HTC Touch Diamond Review

Interface:

TouchFLO 3D (TF3D) is awesome. The “home screen” is an interface in itself, and users will rarely have to venture outside of its environment. Of course the device is powered by Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, so once you get outside of TF3D the user will find the familiar WM interface of devices past, but like we said there is often little reason to ever leave TF3D.

Along the bottom of TF3D are several tabs. Here you will find Home, People, Messages, Mail, Internet, Photos and Videos, Music, Weather, Settings and Program. While you can just tap to select a tab, they do not all fit on the screen at once, so you will actually place your finger on the bar and slide right or left. The selected tab becomes larger and there is a transparent icon and text over the display to tell you what tab you are on as you glide across through the tab bar. It is very intuitive and slick, and works as advertised. The dedicated Home key on the pad will return you to the main tab whenever you wish.

On the Home tab the user will see a large clock, as well as any missed calls and upcoming calendar appointments. The People tab lets the user set visual speed dials for their contact list. The contact’s assigned picture shows up and the user can flip through them with a swipe down or up on the screen. Messages displays SMS and MMS messages, while Mail displays email accounts. Email messages are previewed as a letter coming out of an envelope, and again the user can scroll through different messages by flicking up and down on the letter. Internet launches the browser, but also displays the YouTube application and any user-defined favorites for quick, one touch access.

Pictures and Videos allow the user to scroll through their albums directly from the main screen. Flicking up and down moves the user through their images and movies, and tapping on one will bring it into full screen mode. When in full-screen the user can rotate the device and pictures will change orientation. From this tab the camera and camcorder can also be launched. Music again puts the media on the homescreen; the user can flip through their album art and play music, as well as access their music library. The album art of upcoming tracks is displayed behind the current one, and flicking up and down again cycles through these tracks.

The Weather tab is very cool. It allows users to add up to 10 cities worldwide and has some slick animations for the current conditions. For instance, when it’s raining the screen will appear to get drops on it before a windshield wipercleans them off. Flicking up and down through the cities plays different animations related to the current conditions. You can also pull the five day forecast for the location. If you want even more information it will launch the browser and take you to AccuWeather’s homepage.

The settings tab is in essence a skinned, watered down version of the standard WM settings screen. Settings available are Sync Data, Sound, Wallpaper, Communications (Comm Manager,) Data (to manage weather download options) and About. The user can also launch All Settings, which takes them to the WM settings menu with all the options. The last tab, Programs, is a simple launcher that allows the user to set up to 18 shortcuts to programs. It shows 9 per screen, to access the second screen the user simply flicks their thumb upward. The user can also launch All Programs, which is a skinned version of the WM Programs menu.


We really, really like TF3D. The interface is silky smooth, animations are modern and slick and it is a very practical interface. The design is simple and intuitive, and the user can forget they are using WM most of the time. In fact, we were so impressed with the interface that we didn’t even notice/remember the Start Menu until well after we were using the phone for a bit. Our only real complaint with it is that when you turn on the Diamond you have to tap the screen to launch TF3D, which takes fifteen seconds or so. We’re perplexed as to why this isn’t an automated process and hopefully HTC will address this in future updates. Windows Mobile is a powerful but clunky platform, so we applaud anything that serves to simplify and hide it. TF3D does a wonderful job of not only hiding WM, but also offering a power and intuitive tool to the Diamond.

While in the TF3D environment everything runs smoothly; animations and transparences and kinetic scrolling all work flawlessly. Now and again the Music or Picture tabs might exhibit lag for a second or so while loading the media, but nothing that took away from the experience. Outside of TF3D, however, we noticed lag while moving through the Windows interface. Given the Diamond’s increased processor, memory and improved video drivers we have almost resigned ourselves to the fact that WM 6.x itself will always run somewhat slow, though we’ll dive deeper into that later. What we’ve seen of Windows Mobile 7 looks promising, but we really hope Microsoft focuses on fluidity which is a major factor in the iPhone’s success.

