HTC Touch Diamond..!! Dum Hein

The Touch brand from the HTC stable has certainly evolved. From the Touch to the Dual and now the Touch Diamond, it feels like a planned strategy.

The Touch Diamond fares far better than other phones in HTC's Touch series, so calling it a "successor" wouldn't be strictly accurate. Having reviewed the two previous Touch phones already, I will stick to those features that are unique to this one


Design

The interface is refreshingly new and chic. The phone is one of the thinnest in the Touch stable, and will hence appeal to the style-conscious. It’s important to keep in mind that the Diamond has an internal memory of 4GB, which really works to its advantage.



At 102 x 51 x 11.5 mm, this phone has shed a lot of bulk, and is easily the lightest Windows Mobile phone in the market at 110g. The front comprises the 2.8-inch touchscreen with the lower band housing the four function keys and the navigation button




The earphone jack, USB and the charging slot can be found at the bottom. The socket housing the stylus has accommodated a refreshing change with the inclusion of a mild magnetic effect, to ensure that your stylus doesn’t fall off.





Features and Performance

The phone works on Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, and like any HTC phone, this one too comes heavily customized. Foremost is the TouchFLO 3D version 3.0. It’s evolved from the original Touch days, and there’s more to it than you'd guess.

The phone has192MB DDR SDRAM, 256MB ROM, and improved processor power with a Qualcomm MSM7201A 528MHz processor.



Unlike the earlier TouchFLO models, the current interface is a lot more user-friendly. Since using it takes up a lot of the phones resources, it was always a conscious decision between what's flashy and what's feasible – for its slow performance often made it a real pain.




The TouchFLO interface looks and feels pretty good. As I said, there’s no reason to avoid it, for it's fast and fun to use. For instance, while reading messages, you can just "pinch" and send the message flying up or down to the next or previous message. Viewing pictures using TouchFLO is also fun.

The bottom band now displays more than just the current page you are on, and at any given point of time you can just press your stylus and keep rotating the various tabs – Mail, Music, Settings, Browser etc. You can stop at whatever you need to access directly, so there’s no need to go past all the tabs to get to the one you want.

The TouchFLO interface looks and feels pretty good. As I said, there’s no reason to avoid it, for it's fast and fun to use. For instance, while reading messages, you can just "pinch" and send the message flying up or down to the next or previous message. Viewing pictures using TouchFLO is also fun.



Multimedia

The music quality has undergone some significant changes. It not only sounds a lot crisper, but at the same time looks and feels a lot less hostile. Since there’s 4GB of space built-in, you can start enjoying music immediately.



It also supports the A2DP profile, and having tested it, I have to say the music sounds much better with a heavy-duty Bluetooth headset. It also has a FM radio with RDS, which works fine.



Battery

After considering all these new features, it’s disheartening to learn that the phone's battery life is not adequate. Of course, if you are a heavy-duty power user, I would recommend that you carry a charger with you, or buy another for office use. The phone can be charged through the USB too, though it takes a lot more time


Price

At Rs 29,500, HTC Touch Diamond is really expensive. Still, considering the great looks and features on offer, I'd say it's worth the price.

Rating

I would rate it 8/10 for display looks,7/10 for price ,and 8/10 for features.

In total:7.6/10