HTC Touch Diamond 2, My thoughts on the

HTC Touch Diamond 2

I have had the HTC Touch Diamond 2 for a week now and I am left pretty much on the fence in terms of if I actually like the phone or not. My first impression was great, I liked the look of the phone, I liked the way it displayed information and the touch screen seemed pretty decent even though you had to use the stylus.

However as I used the phone more and more certain features become irritating and actually pushed me to the side of not actually liking the phone myself. Let me get into the finer details then.

The phone really does look great, the 3.2 inch touch screen takes up most of it which is something I really like. The stylus also packs nicely away into the phone which is refreshing seeing that it is a common trend to have one dangling off your phone such as the Samsung Omnia and Nokia N97.

Once you get going with the phone the first thing you have to get used to is the navigation, because it running windows mobile it is similar to any Windows Desktop Operating System with the start menu housing all the programs and then “desktop” shortcuts for the apps that you use the most. Now straight away I hit the sms and email features as well as having a browse on the internet via the built in Opera Mini browser. Once again HTC dominate the smsing arena with their threaded SMS views however this is when I noticed the phones first flaw.

I originally tried the touch screen without the stylus which started getting very irritating because it is pressure sensitive which means clicks when you didnt want and nothing when you did want it. Why this irritated me so much is that you have to use the stylus which makes it impossible to right a message of any sort without having to stop whatever else you are doing. It is near impossible to find a number when you are driving which means you have to pull over, get to the number and then drive again while you speak with the provided hands free kit.

When you get over that, which I finally came to terms with, the phone is actually great. It offers so much in terms of the “office experience” with full Exchange/Outlook synchronization and a very nice web browser provided by Opera Mini. This allows you to really function well when you are away from the office even though it will probably be impossible to whilst you are on the move.

Now every modern mobile phone needs great multimedia functionality and the HTC Touch Diamond 2 does cover that pretty well. With a built in 5MP camera you are no doubt going to be able to snap some very nice pictures with your phone but, and this is a problem we have with all the HTC phones, is that there is no flash. Now any decent photographer knows light is everything and the camera on this phone really performs poorly in low light situations. I am really keen to see a flash on future HTC phones.

The music player does well, it gives you a number of options and allows you to create playlists pretty easily. The built-in speaker allows you to listen to the latest tunes and share it with those around you, and it actually does not sound that bad. Now great, lets make aKing – Against All Odds my ringtone because let’s face it, that is a great song. I am yet to find where to do this if it is even possible which is highly annoying. The looks I get when my phone plays the highly annoying “ring ring” ringtone is enough to make any large man quiver.

All in all the phone is not bad. It does not suit my active lifestyle but it really does fit in nicely to my professional lifestyle and it does the job very well. This is definitely going to be dubbed a business phone and I am sure the Microsoft based users will really enjoy them.

General - 2G Network GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900, 3G Network HSDPA 900 / 2100
Size Dimensions – 107.9 x 53.1 x 13.7 mm
Weight – 117.5 g
Display Type -  TFT resistive touchscreen, 65K colors, 480 x 800 pixels, 3.2 inches
Sound Alert types – Vibration; Downloadable polyphonic, MP3, WAV ringtones
Speakerphone – Yes
Memory
Phonebook Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
Call records Practically unlimited
Internal 288 MB RAM, 512 MB ROM
Card slot microSD (TransFlash)
Data
GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 – 48 kbps
HSCSD No
EDGE Class 10, 236.8 kbps
3G HSDPA, 7.2 Mbps; HSUPA, 2 Mbps
WLAN Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
Bluetooth Yes, v2.0 with A2DP
Infrared port No
USB Yes, miniUSB
Camera
Primary 5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus
Features Touch focus
Video Yes, VGA@15fps
Secondary VGA videocall camera
Features OS Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
Messaging SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Instant Messaging
Browser HTML via Opera Mini
Radio Stereo FM radio with RDS
Games Yes, incl. motion-based + downloadable
Colors Black
GPS Yes, with A-GPS support
Java Yes, MIDP 2.0
Battery
Standard battery, Li-Ion 1100 mAh
Stand-by Up to 500 h
Talk time Up to 5 h