
Great review
I think the review says it all really. Great device but who cares? With only 4GB of memory who's going to bother when they can pick up a 16GB iPhone for less money?
So near but so far HTC.
With the Diamond, HTC probably reckons it has a device that can stop lurking in the bushes, and instead leap out and bash the iPhone over the head with a brick. The first thing that struck us about the Diamond was how small it was. We were expecting something altogether more iPhone-like in both size and weight, but the HTC is …
"Our biggest concern is the lack of a memory card slot which on a high-end smartphone in this day and age is tough to explain or justify."
Do you know how much real estate a memory card slot takes up on a phone motherboard? A lot when the phone is that size and offers all that tech.
Part of the reason memory cards have gotton smaller over the years has been driven by phone manufacturers wanting more space on their motherboards, gave them room to squeeze on GPS as well as Bluetooth and WiFi, now they want to squeeze on graphic chips as well!
Wish I hadn't locked in for 18months with a Touch Dual now, want this phone :(
"...the Diamond proved to be remarkably stable for a Window's handset. We had to re-set ours only the once during our ten days with it... ahem."
SERIOUSLY? Is that the best thing we can say about Windows Mobile? It had to be reset only once in ten days?
I had six different Palm devices and phones from 1996 to 2007 and I can't say I ever had to reset them except for a handful of times in eleven years. Sadly, Palm devices just haven't been updated enough in several years and I jumped ship to Windows Mobile late last year. What a disastrous move that was! This HTC Tilt P.O.S is going in the garbage at the end of the week. Wish me luck with the iPhone 3g.
Before this was released in the UK I read that there were two versions of this phone planned... the Diamond and the Diamond Pro. The difference being that the "Pro" version had a Micro SD expansion slot.
Not seen it anywhere and had planned to buy the "Pro". Now put off and may wait for the N96.
A colleague has one and I was ready to buy one until I tried his.
First of all, it's got a lousy radio - GPRS and 3G signals drop out all the time in our office, but the same network has no such problem on any of the other mobiles here. GPS signal reception, however, is excellent.
Secondly, that pointy back means it doesn't sit flat on a desk so you need to rest it on something or it'll wobble. It's hard to appreciate just how annoying this is.
Finally, and this is a huge problem, he's lucky to see 8 hours use out of it before the battery gives up, and that's assuming he makes or receives no calls, just push email (GPS and bluetooth turned off).
I also found it to be a little slow and clunky, but he finds it quite acceptable.
I'd like to see more thorough reviewing from el reg, please. This review smacks of playing with a new toy rather than a subjective, hard-nosed analysis.
Another really nice sounding HTC product, great specs, but with a tiny screen. A 2.8" simply isn't usable for web browsing or video - the Iphone's (3.5") has 56% more screen acreage.
Get rid of the hard buttons, get a decent sized screen, and you have a product.
Oh, and no memory slot is pretty dim. Given you can get 16GB microsd now for about 50 quid, those slots are really pretty useful nowadays.
...or does it look like a Zune?
Interesting phone, although I don't care about smart phones at all, and won't be getting one anytime soon (just want something to speak). Nice to see others finally starting to catch up with the iPhone interface anyway.
Just one reset in ten days? That's the best Windows ever, then! Can we have it instead of Vista in new computers?</joke> :O)
I own an HTC Touch - biggest piece of garbage ever.
Windows Mobile 6x is so unbelievably awful that any device built on that piece of abject piece of crap is doomed to failure - and so it should be.
I can't wait to trade mine in for a new jesus phone - I couldn't believe it when I played with the original for an hour or so.
Words almost fail me trying to explain how ill-conceived, poorly designed, badly written, abysmal usability, slow, slow and did I mention slooooow WM 6 actually is.
It just shows what a talentless bunch of idiots Microsoft's programmers truly are. I'll take a sucky iPhone camera in exchange any day.
Not that I'm bitter about spending £300 odd quid on this crap or anything you understand.
I am using htc P3600, s730 and just added the touch diamond. Also, I have configured all kinds of htc phones for office colleagues and friends.
I love htc phones however the touch diamond is a huge disappointment. 3G connection is unstable and unusable in same locations where the P3600 and s730 show steady multiple bar signal and make and receive video calls.
Touchflo 3D is jumpy and I spend a lot of time canceling calls when trying to just view contacts or the call logs. It is not responsive. Battery is very poor and I charge the phone twice a day to keep it up all day.
I hate the phone and wish I resisted the urge. Sad I am stuck with an $800 toy.I should have waited and bought many iphones. I do not think the reviewer saw the phone talkless of testing it.
