With HTC’s upcoming TouchHD on everyone’s mind, we take a look back at what we love about HTC in the first place

Rating: HTC Touch Diamond still impresses

Where to start? HTC took a lot of the best aspects of the untouchable touch-screen of the iPod, and combined them with a rock solid mobile phone. Rather than ramble on, it’s probably best if I tackle this in headers.

Phone:
I’m generally unimpressed by overly-gadgety devices. My main interest is in having a functional mobile phone, and the Diamond is certainly that. Call and text functions are beautifully presented and easy to access. Windows Mobile 6.1 stores texts between you and others in conversation-style screens, making it incredibly easy to scroll back to earlier texts. The entire process feels more like IM than texting. Entering letters is done with the aid of a handy stylus, which is stored inside the body of the phone and kept in place with a magnetic clip. The touch screen QWERTY keypad would be impossible to use without the stylus, for which they have helpfully included a replacement. (In one of those little touched that adds wonderfully to the device, taking the stylus out of it’s dock automatically unlocks the phone)

The body of the device itself is sleek, smooth black plastic. It’s slimline and lightweight - and having just come from the N73 I really appreciated having phone that didn’t pull my pants down when I dropped it in my pocket.

Interface:
The touchscreen is fantastically high-resolution, with strong colors. It’s invisible under strong light, of course, but that’s true of most phones these days. The Diamond doesn’t miss out on a single opportunity to remind you that you’re using the 3D TouchFlo system to navigate the device. And, in fairness, they’re right to. The touchscreen on the Diamond takes up about three-quarters of the front of the device, and the vast majority of the phone functions can be accessed through it. There is a key-pad below the screen (more on that later), but I rarely if ever use it.

First, the problems I encountered: TouchFlo is a gesture based system that allows you to scroll fairly seamlessly between the functions of the phone via a carousel bar across the bottom of the screen. I say “fairly” seamlessly because there can be serious delays and pauses while navigating. On top of that, the gestures aren’t very intuitive, and require you to switch between using your fingers and using the stylus without warning. Information on the gestures IS included in the electronic manual, but I always felt the point of gestures was to speed up the use of the phone in a natural, easy way. Getting stuck trying to figure them out for 15 minutes before giving up in despair and looking it up isn’t such a bad thing, but it’s not something I’ve encountered on any other device.

And that’s it.

Other than that, the interface on the phone is gloriously simple to use. The internal gyroscope automatically switches pictures and web-pages around, no matter way up your phone is. The buttons at the bottom are stylishly unadorned, but very useful. They integrate numerous functions including a directional keypad, and touch-screen circular scrolling button, along with usual array of buttons.

Internet:
Web access is easy and straightforward with the Diamond. Using Opera, rather than Internet Explorer, the display is sharp and navigation is easy. Web pages are simply resized to fit the screen, and you can scroll around the page with either finger or stylus. One of the inbuilt functions is an RSS feed you can access within seconds of unlocking the phone, and I’ve found that hugely useful. I can check the main news that happened overnight and during the morning before I even roll out of bed.

Multimedia and cameraphone:
As you might expect, the Diamond has multimedia out the wazoo. It reads, displays and plays any file format you could reasonably expect to encounter, and the 4 gig internal hard-drive is nicely big. The video recording function, unfortunately, is pretty low quality. but the cameraphone takes very good quality stills even in quite low light which more than makes up for it.

Windows Mobile 6.1:
I found it amusing that the biggest problems I had with the device had nothing to do with HTC itself. Windows Mobile 6.1 isn’t the most stable platform in the world. But after a shaky start, where the device crashed completely on me three times in one day, it hasn’t given me much trouble. I was also impressed to notice a quite comprehensive suite of mobile-streamlined Windows Office applications in there, including Word, Powerpoint and Excel. I’m not entirely sure when I’ll need to have Excel on my mobile, but I can sleep easy in the knowledge that if I ever do need, it’s there.

Overall:
I’m extremely impressed with the Diamond all-in-all. It has its flaws, as will any device, but the overall package is smooth, easy to use and aesthetically beautiful.

It has proved itself to be no iPhone killer, but when I consider how nicely put together it is, I find myself practically drooling at the idea of getting my hands on the TouchHD.

Many, many thanks to David Ross-Tomlin of Nelson Bostock for the opportunity to get to grips with this lovely device.

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