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HTC’s Diamond, or Touch Diamond, depending on who you talk to, is the latest iPhone challenger, but can it compete against a new 3G model or the plethora of other new smartphone handsets out there?
Looking at the tech sheet, virtually everything is better than the competition. Compared to the iPhone it is smaller, has got a three megapixel camera over two megapixel one, offers a faster HSDPA connection speed, promises a VGA quality screen, better keyboard options and Bluetooth A2DP so you can wirelessly connect stereo headphones to listen to your tunes.
The Diamond runs Windows Mobile 6.1, although from the customisation HTC has done to the operating system, you wouldn’t know it.
Sitting on top of Windows Mobile is HTC’s 3D TouchFlo software, which is incredibly graphical. You can quickly scroll through the available applications via a carousel at the bottom of the screen. Although not available at all times, when it is on screen you can access virtually all the phone’s main features like the picture viewer, music player, contacts book or browser.
Elsewhere the graphical interface doesn’t stop. Weather, a popular feature on the company’s Touch device, is back once again, this time in glorious technicolor. Everything from contacts that offer photos as if it was in a Rolodex to the image browser that sees photos cascading down the screen like the photo screensaver on the PS3 makes this phone very, very, consumer focussed.
HTC has created a device that is the best iPhone challenger we’ve seen to date and offers those not keen to switch to Apple or O2 the chance to get touchy feely with their phone.
Overall, HTC has somehow managed to take the Microsoft OS and make it everything but – a good thing in our mind. It’s a thumbs up from us.
