Plemix

Hot as pancakes, the HTC Touch
Diamond is definitely in high demand. I (actually not just me, a whole bunch of
guys) bagged for one to do photo shooting and reviews a week before the launch.
And then on this Monday, I found colleagues are waiting for me to get back to
work and “escorted” me to my desk. I thought, what is going on?  Then I saw the
black diamond shaped box sitting on my desk, I know why I am suddenly getting
popular this morning.  Quickly before doing anything else, I unboxed the HTC
diamond and arranged the photo shooting.



In the package it comes with a Battery, a charger, a design matched handsfree, a
USB cable, two styluses, CD and Manual.






In the user interface, there are mainly three rows. The top are the icons to
show you what is being active and the Windows Mobile drop down menu. The big
middle application menu, and the bottom application launcher rolling menu. You
can use your thumb to roll the bottom menu to find the right application. The
reaction for jumping from one app to another app is not very fast. It is around
0.5 to 1 second wait.






The music application in action. The thumb flipping control is fast in here.






Other than the touchscreen, this is the main navigation. The four buttons
located at the corners are clickable. The fun part of the navigation is the
multi-directional round button. It is somewhat like the Nokia D-Pad, it is
pressure sensitive. When circling around the outer rim, you can zoom and unzoom
pictures. When holding the centre button, you can trigger the autofocus. Press
to shoot the picture. The only problem I found is that, the central round button
is a little bit too small. If you have got big thumb like some of my colleagues,
you will press all the directional buttons and the central button all together.
Then of course the HTC Diamond does not know what you wanted to do.

4GB internal memory. Well, you cannot add more. So you may need to do some house
cleaning yourself.






3.2 mega pixel camera, but with no flash. We will show you the picture quality
later on.






Stylus is located at the bottom with magnetic holding. Also the software is
smart enough to know you will want to write something when you pull out the
stylus and launch the writing application.






Windows mobile interface.








Windows Mobile 6.1 professional






Qualcomm 528MHz CPU and 640x480 65K colour resolution screen. The screen quality
is actually very good.






There are three styles of virtual keypads for you to choose from. This one is
phone style. It is so obvious.






For big thumbers, this is a bigger 20 keys Qwerty keyboard. Not sure you will
like it or not.






At last the full Qwerty keyboard layout to choose from.






Camera in Action! When you touch and hold the round navigation button, the focus
area will become green and beep you when focused. When ready, press to shoot.







Photo album interface. You can do the thumb flipping trick again to check the
next or previous photo images. When clicked inside to view a picture, you can
circle on the screen to zoom and hold to drag. This is the nice design of the
Touch FLO 3D user interface.






Actual photo quality. Again, we just resized the picture to fit in with no
retouch on them. You can see the quality of this indoor photo with no flash
light support form the phone. Even the dents on the toys can be clearly seen.






Another shot. I have just shot similar stuff with the Nokia N78. The photo
qualities are comparable. Of course the N78 has flash light support that is
slightly better. For a 3.2 mega pixel camera in a pocket PC, the HTC Diamond is
definitely a winner.






As I am so excited about reviewing the phone, I forgot to describe the physical
impression. The HTC Touch Diamond is extremely thin and small. The diamond
shaped back is actually quite flat to fit on any table. Also the tapped back
makes it good to hold on hand without the squary edge hurting the plam. The 2.8
inches touchscreen is not big but the LCD quality is definitely very good. In
general, the reaction of the new touch interface is quick, a lot quicker than
the previous “Touches”. I will say definitely a recommended Windows Mobile
phone.