Camera Phones Plaza

Announced in September 2008, HTC G1 smartphone has been made available, on the U.S. market, one month later, in October 2008. Now, the phone can be purchased under the T-Mobile brand name.
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At a first look, HTC T-Mobile Dream G1 looks just like a normal Pocket PC, in HTC style. The curved bottom side of the phone, along with the unique sliding mechanism, are the most impressive innovations. Those who are looking for a slim and stylish phone will probably be disappointed, because G1 is not one of them. Measuring 117 x 55.7 x 17.1mm and weighing about 158g (including the battery), the Google product is included in the category of medium-sized smartphone. While the plastic on the front was very well polished and looks very stylish, the back cover seems like a cheap plastic. Both sides are well protected against fingerprints.

In addition, the large display is well protected, so it will remain fresh in all circumstances. Only the standard keys were included on this phone, like the camera button on the right side, the 2 volume keys on the left, and a miniUSB port. Under the screen, we see exactly 6 keys that will help the user to control the phone as easy as possible. Two keys - Accept call / Reject call, a Home key, a Back key, a Menu key (very important), and a small trackball. The phone lacks the stylus, so the user will be limited to control the phone by touch or using the trackball. I was pleasantly surprised to find that, whatever method you choose, you will not have problems navigating through the phone's interface. The trackball navigation was used with exceptional results. Excellent choice for HTC-Google to include this feature; it is very easy to navigate through the menu, using only one hand.

However, when you open the phone to write a message, you immediately notice the innovative sliding mechanism and the strange QWERTY keyboard. It will take time to get used to it, but after a while you will not have problems finding any keys or special functions. The only downside that I noticed was that the keyboard has reduced visibility in some circumstances. Depending on the light falling on the keys and the angle of the phone is seen, the identification of the symbols on the keys can become difficult. Otherwise, the backlight is good and it is very receptive. Maybe the keys are a bit hard to press, at first, but I got used to them pretty quickly. There are 48 keys on the keyboard, most of them having two symbols that have different colors. If you are right handed, you will might have some difficulties when you type, because you must use your thumb on the bottom side of the device, the one with the trackball on it.

The back of the smartphone contains a 3.2 megapixel camera and a small speaker. Moreover, the Google logo was printed on the back cover. In general, HTC T-Mobile G1 cannot be considered an elegant phone. However, I do not think it was intended to be. Without looking too bad, Google is proving to be a very easy to use phone, once you get used to it. I have no doubt that there will be other Android phones that will look better than this.

HTC T-Mobile G1 has a touchscreen display of 3.2 inch (8.1cm), TFT-LCD HVGA with a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels and 65k colors. Given the fact that it lacks a stylus, the finger will take its role. I was a little skeptical about it at first, but after I played with the device for a while I did not felt the need of the stylus at all, on the contrary, I think will soon become outdated. The screen was covered with a material, which is said to lead a continuous electrical current across the sensor. Both, the sensor and the human body (the finger), have the opportunity to acquire a capacity and are good conductors of electricity. Knowing that capacitive sensors are based on proximity and should not be directly touched to be triggered, we can now understand why it is so easy to control a device that integrates this technology.

In addition, it supports the multi-touch technology, but the Android platform does not accept these functions, yet. The same thing is happening with the accelerometer, which can be used to a certain extent, although it is limited to some applications. However, the image quality is perfect, and switching between portrait and landscape mode is excellent. In addition, it is clearly visible in sunlight, which cannot be said about Windows Mobile devices, so here is another plus for G1. Absolutely everything seems to be done naturally and without effort when you use your touchscreen. I was pleasantly surprised and I do not think anyone would do something similar with iPhone's multi-touch soon enough.

The 3.2 megapixel camera is a total disappointment, facing with the lack of the flash and any other complex settings. The only thing I found positive was that the device has a dedicated camera button, which was very easy to use, and an auto focus function.

The pictures taken outdoors are dull and confusing. The camera seems to not treat the moving objects very well. Furthermore, the camera has no way to reduce the resolution or to change the balance and the colors. However, the main disadvantage remains that the camera cannot make videos.

