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HTC Diamond is the first phone that includes Touch Flo 3D, a clever interface meant to make access to the most common features of the phone more easily and, at the same time, giving them a futuristic look. I will let you create your own opinion about this phone by reading this HTC Diamond review.

The phone is part of the Touch series and is the fourth model after the HTC Touch, HTC Touch Dual and HTC Touch Cruise. Actually, the box in which we find HTC Diamond is the first thing that will surprise you, because, it is probably the smallest phone box made by HTC but still, it hides many surprises. The box shape is not the usual cubic form but a trapezoidal one.

In the phone box, we have the two CDs with applications, a booklet, the HTC Diamond phone framed by the headset and under the phone there is a spare stylus, the charger, the headset, the USB cable (which is used for PC connections and for charging) and the manuals.

Although the plastic and the glass, from which is made, look very good, HTC Diamond is extremely sensitive to fingerprints and requires at least one daily cleaning with a soft piece of cloth.

On the top side, we find the on / off button, a little too fixed in the case and the speaker which has an acceptable quality, but it is not too good, comparing it to other phones like Sony Ericsson or Nokia. On the left side, we find the volume control buttons, which can also be used during a call, and absolutely no button can be found on the right side of the phone. In the bottom right, we find the stylus that falls almost perfectly into the case. Under it, the phone has the soft reset button.

The front side of HTC Diamond "hides" a clear display of 2.8 inches that displays images at a VGA resolution of 480x640 pixels and on the upper front side, one VGA camera, used for video calls or for auto portraits. Bellow the display we find four buttons and a joystick in the middle, which can be rotated. The four buttons are the Home button, which brings the user from any menu into the Today screen menu, the Back button which brings the user to the previous menu and the answer / reject calls keys.

On the bottom side, we find the support for the hand-strap, the mini USB jack for connections between the phone and the PC, and for the headset, and the microphone.

HTC Diamond may be used with one hand. Because of the Touch Flo technology, moving through the HTC Home menu is very easy, although slightly delayed (bug partially corrected by the official updates available from June 19, 2008).

The display's luminosity can be set at different levels or you can decide if the device sets the display's light intensity alone depending on the lighting conditions.

The phonebook is dependent to the available memory and the number of information stored in each contact and it is very easy to use and sync with your PC. On the right side, you can set a mini alphabet, which can be used for finding contacts quicker, which begin with a certain letter or if you hold the joystick button pressed "down", all the alphabet letters appear and you can stop it where you desire, a function very easy to use with one hand. The phone has a SIM Manager application that can be used in moving or copying the contacts from the phone to the SIM card or vice versa.

Calling a contact is a very easy job if you use the dialer menu of the device because of its numbers filter that suggests the numbers and the names of the contacts depending on what you type; and this is also very useful to use with one hand. The calls list has four tabs at the bottom. The first one is filled with all the calls, the second one has only the missed calls, the third one has only the calls you made and the last one is filled with the calls you received.

The SMS and MMS is the same one with the devices that are running Windows Mobile Professional. Writing messages is relatively easy if you have used a device with touch screen, the display is responding well to the commands.

The file manager is the same we find on Windows Mobile devices. The only difference is the lack of an external storage device. The internal memory has only 4 GB. The images are displayed very clearly on HTC Diamond's VGA resolution screen and, due to the accelerometer, are rotated according to the phone's position towards the earth. The multimedia is supported by the Windows Media Player and by the own media player we found in HTC's Home menu. We must admit that the headset has a high quality sound whether you are listening to the radio or to music files from the phone. The camera has 3.2 MP and like the HTC Ty TN II, the image quality is acceptable. The camera behaves very well when focusing on targets that are 5 to 30 cm away from the phone, dependent from the light conditions. In conditions of low light, the photos are below average with color deficiencies. The camcorder has also an average quality.

The internet access part was not neglected at all. HTC Diamond benefits from Internet Explorer Mobile, Opera Mobile 9.5 and YouTube, so browsing is a pleasure on this device. It would be recommended to use the included Opera browser, because pages load relatively faster than with Internet Explorer and has a better zoom function. The YouTube application makes connections to the well-known video streaming site, and generally requires an Active Sync, WiFi or 3G/3G + connection. The application is not indicated in the GPRS / EDGE.

On the connectivity chapter, HTC Diamond is at a high end level:
- Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR
-  WiFi 802.11 b / g
- HTC mini USB
- GPS and A-GPS
- upload speed: 384 kbps, download speed: 7.2Mbps
- integrated modem

All these facilities make HTC Diamond a mobile substitute of the PC. The phone has access to the Internet mail through several ways of connections. The Bluetooth is very useful in sending or receiving files, for the headset function, modem, being in this case a mobile internet solution for laptops (if connected via USB cable the connection speed and the download speed are slightly faster than via Bluetooth), or A2DP (Bluetooth stereo headset).

HTC Diamond has an integrated GPS, which assures navigation using additional software. It is a real "friend" when traveling with the A-GPS and GPS Quick functions that help it locate more precisely the integrated GPS receiver.

The organizer part was not neglected either. The device has included the calendar that can synchronize with Microsoft Outlook. The Microsoft Office Mobile application includes Microsoft Word Mobile, Microsoft Excel Mobile, Microsoft PowerPoint Mobile, Microsoft OneNote Mobile and Adobe Reader LE for PDF files. The Word documents, Excel, Power Point and One Note can be created, edited, and eventually sent by e-mail or Bluetooth.

I hope that you really enjoyed reading this HTC Diamond review and you can now say that you know almost everything about this phone.