Camera Phones Plaza

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.

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.