HTC T-Mobile package comes with:

-T-Mobile G1 phone
-microSD SanDisk 1GB Card
-1150 mAh Li-Ion Battery
-Charger
-USB cable
-Hands-Free Stereo
-Protective cover

HTC Touch Diamond2 is the successor of HTC Touch Diamond, which had big success and was highly appreciated by its users. Even if Windows Mobile did not come with major improvements in recent years, HTC has created TouchFLO 3D user interface, which allowed them to make phones that are easier to use. Diamond 2 offers enhancements over HTC Diamond original, but so far, it did not manage to impose a lot. Let us see from this HTC Touch Diamond2 review what this phone can do.

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HTC Touch Diamond2's dimensions are within the normal limits for a smartphone. The phone has a length of 108 mm, a width of 53 mm, 13.7 mm thick and it weights 118 grams. HTC Touch Diamond2 is available only in black.

HTC Touch Diamond2 has a larger screen than HTC Touch Diamond. The bottom side was reduced in order to highlight the screen. The materials are of high quality, but are not protected against fingerprints. The back cover is the biggest magnet for fingerprints. On the screen, the fingerprints are not visible. There is another cover that can be purchased separately, which is made of a material resistant to fingerprints.

Under the large 3.2 inch screen, we have four hardware buttons, and a touch sensitive bar, used to zoom. The ambient light sensor is located above the screen. On the top side of the phone, I only found the on / off button. The bottom side is hosting the microUSB port in which you can connect the data cable, the charger and the headphones. Also, here we find the stylus and the microphone. On the right side, HTC Touch Diamond2 only has the speaker. On the left side, we have the volume control key. We did not find a special key for the camera, because you control it with the touch screen. On its backside, the phone has a 5-megapixel camera. It has no flash, which eliminates the possibility of taking pictures in low light conditions. The Li-Ion battery has 1100 mAh, with 200 mAh more than HTC Touch Diamond. It is a good value for a smartphone, although some users want 1500 mAh. According to the manufacturer's specification, the battery should hold up to 500 hours in standby mode and up to 5 hours in talk time. The MicroSD card is behind the battery, so it is not easy to get it out. I like the fact that the back is smooth. Although it keeps the Touch Diamond specific design, it is easier to make it stay on a desk

If you have used any HTC phones recently, you are probably familiar with the TouchFLO 3D technology. It is one of the most successful user interfaces, so it is a pleasure to get in each of the menus they offer. The TouchFLO 3D Standby screen offers you various possibilities of personalization. You can add shortcuts to your favorite applications and you can easily navigate between tabs, exactly as you would turn a page. The second tab of TouchFLO 3D is called People. Here you find contacts, and you can associate a lot of information and even a photo. The third tab is called Messages. It is not hard to guess that from here you can send SMS and MMS. The email has a dedicated tab with a successful graphic. The messages are in an envelope on the screen and you can easily navigate among them.

The 3.2 inch screen has a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels. The image quality is very good, but in strong sun, it is difficult to read it. It tends to remain with some fingerprints, but it is not very disturbing.

Continuing the tradition that Touch Diamond started, HTC Touch Diamond2 has very good multimedia features. It has only 512 MB of internal memory, but you can extend it with a microSD card to make room for movies, songs and others.

The camera has 5 megapixels. The user interface is very intuitive. Unfortunately, it does not have a dedicated key for capturing photo / video, so pictures are made by touching the screen. Although I think a dedicated button for those who often take pictures with the phone would have been better, using the touch screen has an advantage: the focus is made where you put your finger. The camera does not have a flash, making it impossible to take pictures in low light conditions. The images have a medium quality, with many details. The colors really come alive.

The image gallery is very well set. It is a pleasure to go through photos, especially because the screen is big. The bar below the display does its job well and it is easy to use it if you want enlarge or shrink the pictures. Moving from one picture to another can be done like turning a page.