Phonebook:

Outside of the People tab, the phonebook on the Touch Diamond is standard Windows Mobile fare. From that tab the user can launch the full phonebook, which is identical to what we have seen on past HTC WM devices, such as the Touch. The contacts are listed alphabetically by last name, though the list can be sorted by company as well. Along the right hand side is HTC’s Random Access plug-in, which displays the alphabet top down and the user can run their finger along it to select a certain letter and jump through the contact list. From the phone screen, as you begin to type a number it will match it with your contacts both numerically and alphabetically. For instance, if you type in 866 it will match any 866 numbers but also bring up anybody with a form of Tom in their name.

Contact storage is limited only by system memory, so for all intents and purposes it is limitless. Each contact can store a wealth of information, such as company, job title, picture ID, several different numbers and addresses, multiple emails and IM names, assistant and manager information, customer ID and account numbers, birthdays, anniversaries, spouse and children. And if that’s not enough, you can always add notes. In fact, if you’re on a call with a contact and you pull the stylus out the Diamond will automatically launch the notepad and associate the note taken with that contact.

HTC has created custom screens for incoming and outgoing calls. The outgoing screen displays the contact name and phone number at the top, and to the left of that is the Picture ID (if one is not assigned a default silhouette is used.) There is a grouping of six buttons in the middle- two rows of three- which includes Hold, Add Call, Note, Mute, Speaker and Contacts. At the bottom is a large red End Call button. The incoming screen is a bit plainer; the Picture ID is centered at the top, and below is the contact name and number. A large green Answer and red Ignore button sit below that, and finally is a Mute Call option along the bottom. The Picture ID is not quite as small as a standard Windows Mobile ID is, but it’s still not large. It is larger on the incoming than outgoing screen, and with the VGA resolution the size isn’t really an issue.

Of course this all syncs neatly with Outlook, making contact management that much easier. If the user is connected to an Exchange server two-way Outlook sync can be done over the air.

Voice dialing is handled by Cyberon Voice commander. It is very similar to VoiceSignal, but adds some advanced features such as controlling music playback, checking upcoming appointments and launching applications.

Organizer:

Again, the PIM functionality of the Diamond is the same as other Windows Mobile devices. The calendar is launched from the Home tab. It can be viewed in several ways; Agenda, Day, Week, Month and Year. Adding an appointment is simple, though not exactly finger friendly. Since we’re dealing with the standard Windows Mobile interface here it is best to pull out the stylus to add events.

It is a very advanced calendar, offering everything a user would need and expect including recurrences, reminders, category grouping, sensitivity settings and much more. Notes can also be added to an event, for instance the user can set an appointment for a meeting, then take notes for that meeting within the appointment. That way, the user can simply go back to that calendar event to find the corresponding notes.


The Diamond offers other essential PIM elements such as Tasks, Notes, Voice Recorder and a calculator. These programs are more basic and all work as you would expect them to. There are a few options available for Tasks, for instance setting priorities, reminders, recurrences and categories. Notes can be handwritten or entered via the various keypads. Other than that it and the rest are barebones, which is just how simple programs should be.

We love TF3D, and wish HTC had paid some more attention to the core PIM elements of the Diamond as well. Finger-friendly programs like One Touch Organizer and PocketCM Contacts have made life much easier on WM devices in the past, but with the Diamond’s VGA resolution they do not work properly. Hopefully the WM developer community will again rise up and offer some solutions to this problem.

Messaging:

Messaging is simple and pretty enough on the Touch Diamond. It supports SMS and MMS, and users can set up personal and corporate email accounts. There are separate Messaging (SMS/MMS) and Mail (email) tabs on the TF3D interface, but the user can view all of their mailboxes in one place on the Windows Mobile messaging screen.

The Messaging screen allows users to view the full message onscreen in TF3D. Flicking up and down moves between messages, and tapping a message brings up the threaded conversation in the WM environment, a new feature of WM 6.1. For MMS the media shows up as an attachment, which is launched by its respective application.

On the Mail screen the user sees a different envelope for each email account they have set up. The envelope is open, and the emails appear as letters coming out of the envelope. The user only gets a snippet of the message here, but tapping on it will bring up the full message in the WM environment from which the user can reply.

