On back, you'll find the Touch Diamond's 3.2 megapixel camera lens, but no flash.
Whether you’re using it as a modem or just cruising the Web on your device, you should get some good speed given that the HTC Touch Diamond works with Sprint’s EV-DO Rev. A network. The Rev. A bumps up download speeds to the 600Kbps-to-1.4Mbps range versus 400Kbps-to-700Kbps, while upload speeds will average around 350Kpbs to 500Kpbs (compared with EV-DO’s 50Kpbs to 70Kbps). In short, you’re going to get faster Web browsing, e-mail, and downloads–that is, if you live in a coverage area. Alternatively, you can also hop onto any available hot spot, since the smartphone also has integrated Wi-Fi.
The final wireless feature on the Touch Diamond is GPS. A utility called QuickGPS is also installed on the device to speed up the time it takes to find your position; it works by downloading the latest satellite information via an Internet connection. You can get some basic navigation tools with Google Maps but for more robust capabilities, you’ll have to turn to a location-based service (LBS) like Sprint Navigation. The LBS offers turn-by-turn text- and voice-guided directions, traffic updates, local search, and more. Sprint Navigation is free for the first day of use, but afterwards, you will have to pay $2.99 per day or $9.99 per month for unlimited use.
The HTC Touch Diamond wants to provide you a nice balance between work and play, so there are plenty of entertainment features on the smartphone. To start, there’s support for Sprint’s various multimedia services, including Sprint TV and the Sprint Music Store. Sprint offers these services as part of the Sprint Power Vision pack, which ranges in price from $15 to $25 per month. Sprint TV gives you access to programming from a variety of channels, including CNN, Comedy Central, and Sprint Exclusive Entertainment. In addition, you can listen to live streaming music and talk radio from Sirius, VH1 Mobile, and MTV Mobile. Meanwhile, the Sprint Music Store offers simultaneous track downloads both to your PC and wirelessly to your phone. Songs cost $0.99, or you can get a six-pack for $5.94.
You can, of course, transfer your personal library to the smartphone. Windows Media Player 10 Mobile supports a number of audio and video formats, including AAC, MP3, WAV, WMA, MPEG-4, WMV files, and more. The HTC Touch Diamond also has some multimedia extras, including a YouTube-dedicated app, a streaming-media program, and a utility called MP3 Trimmer that allows you to cut and trim MP3 files and make them into ringtones. Given all this multimedia goodness, we have to say again that we’re disappointed by the lack of expandable media.
Finally, the Touch Diamond’s 3.2-megapixel camera takes sharp, detailed, but grayish photos. Its shutter speed is very slow because the autofocus tends to fuss around before finding a lock. The device also records jerky, dim, 352-by-288-pixel video files. For still photos, you have a choice of five resolutions and four quality settings, in addition to white balance and brightness controls. Other tools at your disposal include a photo counter, a self timer, flicker adjustment, and various effects. In video playback tests, a 320-by-240-pixel clip of Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery was moderately smooth (with choppy spots) in landscape mode. However, a 640-by-480-pixel AVI played back at only about two frames per second, just slightly faster than a photo slideshow. In video mode, you get four resolutions as well as white balance, brightness, and effects.
Picture quality was a little disappointing, since colors looked very dull and flat. It’s too bad since objects were clearly defined and otherwise looked good. Video quality was also pretty poor with very dark and grainy clips.
Underneath the TouchFLO hood is a full copy of Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, which brings Microsoft Office document editing along with Outlook and Exchange synchronization with Direct Push e-mail. Hardware-wise, the Touch Diamond sports a 528-MHz CPU and 203MB of RAM, with a roomy 127MB available for user programs. HTC bundles a copy of the vendor’s nifty Task Manager for closing errant Windows Mobile threads. Overall, the Touch Diamond felt more responsive than the unlocked model. But this high-resolution handset could still use some more oomph in the CPU department to overcome frequent, 3-second freeze-ups. We also saw several service.exe error dialog boxes (using only the built-in apps) during the review period. Perhaps most disappointing element was the Touch Diamond’s battery life: It lasted just 2 hours and 54 minutes on a talk-time rundown test, which is one of the lowest figures.
Call quality on the Touch Diamond was okay, but not as good, though reception was solid even in rural areas. Voices sounded a tad raspy in both directions, and there was a trace of hiss in the earpiece. The harsh-sounding speakerphone wasn’t quite loud enough for outdoor use.
Oddly, the Sprint Touch Diamond gets quite hot during calls. It wasn’t enough to burn face or ear, but the device gets considerably warmer than the iPhone. The handset paired with a Cardo S-800 Bluetooth headset without incident.
The most impressive thing we noticed about the Sprint HTC Touch Diamond is how much more responsive and snappier the smartphone felt in general usage. We didn’t experience any of that frustrating delay when trying to perform simple tasks like switching between menus or launching applications. That said–as with other Windows Mobile devices, the more applications we had in use, the slower the device responded, particularly some of the multimedia features like Sprint TV.
Music sounded full and warm, if a bit muffled, over a paired set of Cardo S-2 stereo Bluetooth headphones, but subpar using the included, tinny wired earbuds. Fiddling with the included Audio Booster graphic EQ helped, but not much. Video quality was mixed. We watched some clips using Sprint TV and YouTube and the picture quality was pretty atrocious, with lots of pixelation and some interrupted playback. However, when watching a WMV clip from our personal library, it was perfectly fine. We used both Wi-Fi and Sprint’s network to connect to the Web and had no major issues.
Follow this link if you are interested in pricing and full specifications
The Touch Diamond is easily the sexiest phone on the market running Windows Mobile. It’s also plenty powerful and, aside from the battery life issue (which, admittedly, is a big one), the handset generally performs well, particularly as a mobile Web browser. In short, it’s an ambitious touch-screen handset that never quite manages to overcome its clumsy operating system. Business smartphone buyers on Sprint should look hard at the excellent BlackBerry Curve 8330 before choosing the Touch Diamond, even if lacks the flashier, prettier interface. If you don’t need Microsoft Exchange support, document editing, or third-party app capability, and you don’t mind a lower-resolution screen, Sprint’s Samsung Instinct does much of what the Touch Diamond does (even though it’s not a full-flown smartphone). Both of those devices are more solid and reliable choices for Sprint subscribers.
You maybe interest other my guide on:
- BlackBerry Storm 2
- HTC Fuze (AT&T)
- LG enV Touch VX11000 (Verizon Wireless)
- RIM BlackBerry Storm 9530
- Samsung Jack SGH-i637
- Samsung Omnia II
- Sony Ericsson W580i
For additional information on Cell Phones and product reviews, please visit our Cell Phones guide