Jenneth Orantia08 August 2008, 9:13 AM
Did somebody say iPhone killer? HTC's latest handset is a formidable smartphone with just enough features and style to take on the Messiah of mobiles.
HTC has a reputation for producing some of the best-looking smartphones in the business, but the svelte Touch Diamond – launched less than a month after the iPhone 3G – ups the ante considerably. It’s tiny compared to other smartphones, particularly those that run Windows Mobile 6 Professional, yet it leads the pack when it comes to features: 7.2Mbps HSDPA, 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, A-GPS, Bluetooth 2.0, 4GB of internal storage and a 3.2-megapixel camera.
Physically, the Touch Diamond is a stunner, with a luminous 2.8in touchscreen display on the front and a pattern of raised edges on the back. The screen deserves special mention: encased behind a layer of glass that extends to the phone’s outer edges, it has a larger-than-average 480 x 640-pixel resolution that makes graphics pop off the screen. The front and back of the Diamond has a glossy sheen that looks striking when you first take it out of the box, but as with all shiny surfaces it quickly gets greasy with fingerprints.
The upsized resolution shows off the Diamond’s fancy TouchFLO 3D front-end, which is basically a plug-in that lets you do lots of tasks without leaving the Today screen. A bar at the bottom of the screen lets you move between the different sections by sliding your finger across it, and the graphics are even better than the iPhone’s: thumbnails for photo speed dials are arranged like a stack of Polaroids, email previews are displayed in white envelopes, and the album art for music tracks is lined up similarly to Apple’s Cover Flow.
Windows Mobile 6 Professional is still lurking in the background though, and if you want to write an email, add a new contact or appointment, or even change the Diamond’s ring tone, you’re back to using the old interface. You can tap most buttons using your finger, but we found the software keyboard too small to use without a stylus. The Diamond takes a leaf out of the iPhone’s book by magnifying each letter when you press it, but as it’s narrower than the iPhone and doesn’t have an auto-correct feature, you’ll need to resort to the stylus if you want to type quickly.
The Diamond is equipped with all the usual productivity-related software, including the excellent Opera Mobile 9.5 web browser, but it’s also well-endowed on the multimedia front. The YouTube client is near-identical to the one on the iPhone, only you can specify the video playback quality between high quality and fast download. The Telstra-customised Diamond also works seamlessly with Foxtel Mobile and BigPond TV, both of which launch the Streaming Media application in full-screen landscape. Unfortunately, the built-in speaker is weak and distorts at full volume, and since the headphone jack uses a mini-USB connector, you’re limited to using the supplied earbuds or a set of wireless Bluetooth headphones.
The Diamond uses a 528MHz Qualcomm MSM7201A processor with 192MB of DDR SDRAM and 256MB of system memory. Contrary to earlier reports of the Diamond’s sluggishness, we found performance to be responsive for most tasks, even with lots of programs open simultaneously. But there are other usability quirks: the software keyboard takes up over half the screen so you can only see one line at a time when writing an SMS, the screen automatically turns off as soon as a call is connected (the iPhone does the same thing, but only while the phone is against your ear), and while the TouchFLO 3D interface is fun the first few times you use it, the touchstrip is fiddly to use. We also think HTC should’ve included a microSD expansion slot to supplement the Diamond’s 4GB of internal storage.
So how does it ultimately compare to the iPhone? Smaller dimensions make it appealing for those turned off by the iPhone’s size, and it offers many of the features missing from the iPhone, like copy-and-paste functionality, Bluetooth stereo, MMS, video recording, FM radio and a replaceable battery. On a multimedia basis, the iPhone has it beat thanks to more storage, a larger screen, and a standard 3.5mm earphone jack. For business use, on the other hand, features like superior Microsoft Exchange support, full multi-tasking and an open file system structure make the Touch Diamond a better candidate.