The music player is also well done. Unfortunately, Touch Diamond2 hardly invites you to listen to music, because the 3.5 mm audio jack is missing. You can use the headphones found in the package box, which are of medium quality, but you cannot use other headphones. You can sort songs by album, artist, genre, name and composer.
The FM radio has RDS and is very good for situations when you get bored of your own music. The radio only works if you connect the headphones, because they serve as an antenna. You can store up to 20 radio stations.

The video player is Windows Media Player. It supports movies in MP4 and 3GP. There are no DivX / Xvid codecs, but there are other video players for Windows Mobile, that know how to open movies in this format. Videos can be viewed both in portrait mode, and in landscape mode. The screen resolution is very good, so the movies look very good in landscape mode. The phone comes with a preinstalled YouTube client, so you can watch videos on this site very easy. HTC Touch Diamond2 knows how to record videos at a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels. The recording is made only with 15 fps, and movies are saved in MPEG4 format.

The phone offers excellent functions for internet connections. The phone has WiFi, so you just need to find hotspot areas. If you want to use the operator network, HTC Touch Diamond2 supports GPRS, EDGE, 3G and HSDPA 7.2 Mbps. The phone can be used without problems as a modem. The Bluetooth supports A2DP, so you can connect wireless stereo headphones. The microUSB port is used for data transfers, and to connect standard headphones from HTC.

HTC Touch Diamond2 comes with two preinstalled browsers, Internet Explorer and Opera Mobile 9.5. Opera is configured as the default browser, because it works better than Internet Explorer. Pages load faster and the application is optimized for finger touching. The zoom bar under the screen can be used to zoom in or out.

Microsoft Office Mobile is already installed on the phone. You can view or modify Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote files. It even has an PDF reader.

HTC Touch Diamond2 has GPS and comes with Google Maps preinstalled. The GPS works very well, it quickly locates the satellites without delays. If the Google Maps application does not please you, you can find more complex GPS navigation software for Windows Mobile.

HTC has released lately only quality phones. Touch Diamond2 is no exception, the TouchFLO 3D interface makes its use very pleasant and eliminates some of the shortcomings of Windows Mobile. If you ask me why Touch Diamond2 did not have its deserved success, I think this is due to the agglomeration of smartphones released in 2009.

I hope that, after reading this HTC Touch Diamond2 review, you will be able to make a decision if you want to buy this phone.

HTC Touch Pro 2 is an interesting phone, but the competition on its level is strong. N97 is definitely much more attractive and the prices are not too different. HTC Touch Pro 2 has a length of 116 mm, a width of 59.2 mm and it is 16.6 mm thick. Weight reaches 178.5 grams. Touch Pro2 is available in black and gray colors.

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The front side is dominated by the large 3.6-inch screen. Under it, we have a tactile bar used for zooming, which is very useful in the image gallery or in web pages. Below this bar, there are four buttons quite small and easy to press. These are answer calls, reject calls, the menu key and back key. Above the display, we have a secondary camera used for video calls, as well as an ambient light sensor. The front side contains a QWERTY keyboard with 5-rows of buttons. From the beginning, I noticed that the sliding mechanism of the keyboard is somehow stiff compared to other phones with QWERTY slide keypad, but you will get used to it. I remember that HTC Touch Pro had a problem, the mechanism quickly began to wear and to squeak. HTC Touch Pro 2 does not have this problem, but I am curious what happens after a few months.

On the left side of the phone, we find only the volume control key. It is slim, matching well with the design of the device. On the bottom side, we find the miniUSB port in which we connect the data cable, the charger and the handsfree headsets. HTC Touch Pro 2 has a stylus, which is positioned in the lower right. When you pull out the stylus, the screen turns on automatically. It is interesting that if you talk on the phone and you pull out the stylus, an application automatically opens where you can note something quickly. On the top side, we have only the on/off key. On the right side, there are no buttons. On its backside, we have the stereo speakers and a 3-megapixel camera. The phone has no flash, so do not expect any high quality pictures unless you have light. HTC Touch Pro 2 has a second microphone which is placed in the back, and it is used to reduce ambient noise during calls. If you remove the back cover, you have access to a reset button and the microSD card slot.