New SMS, MMS and emails can be initiated from the TF3D interface, but are typed out in the normal WM environment. Email setup is quick and easy; the Diamond supports POP3, IMAP, SMTP and Lotus Domino formats and can utilize Microsoft Direct Push when associated with an Exchange server, allowing for instantaneous mail delivery. Personal account setup is fairly simple; settings are automatically obtained for many common accounts like Gmail and Yahoo and if they cannot be obtained the user will be taken through step-by-step to input the proper servers. If not connected to an Exchange server the user can select a pull interval from every 5 minutes to once a day, or just pull manually.

The onscreen keyboard remains the biggest sticking point for critics, but HTC has revamped their offerings from the original Touch. The 12 and 20 key keypads still remain (like a standard phone and SureType-esque, respectively) but have been reworked a bit. The 12 key T9 keypad, or “Phone Keypad” as HTC is now calling it, has been especially improved. There are now four columns instead of 3, meaning the dialing buttons are smaller, but the space key has been enlarged (our biggest gripe with the Touch) and the buttons are still plenty big for typing. Another large improvement is that users can now select the Full QWERTY HTC keyboard. On the Touch this only appeared when in a password field, but now users can choose it whenever. Despite the small keys it is surprisingly accurate and we were typing error-free right away. The SureType-like “Compact QWERTY” keypad remains unchanged, save for the re-skinning. Other keyboard options are the small Microsoft QWERTY pad, Block Recognizer, Letter Recognizer, Transcriber and of course third-party alternatives like SPB and TouchPal. We still wish HTC offered haptic feedback for their keypads, but at least they are easier to use.



Connectivity and Data:

The Touch Diamond is a Tri-Band GSM device. HTC claims that the quad-band radio found on nearly every past HTC device was a casualty of the Diamond’s diminutive dimensions, but we’re sad to see this move nonetheless. Because of this there will be several variants of the Diamond to support the different bands used in different markets. It features GPRS, EDGE and HSDPA data speeds, the latter maxing out at 7.2Mbit/s.

The Diamond packs a Wi-Fi b/g radio to allow for data transmission when off the cellular network. Native GPS allows the user to get turn-by-turn directions with third party programs such as Google Maps or Garmin. Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR is available for short-range wireless connection, and pairing is usually automatic so the user doesn’t have to enter in passcodes.

For now there is no U.S. HSDPA support so customers who import the device will be relying heavily on the Wi-Fi. The North American version, supporting the 850/1800/1900Mhz bands, is expected in the second half of this year. Furthermore, it appears that the Diamond will also come in a CDMA flavor and be headed to Sprint late this year.

One of the standouts of the Touch Diamond is the browser, powered by Opera. It is a customized version of the yet-to-be-released Opera Mobile 9.5, and unlike Opera Mobile 8.x it is powered by Opera Mini’s Presto engine. Browsing is, in short, fantastic. Complex HTML pages are rendered flawlessly, panning and zooming is fluid and simple, full-screen mode is automatic and it supports tabbed browsing. Pages are loaded as an overview and the user can easily drag the page to pan around. A double tap zooms in on the selected area and another double tap zooms back out. When zoomed in the browser renders text to fit the view, eliminating the need to constantly drag back and forth to read a paragraph. Rotate the device900 in either direction and the page moves to landscape view nearly instantaneously.


When not in full-screen mode there is a menu bar at the bottom with Back, Favorites, Tabs, Home and Menu. At the top of the page is the address bar and stop button, as well as a close tab button. Unfortunately it does not support Flash, and if you move the device around a lot (and especially if you flip it upside-down) it can get confused and pages don’t re-orientate as quickly. We’ve seen this same behavior with the iPhone though, and we have a feeling it can be blamed on the accelerometer getting confused. There is no zoom pinching like in Safari, but Opera has the ability to copy and paste text as well as download files. We’re sure there will be improvements to Safari on the 3G iPhone, but for now Opera Mobile 9.5 is the best mobile browser out there.

Pocket Internet Explorer is of course available as well, but we fail to see why it would ever be used.

The phone syncs with a PC via ActiveSync (Windows XP) or Mobile Device Center (Vista.) Users can choose to sync any number of items, such as contacts, calendar, tasks, favorites, notes, media and more. We tested it with ActiveSync and had no issues syncing with our existing Outlook database. Officially there is no Mac support, but programs such as Missing Sync can remedy this. The phone also gives you a Mass Storage mode option when you connect, enabling use of the device as a USB drive.

