked the links on the calling screen that jump directly to the calendar and call history. While the iPhone has buttons for adding a conference call, the Touch Diamond handles this more intuitively, with "Call" button presses, and leaves at the fingertips information that might be useful during a business phone call.
Messaging - Good
The HTC Touch Diamond on Sprint packs the standard messaging assortment for a smartphone these days. Again, without the keyboard you lose some of Windows Mobile's newest enhancements, like the e-mail shortcuts, but here HTC has done a better job bringing the good stuff to the top. The e-mail preview envelope is a very nice touch, and it gives just enough information for a quick impression. We had some trouble setting up our Exchange e-mail with the phone, but couldn't rule out problems on our end, and not with the phone. For Instant Messaging, there is support for AIM, Yahoo and MSN, and if there's anything positive to say about the IM client on the Touch Diamond it's that everything is slightly larger, which makes tapping a bit easier.
The onscreen keyboard on the Touch Diamond is problematic. HTC has made a serious attempt, with a SureType layout, a full QWERTY layout and even handwriting recognition. Unfortunately, what makes Apple's iPhone software work so well, and what other all-touch manufacturer's haven't picked up on, is that it's auto-correction that makes onscreen typing easy. If the phone can accurately guess what you're trying to type, you don't need a huge keyboard, and you can mess up from time to time. At the very least, we wish the touch had a haptic response, or anything to make typing easier and a more pleasant experience.
Scheduling and productivity - Good
While almost every other area on the HTC Touch Diamond gets a visual polish, the calendar and productivity apps are largely left behind. Sure, you can read your next appointments on the home screen, but when you dig into the calendar you get the standard, boxy and bare Windows Mobile look. We wish there was something better here, as the Touch Diamond seems to have some other nice improvements that will appeal to the business audience. We also wish that the keyboard didn't hamper using the scheduling and Office apps, but whenever you have to type on the Touch Diamond, it isn't the best experience. Better when you can trust SureType to get it right, but when you have to enter proper names, it's a pecking game.
Music - Very good
Improved media player? Check. Top level music functions with album artwork and cool flicking motions? Check. Loads of internal storage? 4GB on board, check. Stereo headphone jack? What? Somebody forgot the stereo headphone jack! It's unfortunately true. The HTC Touch Diamond, which has an improved media player and Sprint Music store, and which also has a special "Disk Mode" to make USB transfers even faster, lacks a headphone jack. And the mini-USB adapter is ugly. Headphones stick out the side of the plug end at a right angle. It's worse than the Apple iPhone headphone jack debacle of 2007.
Still, the music player has gotten a TouchFLO polish, at long last. The music song lists are now much more finger-friendly, and float by as you flick them. We wish HTC would go a bit farther, with a PMP-like interface (see Sony Ericsson for details). But for a business phone, this is a fine way to listen to music. Our songs and album artwork synchronized quickly with Windows Media Player, and once we had our headphones plugged into that ugly adapter, the music sounded good.
Video - Good
Video performance didn't fare as well as music. Reception issues kept Sprint TV from looking any better than the streaming clips we've been seeing for years now. This is too bad, considering this phone's most groundbreaking feature might be its VGA screen. We would love some DVD-quality content to go along with the DVD-size resolution. AT&T and Verizon have advanced mobile video already, but Sprint has an interesting offering. We just wish the quality would keep up with the selection and variety.
Camera - Good
The HTC Touch Diamond on Sprint uses a 3-megapixel sensor, which is still a rarity in the U.S. market. Even better, the camera uses auto focus, which should have resulted in much clearer shots, but we still had some issues with the pictures. Colors were way off in places, and some of our shots looked very sharp and digitized. Even worse, the auto focus didn't work very well, perhaps in part because of the long delay in firing a shot, and there were some pictures we could never take clearly.
Outdoors in San Francisco
This is a pleasant looking shot, and the primary colors come through well, but you can see the over-sharpening in the flowers beneath the Haring piece and the fringing around everyone's clothing in contrast to the street behind them. Oh, also the sky is very, very purple.
Dognapping
Our pup is not nearly this bleached, but the camera blew out her white fur, making it look like clay or feathers.
Peace Lilly
We were trying for a cool perspective effect taking this shot of the flower on our lilly plant, but the camera could never quite focus on any part of the flower. Lighting may have been an issue, but at least some of it should have been clear here.
Rug and Wood
The camera does a better job with the light brown wood grain than with the rug. Detail is muddled and strained on the left side of this picture.
Happy Snap
Your editor's forehead is posterized, where the color obviously divides itself. Colors are otherwise drab, though noise isn't too bad in the poorly lit background.
Web browsing - Very good
The HTC Touch Diamond on Sprint uses the Opera browser, which was a great choice for this phone. It managed to churn through all the pages we threw at it, and even complicated or image-heavy pages like our own homepage were no problem. Navigating pages works very similar to how it does on the Apple iPhone. You tap to zoom in, then again to zoom out; you flick pages around with your finger to see more. The phone wasn't quite as responsive as the Apple device: pages seemed to lazily float by when we flicked them without much urgency. Also, layout would sometimes shift during the zoom-in action, which added a lag and some confusion. Still, the browser looked great.
The Opera browser on the HTC Touch Diamond is also very fast. It was much faster in our side-by-side tests than the Apple Safari browser. We tried it against an iPhone 3G, and both phone had between 2-3 bars of their respective service in our lower Manhattan offices. The HTC Touch Diamond took about 17 seconds to open our homepage, thanks to Sprint's fast EV-DO Rev. A network, we assume. The iPhone took more than twice as long, about 43 seconds or so, and sometimes much longer.
GPS Navigation - Very good
GPS navigation services on the HTC Touch Diamond are provided by Sprint Navigator, and the app has been cleaned up a little for the Touch Diamond's interface. It looks nice and clean, though still a but basic for a portable navigator. We're waiting for phones to truly catch up with the PND market, but the Touch Diamond provided a good experience, nonetheless. It did a fine job shifting the display orientation as we rotated into landscape mode, and it tracked us accurately on our commute from Manhattan to suburban New Jersey.
Odds and Ends
There were still some significant problems with the interface, especially as the top top layer tried to interact with everything beneath. If we left the Sprint TV streaming player running when we jumped back to the TouchFLO 3D interface, the sound would still be streaming loud and clear. If we were adjusting settings the last time we left the SMS messaging app, the next time we tried to create a new message from the home screen, we would get the settings screen again, instead of a blank message. Some times the music player would deliver us to a spiffy new TouchFLO-look music library, some times we would get the stodgy old Windows Mobile standard library. These kinks need to be ironed out, hopefully in a software update.
Price and availability
The HTC Touch Diamond is available now on Sprint for $350 with a two-year contract. A $100 mail-in rebate is given when signing up for a qualifying plan.
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We'll start off 2009 with live coverage of Macworld and CES:
Macworld 2009, Jan 5 - 6
CES 2009, Jan 7 - 11
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