The phone's battery has 1500 mAh. According to HTC, the battery resists during calls up to 8 hours and 30 minutes in 2G and up to 6 hours and 30 minutes in 3G. Also, in standby mode, it resists up to 500 hours in 2G and up to 75 in 3G.

HTC Touch Pro 2 uses Windows Mobile 6.1. The TouchFLO 3D user interface is very well optimized for touching. I did not felt like needing the stylus. It is still useful if you want to hand-write something or if you need to get in the Windows menus, which are not optimized for touching. TouchFLO 3D has the same spectacular graphics. The standby screen offers you shortcuts to email, SMS, Internet, calendar, camera, etc. In the top bar, you see information such as received messages or lost calls.

HTC Touch Pro 2 has a 3.6 inch screen that provides an excellent resolution of 480 x 800 pixels and 65,000 colors. The touchscreen responds well to commands, but unfortunately, it cannot be read easily in bright light. Once you slide open the phone, the screen automatically switches to landscape mode.

HTC Touch Pro 2 has one of the best keyboards encountered on a phone. It resembles a lot with a computer keyboard. The buttons are large and arranged in 5-rows. The pressing is accurate, so it is easy to write an SMS or an email.

You realize that the pictures are extraordinary on the 3.6-inch screen. The gallery is also very well designed. Everything is optimized for touching. The bar below the screen lets you zoom in or out a picture. The zooming is done without any delays.

The music player is very good. It supports most audio formats (AAC, AAC +, eAAC +, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, QCP, MP3, WMA, WAV, MIDI, M4A) and it has an interface similar to the one that the iPod has. It can be accessed directly from the standby screen. You can sort the songs and you can even create playlists. It has some preset equalizer modes. A big minus is the lack of a 3.5 mm audio jack, so you can only use the headphones that come with the phone. It is very strange that the phone has no FM radio application. The hardware exists in the phone and can be used with a separate application. The video player remains the same Windows Media Player, old and underperforming. It can play 3GP and MP4 movies, but if you install the appropriate codec you can watch DivX or Xvid movies. The large screen helps a lot.

The camera fails to impress. The 5 megapixels camera, that HTC Touch Diamond2 has, is reduced to only 3 megapixels on HTC Touch Pro 2. The maximum resolution is 2048 x 1536 pixels. The user interface is very good, but the camera dedicated button is missing. The phone has no flash, which means you cannot take pictures in a dark environment. The software has several options such as self-timer, white balance setting, ISO setting (up to ISO 800), color effects and others. The quality is normal for a camera of this class.

The video recording also fails to impress. It can capture videos at a VGA resolution of 640 x 480 pixels and 15 fps. Most phones now know to record videos at 30 fps in this resolution, so Touch Pro 2 is exceeded in this regard.

Once we get to the connectivity part, things get better. HTC Touch Pro 2 has all the great technologies: HSDPA 7.2 Mbps / HSUPA 2 Mbps and WiFi. The preinstalled browser on HTC Touch Pro 2 is, of course, Opera Mobile 9.5. It is optimized for finger touching. It shows pages in a very pleasant way, both in portrait mode, and in landscape mode. The zoom bar below the display works in the browser too. To connect the phone to your computer, you can use the miniUSB port or the Bluetooth link. The Bluetooth uses the A2DP Bluetooth profile, so you can connect stereo headphones too.

Organizing time is not a problem for HTC Touch Pro 2. It has a very well formed schedule. This can easily be synchronized with Microsoft Outlook. It can display events at a day, week or month level.

Like any Windows Mobile phone, it has Microsoft Office. You can view and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint files. It even has a PDF Reader. The phone has some interesting applications preinstalled. They include an RSS reader and a YouTube application. The Task Manger is also present and can be accessed from the top right corner of the standby screen. It is easy to see what applications run and close an application that has blocked.

