Thread: HTC Touch Diamond Mobile Phone

The main problem with the new Touch Diamond phone from HTC is that it wants to be something it isn't. In this case what it wants to be is an iPhone.lt's being launched at the same time as the new 3G iPhone, but it's lacking in more than one area compared with its illustrious competitor. It looks good, though. HTC's phone design has been getting better over the last few years. In this case you've got a slim device that's easy to pocket,and as the name suggests it's touch-sensitive.

As with the iPhone that means there's no physical keypad there are just five buttons on the front,for beginning and ending calls and navigating the menus. This is a 3G phone, so as long as you pair it with a suitable network you'll be able to make and receive video calls and use itfor fast internet browsing. Butthat's where the problems start.The main problem with the Touch Diamond is that it's very slow indeed. Clearly the Touchflo interface bolted onto the top of the Windows Mobile operating system is extremely power hungry, because the phone's lack of speed makes it almost impossibleto do anything. If you've used an iPhoneyou won't see any of the smooth flowing menus ofthat phone,and if you haven't, the Touch Diamond may put you off touchscreen phones for life.



It has some redeeming features there's a GPS sensor (but no mapping software) and an excellent game, called Teeter, in which you have to drop a ball-bearing into a hole by physically wobbling the phone.The web browser works fairly well, and it threads text messages so that you can see all the messages in a conversation. But the messaging system suffers from extreme slowness as well- in theory you can swipe a finger across the screen to see the next message but in practice this only worked rarely, and the rest of the time either didn't work or reg istered as a press, wh ich took us to the current message.

The 3.2 megapixel camera's is mediocre and the presence of an FM tuner helps to keep you entertained. With a fixed storage capacity of 4G you cannot complain about the so or movies you wantto carry along. However, the phone suffers frofT the flaw common to all touch-phor the screen gets covered in fingerpri and smudges which you then need clean off to get it looking clean again.