HTC Touch Diamond review

HTC's Touch Diamond is by far the smallest and slimmest phone in the group. Its sharp-cornered profile looks slick and, apart from the 'diamond' facets on the rear, it's attractive.

The Diamond has not only fast HSDPA mobile data for quick on-the-move web browsing, but also wireless networking, Bluetooth and a GPS receiver. There's even an integrated sensor that can tell whether you're holding the phone vertically or horizontally so that it flips the screen accordingly.

The Diamond uses Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional and has a touch screen but no keypad or keyboard. Fortunately, text and number entry is pretty easy, with lots of different input methods to choose from, including an onscreen keyboard with large finger-friendly buttons, and the touch screen is sensitive, too.

HTC has replaced Windows Mobile's dowdy front end with its own fancy graphical version, and it works well. Its Opera Mobile 9.5 web browser is especially good, and renders web pages on the high-resolution VGA screen extremely accurately.

Despite its many features and slick front end, this phone has problems. Its battery life of nine hours and 21 minutes is mediocre and it seems that the front end has a negative impact on performance. Instead of responding swiftly to screen taps and finger swipes, the Diamond often delays by up to half a second, which becomes frustrating after a while.

We're not keen on the 3-megapixel camera either, which produces distinctly average shots. There's a large 4GB of built-in memory, but no memory card slot for expanding this.

T-Mobile's Touch Diamond has an excellent web browser and slim design, but its interface is sluggish, its battery life is mediocre and it's very expensive.

Author: Jon Bray