HTC Touch Pro 2 has a GPS receiver incorporated. The A-GPS technology, allows the GPS to connect faster to the satellites, but implies the existence of a data connection. The phone comes with Google Maps preinstalled, but you can install other applications, perhaps with voice navigation.

HTC comes with major improvements compared to the Touch Pro, managing to create a robust phone, very good for business use. If you need internet and email, HTC Touch Pro 2 is an excellent choice. The large dimensions make the phone uncomfortable, so do not buy it if you keep it in the pocket of your pants.

HTC Dream G1's box no longer comes in the form of truncated pyramid, as we accustomed to Touch Diamond and Touch Pro. Now it comes in a regular, mid-size box. Inside it we find the charger (which has a surprisingly long cable), a microUSB cable data transfer, a leather cover, the well-known stereo handsfree, the 1150 mAh battery, software CD and many books and leaflets.

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HTC has used quality materials to make their new phone, Dream G1, so the exterior appearance is very nice. So far, after all the images in which I saw the phone, I was convinced that it is made from a cheap, shiny plastic. I was wrong, it is quality plastic and it is really gentle. It is very solid too. The front plastic is glossy and the back is matt. HTC Dream G1 has a slightly curved bottom and a very interesting sliding screen. With a length of 117 mm, a width of 55.7 mm, 17.1 mm thick and weighing about 159 grams with battery and all, Google's product may be included in the category of medium-sized smartphone. To get an idea is almost as heavy as a Touch Pro.

In the bottom right, we find the photo capture button, on the left side we notice the volume keys and in the lower left corner, a very well hidden microSD card slot. The microUSB port is on the bottom side and it is used for both recharging the phone and data transfers. Even the headphones connect through the microUSB port because the phone does not have a dedicated 3.5 mm audio jack.

The front side of the phone is occupied by the 3.2 inch TFT screen with a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels and 65,000 colors. Under the screen, we see the call / reject keys, the menu key, and the return to the previous menu key. The arrow keys are replaced by a trackball. In the backside, Google G1 has a 3.2 megapixel camera with autofocus, but unfortunately, without a flash. I have expected, at least, the flash to be present, if they put a camera that has a better resolution. Next to the camera, the phone has a speaker, which offers good sound quality. The QWERTY keyboard is ergonomic, easy to use and fun. The keys offer a good response and are large enough that you can hit them easily.

The phone does not have a stylus. You have to control it using the touchscreen or the trackball. I was pleasantly surprised to see that, whatever method we have chosen, I moved quickly through the phone menus. Android's has a big advantage here; it is an operating system thought from the start for touchscreen phones, so all the menus and text are large, you can easily use the finger. The opposite is Windows Mobile, where everything is written very small, so without a stylus is very hard to control the phone. G1's trackball looks very well.

HTC Dream G1 uses the Android operating system from Google. Android is an operating system that runs only on devices specially designed for this. Applications for Android are written in Java. Android is an open-source operating system, which means that developers have access to source code, they can change it, but they can optimize and write applications depending on how the operating system was designed. Android has a very successful 3D interface and many useful functions. It is based on all sorts of pleasant visual effects. Running menus is easy, you just have to walk around with your finger on the device screen.

HTC Dream G1's screen is a 3.2 inch TFT touchscreen with a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels and 65,000 colors. The stylus is missing, so you will have to use your finger. G1's built-in screen technology has made its absence to be felt less, because it has a high sensitivity. The accelerometer is good, but works only in certain applications. However, images and text look very well on the screen and switching between portrait and landscape mode is very fast. Too bad that this switch is made only on opening / closing the QWERTY keyboard; I would have liked to go into landscape mode when I turned the phone horizontally, even if I did not open the keyboard.

