Reviews and tests / Review: HTC Touch Diamond

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Review: HTC Touch Diamond Microsoft is currently the absolute leader on the global software market. Bill Gates left the company on an economical rise – more than 90% of the world’s personal computers run a Windows operating system. Of course, the giant is energetically opposed by Google and Yahoo on the market of web advertisement, and the free Firefox browser is Internet Explorer’s worst nightmare, but that’s not of a big deal against the power of the immense corporation. But a few spheres of the company’s business display weak spots. For instance, the Windows Mobile platform is having hard time. Despite all the effort, it lags far behind Symbian, and the 6.1 contained almost no improvements. HTC traditionally keeps the title of the WM market leader. It occupies a sable niche, looking not to big on the scale of the whole telecom market, yet providing the company with enough revenues to subsist, evolve and enjoy a happy existence.

Video Reviwe Design and Ergonomics Connectivity Storage Screen TouchFLO 3D Miscellaneous software Camera Performance Battery Market Outlook SMAPE's opinion HTC Touch Diamond makes a revolution in the world of Windows Mobile. Portable and powerful, it’s fully worth of its price. The short battery life and the casing’s vulnerability to dirt and grease are the two and only weak sides, but that doesn’t make a difference. In the rest of the aspects, the gadget is an ultimate winner. Advantages:  Elegant design  Compact weight and measures  Powerful CPU  VGA screen  Motion sensor  TouchFLO 3D  4 Gb of ROM  192 Gb of RAM Disadvantages:  High price  Vulnerability to dirt  No storage expansion slot  Average camera

In earlier days it felt like WM PDAs sold badly just because they were hard to find in retail stores; now it becomes clear that the poor promotion results in low loyalty of the audience, being the chief factor to blame for the low sales. The existing demand for WM products will never bring enough profit to make the manufacturers consider investing extra money into a more active promotional policy, making an endless loop of sorts. Until the vendors unite in an attempt to fix the situation through extra expenses and bold force, WM PDAs will keep the stereotype of exotic, niche products.

Nokia are currently investing immense amounts of effort and money into promoting their Eseries products, while HTC is probably the only company which attempts popularizing their WM solutions, but is far even from negotiating with carrier companies (in a manner similar to Intellinyncy Nokia) or initiating partner training programs (like Nokia Academy). The market of smart devices is a young and developing one, needing much care and support. The vendors resorted to the path of the least resistance – their products mostly receive serious improvements in the aspect of the user interface, up to the point where a showy interface becomes a key selling point. The Touch model is but the first product which sprouted from this ideology.

Sales are the best indicator of success; the offer wasn’t revolutionary, yet the evolutionary changes were numerous enough to give the product a good chance for success. A year later touch-responsive interfaces debuted with the new products by Asus, E-TEN, Gigabyte and others. While these companies are feverishly duplicated the old ideas (showing little concern about making up new ones), HTC goes on with further improvements to their key technology. They took little liberty with the old concept though, also showing no signs of a revolution.

However, Diamond can be called a revolution within the niche of WM PDAs. On par with Samsung i900 it shares the title of a most innovative Windows Mobile PDA. HTC will keep an absolute technological leadership till the release of i900. The Diamond device is equipped with a VGA screen, a 528 MHz screen, a 192 Mb of RAM and more than 4 Gb of ROM, an accelerometer, a wide range of connectivity features, etc., etc. The only outdated thing in the package is a 3.2 Mp camera, we already saw something of the sort in Touch Cruise. Another not to logical point is the use of a modest 900 mAh battery.

Talking in advance, let’s check that i900 is revolutionary in a slightly different sense – finally a WM PDA got a decent camera which is something never witnessed before. It’s a modern 5 Mp auto-focusing unit, which is in a full correspondence to the latest trends in the world of telecom. Further you will find a detailed comparison between the two products; the two models are direct competitors with comparable release dates, HTC predating the rival by a margin of about a month. By August or September, the prices will drop to a roughly same level. So far the specifications of Touch Diamond (which on the contrary to all the popular misbeliefs isn’t a continuation of Cruise but is in fact a jump to a whole new level of technology) are as follows:

All the accessories from the sales package are stylized after the general design of the handset. This also affects optional items like the cradle as well. The obligatory content of the sales package is rather scarce: a charger, a data cable, a headset, a software disk and a printed manual.