HTC Touch Diamond is a waste of money and an exercise in frustration, please do not buy until HTC releases a version tested under real world conditions. I am not alone, please check xda developer forum for more disappointed users. Seems HTC has lost its way.
Joseph
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@ Neil Stansbury, - sounds like you have dodgy firmware. I use an HTC Touch with the slow 200mhz CPU and it runs WM6 fine. No lag, doesn't crash, and with SPB Mobile Phone Suite you can pretty much emulate the Diamond's fancy gui with skins from xdadevelopers (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=402021)
This product has some nice ideas, with a decent UI buit with some poor implementations, and building it ontop of Win Mo only adds up negative points in my book, and 4gb, for a 'media' phone? Useless. iPhone will steal all its thunder. The iPhone has only one competitor who could steal its thunder BlackBerry, and its the only one who shows it also knows how to create a device people stick to... CrackBerry addicts!
Noticed on the HTC site than an "extended life battery" is on offer for £40 - comes with an enlarged back panel too - so I guess HTC have decided it needs more juice. Wonder if it will ship with the long life battery when it arrives as the 02 Xda whatever-the-hell, T-Mobile Vario thing-a-me-jig etc
Seriously, what's wrong with Windows Mobile? Apart from it being MS Software so "IT SUXXX COS BIL GATEZ WROTE IT LOLZ"? I bet it'd be a ninth wonder of the world (after Linus Torvalds and his mighty finnish brain) if it was "Linux Mobile".
It's not particularly hard to use- easier than other phones I've had, it has a massive amount of software available for it (and it's quick + easy to write new stuff for it w/ visual studio if there's something you need), and resetting once a week is hardly a hardship if you just do it at night- hit reset, stick on charger, fall asleep.
I follow this routine, and I've been using WM2003/WM5/WM6 for about 3 years on a few different handsets and apart from the occasionally badly cooked alpha-stage custom ROM I've randomly downloaded from the 'net, I've had no major software screw ups. The phone's only run out of battery power on me once and that was due to me losing it for a week with WiFi/BT/3G all turned on.
As far as slooooow OSs go, it's not slow for me. Maybe your network's bundled trillions useless, memory-eating apps with your version? IMHO, it's these that break and these that slow WM down to the horrible thing some people see.
WM6 rocks. Even on my newly-upgraded-to-WM6 2 or 3 year old XDA2s it rocks. Network added apps don't.
@"HTC FOR THE FAIL"AC, it's called a Crackberry as everyone who has one- especially those who use it as a verb (as in "Blackberry me")- are arses.
I recently got given one for work and my personal phone is an iphone, so comparison is fair.
Funnily enough this seems the right combination. From an interface point of view I prefer the i-phone and the touch screen is far less fiddly than that of the Diamond, BUT....
What I want from a work phone is
1. Portability - diamond takes much much less pocket space
2. Functionality - Able to read and work on Microsoft docments a real plus without non-prop add ons. Also I do a lot of walking around strange towns (work related - please don't ask), so having GPS on board knocks my current 1.0 i-phone into a cocked hat
Personal opinion is they could have improved the touch screen interface, but otherwise a great little work phone. For a personal phone I would still go with the iphone though!
PS Biggest downside (which is not the phones fault) is the Norwegian OS I am stuck with - thanks procurement for that little gem.
When the original HTC Touch was introed about a year ago, I bought one of the first 100 in the UK, no contract, and WINced at how much I paid. But the small size of it, and the apparent coolness factor, were enough for me to get over it.
Now I've had it for a year, and tomorrow night I am sitting in a camp chair in a queue for a new iPhone. I have HAD it with Windows Mobile - absolutely HAD it. Too many small fiddly menu choices that are IMPOSSIBLE to navigate with a finger tip, and many of them cascading! They put cascading menus on a MOBILE device with a finger touch screen?!?!? And that f£"$ing touch keyboard - I have small fingers, and loads of patience, but frankly I have to reach for the stylus for anything longer than one or two sentances, and even that is painful. And the number of times I have tried to punctuate a sentence and ended up bringing up the freakin' MENU instead I have lost count of!!!
I tried a 3G iPhone the other day, and was AMAZED at how much easier it was to use, type on, and navigate. The larger screen makes all of the screen functions MUCH easier to use - the menus are more logical and less fiddly, and the screen itself is just beautiful. I have a couple of Windows Mobile applications that I will miss (especially my Chess tutorial program), and the lack of stereo Bluetooth is criminal, but overall I think I can live without them just to get a phone that works. Now I just have to plan how to spent 12 hours in line tomorrow night...
And no, I've never owned an Apple product in my life, hardly a fanboi, but I have to hand it to Jobs on this one...