If someone would ask me to choose between iPhone and HTC Dream G1 in terms of quality and music functions, I would definitely choose the iPhone. G1 is not necessarily made for those who love listening to music all day. It sounds pretty good and pretty cool, but they could have done a better job. The big problem is that the phone does not have a 3.5 mm jack, so you can only connect the original headphones, or others that are using  the miniUSB port. That does not mean that HTC Dream G1's media player doesn't know how to recognize MP3 files, AAC +, WMA, WAV, MIDI, Real Audio or Ogg. I am happy to see that the songs can be heard even with the player in the background. Songs can be sorted by artist, album or grouped into playlists. The music player can display the album cover. There is no equalizer or other settings for bass and treble. The sound is average, and when it comes to the integrated speakers, things are even worse.

If the audio player knows how to "read" quite a lot of audio formats, but it does not have a very good playback quality, the video player is pleasant surprise. In addition to most video formats (H.264, 3GPP, MPEG4 and 3GP) that knows how to play very well, the video quality is very good when it comes to streaming sites like YouTube.

G1's camera disappoints greatly. Besides the fact that the flash is missing, just as the image settings, the picture quality is very low. The only pluses that I can give is that the camera has a dedicated button, easy to use and that it has autofocus. Natural light pictures come out well. The main disadvantage is that the camera does not allow video capture.

HTC Dream G1 is compatible with GPRS, EDGE and HSDPA technology. Transfer speed can reach 7.2 Mbps, depending on the network. The phone has WiFi connectivity too. HTC Dream G1 has a web browser based on WebKit, which is related to Safari and Google Chrome. Google said that they are working on a version of Chrome for Android, so we hope to see this browser soon. WebKit is capable of displaying any website. I really like how this works; you can zoom on certain areas of the page for details using the zoom function. It is one of the few mobile browsers that work with window pages, meaning you can have several Web pages opened at once.

G1 has Bluetooth 2.0 connectivity, but unfortunately, you can only use this function to connect a handsfree. You cannot transfer files via Bluetooth. I hope that a firmware update will solve this problem.

G1 comes with many pre-installed applications, dedicated to Google's applications. That means you have access to Google services like Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Maps and GTalk. Once started, the G1 will ask you to enter your Gmail account. You cannot activate the phone without a Google Account.

The GPS is present, along with a digital compass so you will not get lost no matter if you are in a city or in the desert. HTC Dream G1 comes with Google Maps preinstalled. It does not have voice navigation, but I do not know any other navigation application that can go on Android.

Even if at first sight the phone seems a bit large, you will be captivated by its intuitive menus, very good Internet services, and the superior quality that the touchscreen offers.

HTC Diamond was one of the most expected smartphones of the year (in 2008). Perfection does not really exist, so the phone has some minuses too, but when I finished with it, I concluded that it is one of the best devices I have ever had.

The qualities of the phone start from the rich functions and from how easy it is to use it, and that is because of its Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system and the excellent touchscreen. The screen has VGA resolution, and by that, I mean a resolution of 480 x 640 pixels, way above the 240 x 320 pixels that we find now in most smartphone. Because of that, the images are very clear and well lit. The finger navigation is good enough, because of the standard HTC TouchFLO.

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Without a question, the design is impressive. It gives the impression of quality plastic and the phone is solid. It is true that the face is very shiny, which is why fingerprints are submitted easily. I have used the shirt from time to time to polish it and it did not scratch. I think it is a matter of tastes, but I do not like the back of the case shaped like a diamond. There is nothing wrong with it, it is not hard to hold in your hand, but I got used to phones that have a flat back. It was the only design element I did not like.

As any touchscreen phone that respects itself, it has only four keys and a scroll wheel. The four buttons are used for answering calls, rejecting / ending calls, for reaching the TouchFLO main menu function and the back button. The scroll wheel has more features. The first one is the directions up, down, left right and for clicking. The second one is to actually scroll, a function which can also be applied to images for zooming in /out.

On the sides, we find the key used for starting or shutting down the phone, the volume control keys, the stylus and a miniUSB port. Like the other HTC phones, the stylus has a magnet that keeps it very well in its position. The miniUSB port is for charging, for PC connections, and for the headphones. Here I must say that I would have liked a 3.5 mm jack for headphones, so that I can use my headphones, which are certainly better than the ones HTC has.

