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Last updated: 13. October, 2008 - Monday topic : 2,269 view : 144,044

HTC Touch Diamond

24 May 2008 view : 2,317 | HTC

This is the new HTC Touch Diamond and its light, small and sports TouchFLO 3D. With the UK getting their hands on it first thanks to being on Orange from June, the HTC Touch Diamond will be coming to a US carrier soon although we have no details yet of dates or prices. The interface looks very promising as you can see in the photos on this page; it’s a stunner and features single-finger dialing, zoom-in navigation with “just one hand” and one-touch browsing.

HTC’s new Touch Diamond smartphone, successor to the popular HTC Touch (reviewed in June 2007) has just been unveiled in London.

The HTC Touch Diamond is packed with features and they include Quad-band HSDPA 7.2, a VGA Screen, Windows Mobile 6.1, Orange mobile TV with up to 61 channels, YouTube application, Full HTML Opera web browser and a lot of “One-Touch” features like One-touch music playback and One-touch navigation.

Another cool feature is the accelerometer that rotates pictures as you rotate the phone, the only nasty feature we can see is having to use HTC’s proprietary USB dongle is not good, as a normal headphone jack would have been better.

While we have no information on the exact battery life, we are told it’s better than other HTC devices, although the battery is smaller than the Touch.

HTC Touch Diamond

Keyboards galore

The Touch Diamond also bests the iPhone with its 11.3mm thick width - 0.3mm less than its iconic rival - with HTC claiming that it boasts a more responsive screen, making typing much easier.

To make the task of typing on unresponsive glass better, HTC are offering three different software keyboards; a traditional 12-key phone keypad, a hybrid Blackberry-like QWERTY offering and a full keyboard. We still prefer good old fashioned hardware keyboards but we hope to try out HTC’s efforts soon.

The phone can also work on the fastest 3G networks and packs a 3.2 megapixel camera - a substantial advance on the iPhone’s piddly 2 megapixels.

There’s also GPS onboard for ‘location-based services,’ Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 b/g), Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR and a FM radio. The battery looks a little underpowered though at just 900 mAh.

Peter Chou, president and CEO, HTC Corp tapped the microphone, shouted, “1..2…1…2…” before unleashing a tsunami of spin: “Today we mark a new era in mobile phone evolution, an era where beauty and size integrate with uncompromising innovation at broadband speed. The HTC Touch Diamond will make browsing the Web and using Web-enabled applications just as practical and easy to use as making calls.”

HTC said Orange - along with other European carriers - will be selling the phone from June, with a release in Asia and the Middle East later in the quarter, followed by North America towards the end of the year.

HTC Touch Diamond

Specifications
Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional with TouchFLO 3D interface
528 MHz Qualcomm processor
192 MB SDRAM, 256 MB ROM, 4 GB internal storage
2.8-inch touchscreen with VGA resolution
GPS and A-GPS ready
Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE (900/1800/1900 MHz) HSDPA (900/2100 MHz)
Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11 b/g), Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR
3.2 megapixel camera with auto focus, VGA videoconferencing camera
FM radio
3.9 inches by 2.0 inches by 0.42 inches (99mm x 51mm × 10.7mm)
900 mAh Battery