Let's make up a list of the currently available articles about Diamond products:

HTC Touch Diamond Announcement Reportage
HTC Touch Diamond Preview
HTC TouchFLO 3D Preview
Microsoft and Orange speak at the announcement of HTC Touch Diamond
HTC Touch Diamond vs Apple iPhone & Co
HTC Touch Diamond Russian Announcement Reportage

HTC Touch Diamond Video Footage

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Design and Ergonomics

The appearance of Diamond is something very different form the preceding Touch models; it doesn’t even share any similarity to any other HTC product, or any other known PDA on a wider scale. The only conventional thing about it is that it uses a candy bar form factor. The back panel is remarkable for an extremely unusual faceted relief. This has a small drawback: should the handset happen to be resting on desktop or a similar flat surface, you’d have a hard time using the stylus (and finger alike), for the construction is very unstable.

So far only one color version is available – the color being black – an no other color options are planned for the future. This variant is most neutral and looks really good. The surface of the casing is rather vulnerable to fingerprints and grease because of a glossy coating. This makes a real nuisance strongly unwelcomed in an image phone. A matte-coated version used to be in the works, yet was rejected because of design concerns – it is reported to have been looking to unimpressive. No case or cleaning accessories come in the sales box, so you have to take care of that on your own.

The assembly quality of Diamond is remarkably good. A muffled screech is heard on pressing against the center of the back panel, this fully owing to the concave profile of the said part. The sharp edges get rounded over time as the plastic wears away… this might damage the impression but on the larger scale, everything is fine, the plastic sports a really good quality upon a closer examination. The plastic parts are held together in a metal framework which makes the handset very durable. That’s an important point, since image phones are generally presumed to be fragile.

The controls are rather few: a volume rocker on the left side, a power button on the upper edge, and a data cable slot on the bottom edge. Even the camera button is missing, substituted by the navigation button. The latter, by the way, is surrounded by a circular touch-responsive area which serves for scrolling in various applications, a variation of the NaviWheel concept which originated in Nokia Nseries products. The element can be used to scale documents and zoom in the camera mode, etc. The ergonomics isn’t brilliant, it takes substantially more effort than in the case of a Nokia phone.

Photos suggest that all the buttons are based on the touch technology, but that’s not true. Most of the controls utilize conventional mechanics, they’re just all consolidated in the form of a solid slab. The side buttons (along with the central button) are no problem, but the up/down/left/right keys feel a bit clumsy. There are too small and sunken into the casing. The Diamond device makes use of light indication: the central element displays a pulsing light as a way to remind of a missed call or a new incoming message. The side buttons also pulse, something previously unseen in WM PDAs.

Another important point is the gadget’s overall compactness and mobility. When we first saw the new product in London, we were really doubtful if it really was the technology-stuffed, famed Diamond. But it finally proved real that a skilled team of engineers can stick all of the advanced technological units into a small and lightweight casing sporting a thickness slightly above a centimeter. That’s one of HTC’s greatest achievements of recent times. The handset feels very comfortable in the hand and isn’t too bulky to be annoying when carried in a pocket. This goodness comes at the cost of no compromises – you get a touch interface, a 2.8’’ screen and so on. The mobility of Diamond is really astonishing.

It would be logical to crown this section of the article with a comparison to rival devices like iPhone, but that’s a topic reserved for an independent article already available on our site.

HTC Touch Diamond vs Apple iPhone & Co

Connectivity

Diamond bases off a powerful Quallcomm platform which even includes an RDS-supporting FM tuner. The device is designed to work in GSM 850/900/1800/1900 and UMTS 850/1900/2100 networks, supports GPRS/EDGE as well as HSDPA.

The wireless communication can be done through the available Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR and Wi-Fi units. Both are working quite well. The implementation of the A2DP profile is perfect – the sound is loud, of a high quality, without any noise or such like problems. Unfortunately the sound signal isn’t automatically interrupted on the release of a connection; it’s automatically redirected to the onboard speaker instead, which on some occasions may feel annoying. Other supported Bluetooth profiles include:

- File Transfer
- Generic Access
- Generic Object Exchange
- Handsfree
- Headset
- HID
- Object Push
- Personal Area Networking
- Serial Port
- A2DP
- Audio/Video Remote Control
- SAP (SIM card access profile)

The software part of the connectivity block of features is notable for the availability of a new manager application; it now looks a lot better yet the functionality is still the same with Touch Cruise.

The interface of the FM tuner has also been updated; now it looks better and more user friendly. The signal quality stays on a high level. The service can be automatically stopped with a preset timer. Automatic station search and save settings are available.

HTC no longer yields to E-TEN in Mio in the aspect of GPS – the new Qualcomm platform tells of itself. The positioning software, on the other hand, doesn’t look too impressive – just Google Maps and nothing better. The manufacturer switches the GPS software provider for a third time.

