It's OK, but not good enough to compete with the big boys. (HTC Touch Diamond)

Member Name: Patrick3001

Product:	HTC Touch Diamond
Date:	21/01/09 (112 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Small. 4gb internal memory.

Disadvantages: Slow...think of the load times on a cheap laptop. It's like that. Only on your phone!

I'm a massive HTC fan. I got the Touch Diamond to replace my original HTC Touch, which in turn replaced my XDA Exec (an HTC rebrand). The difficulty is that while HTC has had a nice little niche for quite a while - user friendly business orientated touchscreen phones - in recent years this has grown closer to the mainstream. Where once HTC's were quite specialist items, they now find themselves in direct competition with the heavy hitters of the industry, and in particular the new golden boy that is the Apple Iphone. And to be honest, in my opinion this phone just doesn't cut it.

The main problem with this phone, is that while all the screenshots look pretty, and while HTC have done their best to hide it with Coverflow 3D, the phone ultimately runs on windows 6.1.

For those that haven't used Windows 6.1 on a phone, I would compare it to running vista on a laptop. You switch it on, it looks so much prettier than xp did, but after the novelty has worn of you realise that your more powerful, more expensive laptop actually runs more slowly than your old one did. And sadly this is how it is with this phone - it's just too slow. All the applications take time to run - including the actual 'phone' app, which is particularly infuriating when you are receiving a call, only to miss it before the phone has fully woken up.

While I'm on the negatives: The battery life is fairly poor, you'll get a full day out of it, but not much more if you use WiFi/Bluetooth reguarly. Additionally, in my opinion (and this really does come down to personal taste) the Touchflow interface used by HTC just isn't as slick as it was on the old Touch.

Overall the experience is just knowhere near as slick or as impressive as on the Iphone.

On the positive side, the device is sleek and the 4gb of internal storage will surfice for most. Additionally, being based on windows, there is a large amount of 3rd party software available - which could be the deal maker if you need the phone for a specific task. For example, I have used this for 3D CAD editing with relative ease.

I haven't lost my faith in HTC just yet, I would just say that this phone really doesn't represent much of a step forward from the previous generation. And now that there is real competition, the company needs to really up its game - perhaps the Touch HD does this, I'm yet to use one.

If you are looking at this phone, I would probably have to advise against it. Unless you are specifically looking for the small form factor, the Touch HD, Iphone, of G1 are probably better options.

Summary: Probably one to miss, unless you are a diehard fan of small touchscreen smartphones.

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