HTC Touch-Diamond Review - Design & Features

Design & Features

This phone is pure sex appeal. The stunning lines and minimal use of visible buttons make me feel like I should be ordering an assassination when I lift it to my ear... In a movie - ordering an assassination in a movie. The face of the phone is flat, its smooth surface interrupted only by a thin slot to accommodate a speaker and by the groove that divides the touch screen from the hardware interface elements below. The sparkling display is framed by a shiny, gunmetal boarder that sits under tempered glass. The screen is, in turn, framed by brushed metal.


One of my favorite aspects of the phone's design is the subtle front panel that looks like little sea of mercury under ice, and hosts the hardware navigation buttons. Situated near the centerpiece that is the Diamond's screen, it can easily be overlooked and underestimated. There is only one break in the panel - a circular  ridge that boarders the central, default menu button. There are four icons at the corners of this panel; the standard home, back, send and end points, which light up a hazy gray. The round button in the middle is occasionally surrounded by a slow, subdued light show, much more sophisticated than it is flashy.

The one-piece panel also has up, down, left and right arrows surrounding the default button, which act as a d-pad. Everything about this panel is slick, but what completely won me over was the almost-hidden scroll wheel. There is a very slight line tracing the edge of the ridge around the central button. Unlike the press-and-click panel features I've described so far, this ring is touch-sensitive. Running your finger around the curve offers varied functionality in different applications. It acts as zoom control in Opera and Google Maps, and becomes a jog/shuttle in the music player. Cool stuff.

The edges of the phone are home to a volume rocker, power button, the charge/headphone jack, and a recessed lanyard clip point. There is a magnetically-secured stylus inside the lower-right corner of the phone, integrated so seamlessly that I opened the plastic bag containing the spare before recognizing that I already had one handy. I am not a big fan of styli - I never have been - but I have to admit that the way this one slides into its holster, so the nub on the back-end is incorporated into the irregular shell, is some brilliant, tasty engineering.

You can't help but notice the faceted back cover, where competing triangular slabs interconnect like a corrupted spiral staircase, culminating in the silver triangle that houses the lens for a 3.2 MP camera. For the price, a flash would be nice, but you can't have everything. The pocketability versus battery life dilemma can put engineers on a thin line.

Dull gold Ink on the phone is minimal, providing branding, camera specs, and assurance to those who are looking for an SD slot that the phone does have 4 Gigs of internal storage. The lack of a 3.5 mm headphone jack, and it's substitution with a proprietary HTC USB jack, may seem a bit fishy to some users. It looks like a standard mini-USB socket, but with a little notch cut into the corner. It makes me, and probably others, wonder; is it there to lock people in or out?

As a media player, the Diamond performs well and looks fantastic. Whether browsing the cover art of your collection of albums, or watching a YouTube video, the aesthetics of the interface and quality of the display do not disappoint. Other UI elements are more impressive. The animated weather screen is so pleasant that I find myself longing for rain, just so I can see the drops accumulate inside of the screen and get swiped away by the internal wiper blade.

The phone shares the same basic functions and applications as any Widows Mobile Professional phone, albeit with a greatly-enhanced appearance, and a few extras thrown in for good measure. A secondary camera appears on the front of the phone for video calls, and there are some orientation and feedback contraptions inside that I'll cover in a moment. Stereo bluetooth, Wi-Fi and GPS are included, as well as the ability to capture video.

With smooth, animated interface elements, impressive haptic apparatus refinement, and a one-of-a-kind presentation, the HTC Touch Diamond is a pleasure to operate with for those lucky enough to hold one; and an object of envy and admiration for those who aren't.
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