Camera:

The Diamond features a 3.2 megapixel main camera with autofocus, as well as a forward facing VGA camera for self shots and video calling. The main camera performed well, with good color representation and crisp lines. There was a bit of blurring at times, but it’s very possible that can be chalked up to shaky hands as other pictures turned out clear. The autofocus is triggered by bringing your finger near the d-pad center button; the camera will focus and pressing the button snaps the shot. There are 5 resolution steps, a two and ten second self timer and the user can choose from predefined white balance settings and adjust the brightness. The camera can shoot with grayscale, sepia or negative effects and there are user preference options such as where to save the files, review duration, etc.




Videos can be recorded in MPEG4 or H.263 formats and can be shot in Small, Medium, Large and CIF (352x288) resolutions. The documentation doesn’t actually specify what Small, Medium and Large resolutions are, but it appears Large is actually 352x288 as well. The camcorder utilizes the autofocus features as well, but as expected the overall quality was not on par with the camera. For a cell phone it was above average, there was some pixilation which got worse as you pan around, but it was plenty good for YouTube and general web use. The user can again change white balance settings, adjust the brightness, change the effect and set a few preferences, but overall the settings are minimal.

Multimedia:

HTC offers a custom music player and album viewer that is integrated with TF3D, but when media files are opened through the File Explorer Microsoft Picture Viewer and Windows Media Player serve as the default players. HTC Album (the picture/video player) is very good, but the music player has some shortcomings.

HTC Album allows users to view pictures and video full screen. Turn the Diamond on its side and the picture follows suit- gone is drawing stupid circles to get the picture to rotate!- and you can scroll through your media with the flick of your thumb. The video player is very similar to the iPhone. Videos play in full-screen landscape mode and tapping the video brings up transparent controls. They look amazing on the crisp, VGA screen.

The music player looks nice enough, but isn’t the simplest program to use. From the Music tab on the homescreen you can control your music. Album art is displayed for the songs, and when you flick the art up or down you move forward and back between tracks. However, this is not like Cover Flow where you can scroll through the albums by their art, then bring up the album’s track list and play from there.

The library works like TF3D, with tabs along the bottom. In the library you can sort by artist, album, song, genre and composer. You can create playlists, but otherwise you can either play all the songs at once or a single album at a time. When you play all songs they are sorted alphabetically regardless of album. We prefer Windows Media Player and its library, which allow you to play all albums in alphabetical order while staying true to the original track lists. There is an tab for purchased music, but there is no store available.


One issue many users are bound to run into is album art. Anyone who has used Cover Flow without properly tagged songs know there are a bunch of ?’s on the screen, and the same is true with HTC’s music player. Making the matter worse is its seeming inability to read embedded art. Even though the .mp3s we loaded were tagged with art the player didn’t recognize it and we had to actually add the image file to the folder and rename the file folder.*. Even still, this didn’t work for a handful of albums and we were stuck with the dreaded ?. The homescreen integration is nice, but HTC has some work to do on the music player.

The MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, WAV, and AMR-NB audio codecs are supported. There is no 3.5mm jack so the user is restricted to miniUSB headphones, a set of which is included in the package. The quality isn’t bad, on par with included iPod headphones, but they will most likely be uncomfortable to those with medium and smaller ears.

There is an FM tuner as well, though the included stereo headphones must be used as they contain an integrated FM antenna. The interface is clean and displays station and song information. The reception is weak, but it’s still a nice feature to have.


One very nice feature of the Diamond is the YouTube player. It is a stand-alone program nearly identical to the one found on the iPhone. There are four tabs: All Videos, Bookmarks, History and Search. All Videos is further broken down into Most Viewed, Top Rated and Featured. Videos launch in full-screen mode, and like the iPhone tapping the screen brings up transparent controls. The scroll wheel around the d-pad is active here as well, though it’s not as smooth as we’d like. The video quality was surprisingly excellent, though we were running over Wi-Fi. Still, the videos looked superb on the VGA screen and audio was good and in-sync.

