Product Reviews

UPDATE: Since we first reviewed the Touch Diamond, HTC has released a ROM update designed to solve one of the big problems we highlighted - its lack of speed. And, to a large extent, it works: there are now no unbearable delays within the TouchFlo 3D interface, even if it isn't quite as sprightly as we'd like. The irritation of the on-screen keyboard overlapping the field you're trying to type into is another problem that has been fixed. We still hesitate to recommend it - entering text via the on-screen keyboard remains a chore, and it's expensive. But it's now a strong contender if you want a stylish, touch-driven Windows Mobile phone.

When weighing your decision whether or not to buy the HTC Touch Diamond, we'd suggest you keep one dominant image in your mind: a set of old-fashioned scales. In the left, we'll put the Bad stuff. And in the right, we'll throw in all the Good. Very little about this product falls in between.

Let's start off with the Bad.

Failing to be the iPhone

Top of the list has to be: it isn't the Apple iPhone. This wouldn't matter so much if it wasn't so very obvious that this is precisely what the Touch Diamond is trying to be. For starters, there's the way it tries to mimic the "momentum" idea: so you drag down on the screen to browse through your contacts, and it keeps on going for a few cycles more.

On the iPhone, it works. On the Touch Diamond, it becomes an irritation: you drag and everything moves too fast, or it doesn't move at all because you've got your finger in just slightly the wrong place.

The TouchFlo 3D interface - the touch-based layer HTC plasters over Windows Mobile so you don't need to dip into the rapidly dating drop-down menu approach of Microsoft's OS - owes more than a little to Apple's vision as well.

Everything's animated and whizzy and 3D and at cute angles, so music albums flip into view for instance. Which would be absolutely fine, if it weren't for the Touch Diamond's second biggest problem: it's slow. So slow it almost makes you want to tear your hair out in frustration, fling the Diamond against the wall and whip out the old Nokia phone you put into retirement seven years ago.

Allow us to illustrate: to cycle between Internet and Mail within Touchflo, you swish your finger from left to right on the screen. And then... you wait. For some odd reason, HTC didn't realise this would be frustrating. Has it worked? You don't know until half a second later, when Touchflo decides to 3D animate the swish. If we swish a finger, goddamit, the program should swish. Instantly.

Deep breaths.

Bug alert

And then there are the bugs. Now credit to HTC: it's designed an onscreen Qwerty keyboard so you don't need to peck with quite so much accuracy compared to Microsoft's default onscreen keyboard offering. And, once again in a strangely similar approach to the iPhone, if you press a key it becomes large so it's obvious which one you've hit.

But - and we're still a little stunned this problem made it all the way to release - once you start pecking in a search term, say, the field you're pecking into disappears behind the keyboard! So you've just got to hope you get the word right. Genius.

Battery life
We hesitated a little before placing battery life in the Bad section. At a stretch, you might be able to get three days'

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use out of Touch Diamond, and for many people that's enough. After all, it recharges over a standard mini-USB cable, and during the working week it's not an issue just to plug it into your PC and let it charge up.

But the type of person who's going to opt for the Touch Diamond isn't the sort of person who also wants to hold back on what they do of a weekend just so they can eke out a bit more battery. And for those people, the life could easily disappear during that time.

In the end, HTC's choice of a 900mAh battery will, for many, be a compromise too far.

The little things

The final bundle of issues to fling into that Bad bowl are a diverse bunch. Top of the list must be the lack of memory expansion: though many people will be happy with the 4GB of memory (which in itself is a Good point), just as many won't.

We're also unconvinced by the button system. There are four shortcut buttons: home, back, dial and end call. To select left, right, up and down, you have to press just to the relevant side of the central "activate" button. It works, but again it's fiddly. Give us the trackball of the RIM BlackBerry Pearl any day.

Finally, we were disappointed to discover no case in the box. So HTC has spent lots of money making the packaging look like a great big diamond, but it hasn't bothered to provide screen protecion out of the box. Misguided priorities, anyone?

The good points

Thankfully, there are several things we really like about the Touch Diamond.

Prime among these is the web browser, based on Opera Mobile 9.5. Coupled with the also-excellent 480 x 640 resolution screen, it makes even mobile-unfriendly sites like - we admit it - www.pcpro.co.uk easy to navigate.

Browsing is made all the more pleasant courtesy of HSDPA support. Don't expect sites to appear instantly, but in 3G or 3.5G areas you'll be left waiting for a handful of seconds rather than the half-minute you may have become used to.

Reach for the Gyro

We're also fans of the built-in gyroscopic accelerometer. In reality, that simply means the Touch Diamond knows how you're holding it - whether in portrait or landscape mode for instance. It will then adapt the screen automatically to match.

To take advantage, HTC even bundles a clever marbles-down-the-hole game, where you direct the marble depending on how you're holding it. It's oddly compulsive too.

The physical side

HTC has long impressed us with its hardware designs, and the Touch Diamond is no different. It's extremely compact and incredibly light: just 110g. You won't notice this phone in your pocket.

And, though some might turn their nose up at the diamondesque patterns on its reverse, it certainly isn't dull. What's more, and unlike the iPhone, you can easily remove the back if you need to replace the battery at a future point.

Ying and Yang

Don't get us wrong: in many ways we like the TouchFLO 3D interface. Being able to launch a web browser, email, photos and videos and music without being dumped back into Windows Mobile 6.1 is a big plus.

Or...it...would...be...if...it...didn't...take...so...long...to...switch.

Conclusion

Back when we reviewed the HTC Touch, we had one key message to say to HTC: drop Windows Mobile so far back into the background that people hardly need to use it. And it has.

But it's simultaneously crippled the Touch Diamond by either using code that isn't good enough, thus making the whole phone sluggish, or it hasn't chosen a fast enough processor. We suspect the former as the 528MHz Qualcomm unit powering the Diamond doesn't look like its struggling for horsepower.

And who knows, maybe in a few months' time its engineers will have done some clever tweaking and updating to make the interface work as it should. At which point, this could turn into a half-decent phone.

Until then, though, the Bad outweighs the Good by such a margin that if people told us they were thinking of buying the Touch Diamond we'd be forced to rip the credit card out of their hands for their own protection.