HTC Touch Diamond with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional

INTRODUCTION

WHAT'S HOT

(all images link to larger versions)

The Touch Diamond makes you smile when you hold it.

It's very small.

WHAT'S IN

Here's the unboxing video for our Touch Diamond.

    The packaging for the Touch Diamond seems a bit expensive. The box is shaped like a pyramid, and is made out of hard plastic. The AC adapter is also very nicely designed with angled edges, a removable plug adapter, and a USB port on the end.  This way you can just use any Mini-USB cable to charge the device and there's less stuff to carry.

THE DEVICE

    The slit at the top is where the handset speaker is. An ambient light sensor is also in there. Note the air bubble shown by my screen protector. Apparently, the one I received had a little wrinkle in it right there, and that's what's causing the bubble.  On the upper right, you see the front facing VGA camera for making video calls.

The screen is quite usable outdoors. However, you'll definitely get a lot of glare, which is to be expected from the shiny screen.

    At first I thought the hardware buttons on the Touch Diamond was an absolutely horrible design. First of all what's with the Home and back buttons?  Where's the Start menu and Ok buttons?  It turns out, the back button behaves exactly like the Ok button, except in Opera where it does the "back" web browser command and loads the previous web page.  That's a little annoying since it makes minimizing the application more difficult.  Also, the back button does nothing when navigating between panels on the Today screen, but it does  activate "Ok" commands.

    The House button only has one function and all it does is bring you to the Today screen/ Home panel of TouchFLO 3D, which happens to be the same thing that double pressing the Start menu key would do on other Windows Mobile devices. If you're already on the Home screen, pressing the Home button again does nothing. It doesn't open the Start menu, it doesn't toggle anything.  Holding the button down or double pressing it also does nothing.  I guess the idea is that this button layout is simple and easy to understand, but it actually makes things more difficult especially for power users.

    Now look at the hardware buttons themselves. It's all one smooth flat piece of plastic except for an inset action button in the middle. How are you supposed to find those buttons in the dark or without using your eyes to look for the little icons?

    It turns out, you actually can feel the buttons with your fingers.  Notice in the red circles above, each of the 4 outer buttons can be felt for by the edge corners of the plastic.  Just feel for these corners and you'll be able to press the corresponding button.  Then for the directional buttons in the middle, the up and down buttons are easy since you can feel the area between the top/bottom edges and the center action button.  The left/right buttons are a bit more difficult to find since pressing the exact left/right edge of the inset center action button doesn't really work that well.  You have to find that edge and then move a little bit further away from it to have an easy left/right button activation.  The problem is, if you move too far left/right for that button activation, you might activate one of the other corner buttons. 

    There's another feature that will help you find the hardware buttons in the dark. They are backlight, but the backlight goes off after a while and then you can't see them anymore. Well, the action button in the middle and the surrounding circular area is touch sensitive. So if you just touch the middle area with your finger (you don't need to press down at all), then the backlight will come back on for all the buttons.

    The touch sensitive area is also useful in a number of applications. In the camera app, you can just touch the button to autofocus, and press it all the way to take a picture.  In the Photo Album and Opera web browser apps, rubbing your finger in a clockwise motion around the outer edge will zoom in, while rubbing counterclockwise will zoom out.  This same behavior will change the font size of the text while viewing emails and text messages.

    Also note, the light around the circular action button in the center will glow or flash to indicate different status states.  For example, when you plug the charger in, the circle will glow from bottom to top to indicate that the battery is charging. It will become solid when charging is complete.  Also, when an incoming call or other notification occurs, the lights around the circle will flash rapidly. The ring flashes a white light once when the battery level is low and reaches down to about 10%. The top and bottom parts of the LED ring flashes a white light twice when there is a new e-mail, voice mail, or meeting reminder. A white light goes around the LED ring counterclockwise twice starting from the top when there is a missed call or new SMS or MMS message.

 On the left side, there are two volume up/down buttons and some "HTC Innovation" branding.

    At the bottom, you'll see a lanyard hole, microphone hole and the ExtUSB connector. The ExtUSB connector is used for everything including Audio, Charging, Syncing, and can also be used to attach the device's internal storage to a computer as an external disk drive. This is the only port on the device, and I'm totally okay with it. Another port would have added significant to the size of the device.

The right side is totally clean and smooth except for some small text that says "4GB Internal Storage".

The top end of the HTC Touch Diamon has a power button and a speaker grill. The power button is raised slightly (and labeled with the standard power icon) so that it is easy to find with your fingers.