Teeter is maybe our favorite feature of the phone, and really shows off the accelerometer. It is a Labyrinth-style game, where you have a ball that you need to tilt through a maze and avoid the holes to get to the end. Not only is it a fun game, but it really showcases the phones abilities. For instance, when you hit a wall there is a dull thud you feel that truly seems as if you’re hitting the wall with a metal ball. We imagine it’s done though haptic feedback, but it sure feels like a solid thump and not a vibration. (Yes we are aware there is a version of this for Jailbroken iPhones, but Teeter is better. ) Eventually you begin to play not on a flat surface, but on a 3D rendering of the Diamond’s faceted battery cover!

Software:

The Diamond offers 192MB DDR SDRAM and 256MB ROM, with 4GB of internal storage in lieu of a microSD slot. As we noted earlier, navigating TF3D is smooth but the Windows Mobile environment is decidedly less so at times. One thing we did notice is that out of the box 65% of the memory was in use, compared to around 25-30% when we reviewed the CDMA Touch. This certainly plays a factor in the sluggishness. By disabling TF3D we were able to get down to around 40% memory use after a restart, and navigating through Windows Mobile was noticeably snappier, though still not perfect. Interestingly enough, after disabling and restarting, when we reinitiated TF3D there was only about 50% of memory in use. While there does not appear to be any major memory leakage, HTC seems to have some memory tomfoolery on their hands. The good news is that issues like this can be addressed with software optimization, let’s hope that HTC does just that in future updates.

There are loads of programs available for Windows Mobile, though many of them will not work with the Diamond due to its VGA display. It is usually a simple fix by the writer, but lots of programs (such as the aforementioned and beloved One Touch Organizer) are not supported anymore. The Diamond is not the first WM VGA device however, and as VGA becomes increasingly popular you will see more and more programs pop up.

Out of the box there are some notable programs, such as Office Mobile, Adobe Reader and Flash Lite. Office Mobile allows users to edit Word and Excel files (including Office 2007 documents,) while Power Point is for viewing only. JBlend Java is also included, allowing the user to install Java midlets such as Mobile Gmail.

Performance:

The sound quality on the Diamond, both incoming and outgoing, was excellent. Callers said it might be the best we’ve ever sounded on a cell phone, even when we were on our Samsung WEP500 Bluetooth headset. On our end the caller sounded crystal clear, almost as if they were in the room with us. Speakerphone performance was good, but not as excellent as without. On our end the user sounded clear but a little soft, and callers said we sounded “somewhat tinny but not any different than a landline speakerphone.”

The battery life is rated at 5.5 hours of GSM talk time or 4.5 of WCDMA. We were able to achieve slightly higher than the rated 5.5 hours while using T-Mobile here in the US.

The reception, on the other hand, wasn’t so hot. We tried both an AT&T and T-Mobile but had issues with in-building reception. With AT&T we could barely, and often couldn’t, hold a signal even outdoors in places where we know AT&T works well. Furthermore, some users may not be able to get EDGE data with AT&T.
T-Mobile was a decidedly better experience, though still not great in areas such as office buildings or malls. For now we are forced to use the 1900Mhz band, which does not penetrate buildings as well as 850. This could have played a factor in our reception issues so we will reserve our final judgment for when the US version comes out. For now, however, importers beware!

Conclusion:

We are overall very impressed with HTC’s latest super-phone. TouchFLO 3D is an amazing overlay that proves to be much more than eye candy. Opera Mobile is the best mobile web experience we’ve encountered yet. It’s a very powerful device for both the business user and general consumer alike, and staying fully connected and entertained on the go has never been easier. The size and weight couldn’t be more perfect. HTC set out to raise the bar and they undoubtedly have.

The Diamond is far from perfect though, and the iPhone still has it beat in some important areas. Like we noted, we’ll reserve our reception judgment until a proper US model comes out. While TouchFLO 3D is nearly perfect, the lag when navigating the Windows environment needs to be addressed. HTC falls well short on their music player too, which is the iPhone’s strength. Until a product is built from the ground up to compete with the iPhone there is little chance that it will succeed in doing so. The Diamond will be wildly successful, most likely surpassing the Touch’s 2M units sold, but in the end it is still in a different class than Apple’s offering.

To get the device, go here.