Storage

The device is equipped with a 192 Mb RAM and 256 Mb ROM; but that’s not just all. An extra storage unit of 4 Gb is integrated right into the phone, making the model a full-blown multimedia combine. On the other hand, you don’t get a memory expansion slot, which is a nasty thing. Still the available storage is quite enough in most situations, but you can’t just take out the larger storage unit out of the phone and stick it into another device as you would do with a conventional flash card.

A 192 Mb of RAM is a great plus, never previously seen in a WM PDA. Such a big RAM size is fully justified even if you aren’t planning to use any heavy applications. Even the simplest Internet Explorer eats up to 4-5 Mb of RAM per opened page, to say nothing about more sophisticated applications.

Moreover, the net weight of Windows Mobile itself amounts to 25 Mb if we don’t take the miscellaneous programs into account. TouchFLO takes another 30 Mb. Finally it becomes clear that the standard 128 Mb (to say nothing of 64 Mb) would be simply not enough .

Screen

Finally HTC gives VGA screen a mass usage in their products, which previously was an exclusive trait of E-TEN, Gigabyte and other lesser market players. The real life advantage isn’t that serious, yet a certain VGA fandom exists. HTC have already tried to use VGA screens in some of the earlier models, yet the attempts never reached such a massive scale and success.

The screen is powered by the TFT technology and sports a diagonal of 2.8’’. The color palette is 65K. The image quality is excellent, above what E-TEN has to offer. The screen doesn’t look well in the sun though, yet still good for a WM smartphone (Cruise does slightly worse in this aspect)

TouchFLO 3D

The TouchFLO 3D graphical shell sports some rather notable changes from the original TouchFLO, if not cardinal ones. None of the other existing Touch models are compatible with this version (let alone any other PDA). Diamond is the only and key solution by HTC supporting such functionality, Touch Pro being its keyboard-equipped variant with minimal changes.

The standard WM shell is still available as an alternate option, TouchFLO remaining a mere plugin. However the shell functionality has been vastly expanded. A number of new tabs are introduced. The application shortcuts make up a horizontal row. The active screen is animated with a variety of 3D effects. Listing photos or contacts, for instance, uses this sort of animation. In this aspect, Diamond looks a way better than iPhone, and more practical as well.

The weather application is something we especially liked. Once the temperature goes below zero, the screen appears visually frosted; a ‘windshield wiper’ of sorts will rub away the raindrops from the screen on a rainy day. This introduces a feel of interactivity. We can’t recall a better implementation of the interface.

Despite all the purely aesthetical features, HTC managed to preserve the ergonomics on a high level. The controls are optimized for finger action, so you will only seldom (better say almost never) need a stylus, even for text input. The updated TouchFLO has been imbued with a variety of new functions. The browser and gallery allow for quick zooming with the touch-responsive circle surrounding the navigation button.

TouchFLO3D showcased in a comparison to the interface of Apple iPhone:

Miscellaneous software

HTC Touch Diamond ranks among the first PDAs utilizing WM 6.1. An article relating the whole change history (also covering the preinstalled software package) is available on our site. This article only touches on the exclusive software coming with this particular model.

Diamond is the first PDA to feature Opera 9.5, which comes along with a copy of Internet Explorer. The browser offers a fully functional QWERTY keyboard and excellent web surfing possibilities. A double tap on a random spot of the screen serves to instantly zoom at that point; the screen orientation is promptly changed as you sway the handset around, thanks to the onboard accelerometer.

The support for Flash animations is in a way limited – certain .flv files failed to play on a specific social network site, yet Youtube worked just fine. The browser interface is extremely handy.

A dedicated Youtube manager is available. The options are few; everything is very intuitive: search, sort, bookmark and quality setting. A good addition considering the availability of Wi-Fi.

Teeter is another exclusive Diamond application, being in essence a game (analogous to the well-known iPhone game) where you have to pass a ball through a labirynth avoiding the holes. This game makes an extensive use of the accelerometer capability. On touching the walls, the ball responds with a vibro signal.

The other useful Diamond applications include the MP3 trimmer applet for cutting longer mp3 tracks into shorter fragments for use as ringtones. An RSS reader and audio equalizer are also available.

The gallery uses a new interface yet the old functionality is preserved unchanged (of course fully exploiting the accelerometer capability). A ZIP archiver and Adobe Acrobat are traditionally available.

All the standard Windows Mobile elements were modified to better fit the Touch controls. The Today menu has grown bigger, a vertical alphabet index bar was added to the right side of the contact list, menus can be browsed through with the finger and so on. A few extra possibilities were added.

