HTC Touch Diamond 2 Review

Did you know that the original Touch Diamond from HTC was the best selling Windows Mobile device of all time? Honestly, I didn’t, but it makes sense. The original Diamond Touch was sleek, sexy, and for a device that runs on a Windows Mobile, it was amazingly finger-friendly. And now, HTC has come up with the Touch Diamond 2, and does it do as well or better than its predecessor?

Let’s start with the hardware. The front of the HTC Touch Diamond 2 has a beautiful high quality metal finish that maintains the phone’s sleek and sexy reputation but now we can add sophisticated to that. The HTC Touch Diamond 2, while smaller than the iPhone and the Samsung Omnia, is slightly bigger and heavier than the original and yet still comfortable to hold. It is 4.25 in high by 2.09 in wide by 0.54 in thick compared to 4 in x 2 in x 0.6 in of the original. Diamond 2 is 4.15 oz while the first is 4 oz but the former’s profile is still slim enough to fit into ordinary jean pockets. But the real attention grabber is its 3.2 in screen is bigger and sharper at 480×800 pixels. The images and text practically grab you with crisp, vibrant color and the touch screen is highly responsive.

Looking at the back of the Diamond 2, you can see that it no longer has the diamond cut edges that the original was named after. Many did not like the uneven back because the original phone never sat flat on the desk because of it. The new black plastic of Diamond 2 just attracts too much finger prints, though. HTC also made an upgrade on the built in camera from 3.5 to 5 megapixels with a camcorder mode, as well. Picture quality was quite impressive but video quality was a bit dark and grainy.

As for input methods, the Touch Diamond 2 has an onscreen QWERTY keyboard, as well as a landscape keyboard. It also has a built-in accelerometer which allows the screen to change orientation from portrait to landscape when you rotate the phone. This works only for Web pages, e-mail, photos and video, though and not for all applications and it lags for about a second or two before changing. The on-screen keys give a haptic feedback when touched, so you’ll know when the screen has registered the command. With that said, it’s still not the iPhone – some said they couldn’t type fast because they made a lot of mistakes with the rather cramped keyboard. Of course we all get better with practice but still, typing on it never really got comfortable. With calls, it worked perfectly with great audio quality, minimal dropped calls and generally clear call reception. Battery life is that not fantastic but despite heavy use of push mail, web browsing and some calls, it could easily get through the day without a need to charge.

Both the Touch Diamond and the Diamond 2 run on the same OS: Windows Mobile 6.1. While the former device debuted HTC’s TouchFLO 3D, the Diamond 2 carries the latest PeopleCentric version of the GUI. It may initially look the same as that of the Touch Diamond but TouchFLO has gradually evolved from a straightforward skinned launcher to an environment which hides most of Windows Mobile 6.1’s key features. The integration of contacts, text messages, emails etc are great features but still, running on the 6.1 are still this device’s biggest flaw. It makes the device slow, buggy and nearly unusable because opening pages are slow and Flash is unpredictable when sometimes it works but most times it doesn’t. Windows Mobile 6.1 just bogs the device down almost to a standstill.

So should you buy it? HTC Touch Diamond 2 is still the best keyboard-less Windows phone in the market today. HTC has produced another excellent device: high build quality, stunning screen and the sensitivity of the resistive screen is the nearest thing to capacitive we have seen. The best news is that it will be updated with a Windows 6.5 soon so this should make the HTC Touch Diamond 2 more appealing.

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