HTC Diamond does not have a card slot, so you just have to handle with the internal memory of 4 GB. The internal memory is big enough. I have not missed the presence of the memory card.

Most users think that Windows Mobile is the easiest operating system.  Well that is not quite true, because S40 OS and S60 OS from Nokia are much more intuitive.

HTC Diamond does much more than a regular phone with Windows Mobile. This is because of the TouchFLO 3D, HTC's proprietary technology. The fact that they inspired from the iPhone, is their own business. The idea with the TouchFLO 3D is that I rarely needed to access the usual Windows menus, because all the functions are available in HTC's own interface, along with its specific touchscreen navigation.

The TouchFLO 3D is a special menu where you find all the commonly used functions. The Address Book, your pictures, music, messages, etc. You can navigate from one function to another with your finger like "you would change the page". Like the iPhone, images can rotate using the finger. I felt no need for using the stylus, because it is well done. Only in Windows menus I needed the stylus, the buttons are smaller there, and the finger precision is not good enough.

As I said from the beginning, I was very excited about the screen. The High resolution makes it practical for pictures and movies. Even in the usual applications, the text is clear and the contrast is good. As with most smartphone, the reading problems in direct sunlight remain. You can read a text in direct sunlight but you do it hard. However, the phone has an accelerometer so the screen automatically turns to landscape mode when turning the phone horizontally.

You can see pictures from a photo album with many functions. You can zoom using the scroll button or your finger on each picture. You can move between photos with just a finger slide. Even watching movies became very pleasant. You will notice that HTC have improved the video performance. If in HTC Cruise and other older phones, I had to encode movies at a lower resolution to not skip frames, on HTC Diamond I put a video at a resolution of 640 x 480 and has not skipped a single frame. I am not a phone movie watching addict, I prefer to read news on the internet when I am stuck in traffic, but I have friends who put movies on their phones for when they are in a subway or a plane and they do not have a laptop.

The camera has an average quality. At its 3.15 megapixels, I was probably supposed to say that it is good, but the pictures made with it did not impress me in particular. On the phone's screen, pictures are good, but when you copy them in your computer, you will see that the details are not very clear, even if it has a big resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. You can video record too, but at a smaller resolution of 352 x 288 pixels and 30 fps.

HTC Diamond sits very well at the Internet connection chapter. The WiFi, HSDPA, 3G and EDGE technologies cover all your Internet needs quickly. The phone supports HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, not only 3.6 Mbps as you meet on most phones. You usually need special laptop modems to reach a speed of 7.2 Mbps.

What I did not like was how complicated are the settings you need to make if you want to connect on the Internet. In 3G / HSDPA, as well as the WiFi, the configuration menus did not seem intuitive at all. I spent almost an hour and a half to make these settings. Now I know that it is probably going to be easier for me with any other phones that have Windows Mobile. For surfing the Internet, I used both Internet Explorer and the new Opera Mobile 9.5. As usual, I was more excited about Opera Mobile. The pages are rendered well so they adapt better on the phone's screen. The screen resolution is big enough so the text is clearly visible. Moreover, Opera supports Flash pages. The phone supports Bluetooth, but does not support infrared.

It supports GPS but it is not preinstalled and it must be purchased separately. I have tested Google Maps, which is free and works OK. The big problem is when you want to buy a GPS software used for car navigation. Most GPS applications install on memory cards. Because HTC Diamond does not have a card slot, you cannot install them. I do not surf on the internet every day so it seems more practical to me if I have a dedicated GPS device in my car. Therefore, I do not know if you can find such a GPS software that comes on the CD and not on the card, otherwise HTC Diamond's GPS is not very useful.

HTC Touch Diamond is a good phone, suitable for business, but also for those interested in the multimedia. It is not perfect, but you should not expect to find a perfect phone too quickly. You can see that they have worked very hard in making HTC Diamond an iPhone killer, so using this phone is very pleasant.