HTC TOUCH DIAMOND

HTC Touch Diamond gets its name from the beveled edges of the back case. At first glance, it may strike you as something ordinary, even a run-of-the-mill Windows Mobile PDA. But slowly, all the extras will start coming to light. For starters, the pin-sharp VGA (640 x 480 pixel) screen, double the resolution of most smartphones and PDAs. It has every feature possible in a small PDA, including 3G, camera, FM, accelerometer, media player, and 4 GB internal memory.

Specs: GSM tri-band with EDGE & 3G, Windows Mobile 6.1, TouchFlo 3D, Qualcomm MSM7201A 528 Mhz processor, 192 MB RAM, 256 MB ROM, 4 GB internal memory, 640 x 480 touchscreen with 65k color, 3.2 MP autofocus camera, front VGA camera, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, FM, 900 mAh battery, 110 grams

The Touch experience, started with the humble HTC Touch, has been taken to a whole new level. On startup, the today screen is gone. In place is a 3 dimensional, finger-controlled custom interface with all commonly-used functions easily at reach. And if you want to click the start button and go the normal route; well, that option's there too. The game Teeter (pre-loaded) is fantastic. It uses only the device's accelerometer for control. The magnetic stylus silo is a nice touch, so are the ultra-slick, iPhone-beating graphics in the interface. You can perform small actions, like flicking photos across to view the next one, or draw small circles with your finger to zoom in or out. Amazingly, I also learnt that the lower portion of the device, the area under the touchscreen is multi-touch enabled. Something that's not used anywhere right now, but possibly something HTC is keeping as a hidden feature, to spring on us with a future firmware update.

Shame that there is no GPS application or maps included given the high price. The 900 mAh battery is a tad small too; it manages only about 4 hours of talktime (a day of real-world usage, which will drop down further with heavy Wi-Fi or GPS usage). The camera has no flash assistance and suffers from a fair amount of lag too. Suffice to say, it's not very impressive. Given the
528 MHz processor and 192 MB RAM, I was expecting the device to be blazingly fast, but it isn't. The 3D TouchFlo interface is a very demanding customer, and though it looks really slick with nice animation and graphics, the hardware sometimes fails to keep up. The 4 GB onboard memory is nice to have, but the absence of a card slot means that you don't have the freedom of expanding the memory or transferring data to another device in one step.
The graphics on the Touch Diamond are impressive to say the least, but they take a heavy toll on the hardware. The area under the touchscreen is reportedly multi-touch.
At the other end of the spectrum, an Asus P320 Windows PDA will offer Bluetooth, GPS and WiFi for less than half the cost, minus the VGA screen, fast processor, 4 GB memory and 3D interface of course. In the end, it boils down to the exclusivity factor. It's still a very capable, smart and small Windows PDA, just not the best that HTC is capable of.