The system shortcut menu appear on tapping on the status bar. A few extra icons of a comfortably large size appear. The same goes to the sound volume controls – a full-size indicator is provided for.

The task manager has become more finger-friendly, the icons and control elements are now bigger. A memory usage indicator is available; it’s possible to terminate a selected process or all of them at once, or switch to the settings tab using an appropriate shortcut.

There are several input methods available. On par with the standard ways common to all WM products, the brand Touch keyboards are available in 12, 20 and QWERTY variants. The latter isn’t a full-screen one (unfortunately) which results in an ergonomics below the level of iPhone; a smaller screen is another factor telling on this.

Camera

The camera is probably the sole weak point found on the whole Diamond specifications sheet. Sony Ericsson, Samsung and Motorola announced their upcoming 8 Mp products, but Diamond offers a modest 3.2. The viewfinder if very inert, the flash is missing. Video clips turn out in a low quality. It’s a pity HTC neglected the cam while upgrading their platform. A 5 Mp unit would look much more in place, like the one Samsung 900 has on board.

There’s no lens guard available – so keep an eye on the dust which progressively degrades the image quality as it sticks to the lens. The viewfinder uses a horizontal orientation, the spacious touchscreen is used for configuration and controls. The shoot button is single-positioned. The device can take shots at resolutions up to 2048x1536 and record videos up to 352x288. A 4x digital zoom is available.

The settings come in a pleasing variety, the interface is very handy.

Let’s give a few photo samples shot at maximum quality settings:

As you see, Diamond isn’t doing well as it goes to the cam power. Unless you’re shooting in perfect lighting conditions, most pictures get blurred. Macro looks pretty god though, due to a perfect auto-focusing. The cam response speed is average, generally quicker than in most other WM smartphones. We hope HTC will stop neglecting the camera aspect, following Samsung’s example. Let’s say it again – for the time being, Diamond offers a camera not too bad if we compare it to the cameras of other WM smartphones, for the platform on the whole drags behind the current edge of telecom technology. Below you will see a few comparative samples, pitting the gadget versus Toshiba G810 which is also equipped with a 3.2 Mp auto-focusing cam:

HTC Touch Diamond / Toshiba G810

Performance

Diamond bases off the Qualcomm MSM 7201A chipset. The CPU runs at 528 MHz. This combined with a large amount of RAM and an integrated graphics accelerator gives the device enough power to run the TouchFLO 3D shell in a very smooth and neat manner. Apple iPhone has a faster running interface, though it should be kept in mind that it’s less graphically advanced and, consequently, consumes less computing power. When it gets to things other than just the interface, Diamond proves its status as the fastest WM PDA having no problems with playing hi-definition VGA videos, for example. Just have a look at the test scores:

Battery Life

It’s hard to say why HTC decided to supply their technologically advanced brainchild with a 900 mAh battery. Of course, there’s a great deal of power economy because of the multiple hardware and software optimizations, yet nothing is able to fully make up for what a more capacious battery would give. As of now, the battery life test brings very modest results:

Market outlook

As claimed by HTC themselves, Diamond will sell even better than the original Touch used to, scoring a minimum sales volume of 4 million copies (minding the high price!) Anyway, this piece of technology is clearly one of the most expensive offers available on today’s market, even Samsung i900 is going to bear a less shocking price label. That’s exactly what’s going to keep Diamond from becoming a mass product, at least in our opinion. Diamond will remain a deal for the reach unless some day HTC decides to do a price cut.

The release of Samsung i900 expected in a term ranging from August to September will likely force HTC to drop the price of Diamond below 550 euros, otherwise Diamond will get into an disadvantageous position against the competing solution by the Korean manufacturer. As for now, the lack of a competition gives HTC enough freedom to sell the product for about 750 euros, which oughtn’t to make it anywhere less popular to harm the sales.

SMAPE's opinion

HTC Touch Diamond makes a revolution in the world of Windows Mobile. Portable and powerful, it’s fully worth of its price. The short battery life and the casing’s vulnerability to dirt and grease are the two and only weak sides, but that doesn’t make a difference. In the rest of the aspects, the gadget is an ultimate winner.
+ Elegant design
+ Compact weight and measures
+ Powerful CPU
+ VGA screen
+ Motion sensor
+ TouchFLO 3D
+ 4 Gb of ROM
+ 192 Gb of RAM
- High price
- Vulnerability to dirt
- No storage expansion slot
- Average camera

Author: Dmitry Ryabinin, dm@smape.com

SMAPE.com

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