The HTC Touch Diamond is simply beautiful. From its glossy, interestingly shaped casing to its colourful, high definition touch screen, everything about this phone reeks style and aesthetics. There is more to the Touch than just good looks, though?you'll find a 3.2 megapixel camera, a lightning fast internet connection, and spacious memory storage. Can Windows shatter its reputation as a clunky user interface?



Appearance:

Sleek and glossy, the HTC Touch Diamond is one of HTC's most stylish phones. At 110g, it is extremely slender, which makes the fact that it holds so many features all the more amazing. HTC has taken the ?diamond? theme to a whole new level with the Touch's appearance'on its back is a unique and attractive design that is reminiscent of the facets of a gem. Its 2.8 inch 65k colour LCD touch sensitive screen is also a pretty feature, with its sharp, crisp details and vivid colours. Its only downside is that its polished surface makes it difficult to see with the sunlight glinting off of it. It's also easy to leave fingerprints and face marks, but with regular cleaning, that shouldn't be a problem.

Screen: This smartphone's screen is one of its biggest strengths. It features a variety of interesting little maneuvers, such as TouchFLO 3D swipe navigation as well as several other touch sensitive controls. You'll also find handwriting recognition and an accelerometer sensor that senses when the phone is being turned horizontal or vertical and adjusts the screen to accommodate.

Camera:

The Touch's camera is fairly average as far as cameras go, but it gets the job done. It has 3.2 megapixels with autofocus, but its lack of flash makes it difficult to take pictures in dimmer areas. Its second VGA camera is there for video calls. Its camera also works well recording movies.

Sound:

The phone's music player supports MP3, AAC, AAC+, WAV, WMA and AMR NB. Along with getting an FM RDS radio, you also get some awesome album art as well as polyphonic and MIDI ringtones. Unfortunately, though it comes with a microphone, you're stuck using the Touch's headphones rather than your own.

Connectivity:

The Touch has a stunningly fast internet connection in a variety of different formats, such as 3G HSDPA, Bluetooth, a mini USB, GPRS, EDGE, and Wi-Fi. This results in you staying connected almost everywhere. Combine this with its tri-band network (which also includes HSDPA 2100) and you have a phone that lets you stay connected no matter where you live. You'll find a variety of useful and familiar features, such as Google Search, Youtube, and Wikipedia. Messangers include SMS, MMS, IMs, and an email interface that includes attachments. The phone also includes a sophisticated GPS system that will let you find out where you need to go.

Memory:

If you like lots of space in your phone, you're in for a treat. The Touch boasts 256 megabyes of ROM, 192 megabytes of RAM, and four gigabytes of built-in memory. Combine this with over ten hours of talk time and up to 481 hours of standby time (as well as two hours of video call time) and you have a storage space that is unlike almost any phone on the market. You can store thousands of songs, downloads, attachments, and documents, and charging your batteries is a bit of upkeep you'll barely have to worry about.

Verdict:

The HTC Touch Diamond is gorgeous and filled with more flashy features than many other phones its size. Its only big downside is that the user interface could have been designed a lot better. Windows has managed to disappoint once again with sluggish response times and freezing. However, its literal plethora of gadgets and goodies make it one of HTC's better smartphones.