    The back is covered by a one-piece plastic shell. The shell even goes around about 60% of the edges of the device. It's quite nicely designed with subtle little triangular cut creases that bounce the light in different directions. This is part of the "Diamond" theme of the device and it is quite attractive.  I definitely see a market for replacement backings. I plan on refinishing mine perhaps with a Chromaflair paint job. A rubberized less-finger-print-prone version would also be in order.  Hopefully HTC or some-one will start selling replacement battery covers for this.

    Maybe you're wondering where the soft reset button is. It's actually nicely hidden in the stylus silo. If you take the stylus out, you'll see a little red button under there. That's the soft reset button.  Also note that the stylus is made of shiny metal and is held in by a magnet.  So when you slip the stylus into its slot, the magnet actually grabs it and pulls it in. There's also a sensor in there, so that when you pull the stylus out of its slot, the device will come out of stand-by, so that you don't have to press its power button.  Extremely nice little touches there.

    On the back is the 3.2 Megapixel camera inset into a triangular brushed metal shape. The rear camera here also has autofocus, which can be activated by simply touching the action button on the other side. A full press of the action button will take a photo.

    Taking the back cover off, you can see where the battery is, the SIM card slot, the stylus, etc.  The camera lens and speaker are on the left.  Also note on the right side of the photo near the upper right corner is a little hook.  You can slip a lanyard string through the little hole next to the ExtUSB jack there and loop around that hook, then put the cover back on. This way you can attach little phone charms as well.

Here you'll see from left to right, the Touch Diamond, Samsung Blackjack II, AT&T Tilt (Kaiser), and the AT&T 8525. 

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    Here you can see a comparison of the thickness. On top is the Touch Diamond, Samsung Blackjack II, AT&T Tilt (Kaiser), and the AT&T 8525. You can see the Diamond is significantly smaller than the other devices here.

The Diamond is even thinner than the very small HTC StarTrek (Qtek 8500) Windows Mobile Standard flip phone.

Just for "Ha Ha's," here's the iPAQ H3600 with GSM/GPRS Expansion pack next to the HTC Touch Diamond. The old iPAQ from 6 years ago is 300% thicker, 50% wider, and 50% taller than the Touch Diamond.

    When an incoming call arrives, the above screen appears. There are large on-screen buttons for answering, ignoring, and muting the call, as well as a little "Send Text" button on the left soft key.  Of special interest is the phone dialer's integration with the Diamond's accelerometer.  If you flip the phone over on its face, the incoming call's ring tone will be muted. This is an absolutely awesome feature for quickly ignoring interruptive phone calls. You don't even have to look at the phone to silence it!

    Call quality is just as clear as any other GSM phone and it works great on T-Mobile's network. Bluetooth headset reception is decent and voice recognition commands work well for the most part.

The above video will show you some of the other programs that make use of the accelerometer in the Touch Diamond.

    By default, when you plug the Diamond into your computer with the USB cable, it asks you if you want to use ActiveSync or connect as a Disk Drive. If you choose "Disk Drive," the 4GB of Internal Storage will show up on your computer as a regular USB external hard drive or memory stick. That way you can copy/transfer/open files to your heart's content without having to install ActiveSync and without even needing to use a Windows PC (you can use a Mac or Linux machine instead).

Did I mention the Touch Diamond looks great?  It goes quite nicely with the hard angled edges of the Nextlink Invisio 5G Bluetooth headset. Yes, the headset button will activate voice recognition.

    Another nice little feature. When you connect a stereo Bluetooth headset or speaker system, the TouchFLO 3D music player will automatically start playing music for you.  Unfortunately, if you stop the music will the A2DP device is still connected, the music will start playing itself again once the headset is disconnected.  Instead, just disconnect/shut off the Bluetooth headset to stop the music.

    Don't forget, there's also an FM radio receiver in there. The included stereo headphones need to be plugged in, in order for it to work, but you can also play the audio through the speaker. The headphones act as the FM radio antenna. The software's design matches the whole theme of the device and it looks great.

    What about the VGA screen, you say?  Here you see the Diamond next to the HTC TyTN II. Note at this resolution and zoomed out view, it's pretty easy to read the soft keys on both. The calendar items are a bit easier to read on the TyTN II.  The color balance on the Diamond is a bit on the warm side while the TyTN II is a bit on the cool side, but the Diamond has better contrast than the TyTN II.

    However, if we look at 100% crop views of the same photo, you can see the Touch Diamond in the top photo has a

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