HTC Touch Diamond 2 review

HTC’s original Touch Diamond was an impressive touchscreen phone, with a low battery life proving its biggest problem. The Touch Diamond 2 is a complete overhaul, adding usability, and attempting to address the faults of the original handset.

The biggest change is the screen, which has grown to 3.2-inches. It’s one of the best screens we’ve seen on a smartphone, with amazingly crisp image quality, and a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels. We found colours vivid, and it’s easy to see even in bright conditions.

As with most new HTC releases, the company’s TouchFLO software has been updated, hiding the Windows Mobile operating system better than ever before. Even pressing the Start button brings you to a custom menu, and it’s very rare a stylus is needed.

The Opera internet browser is excellent, offering flawless web browsing and page navigation. Zooming is done via a touch sensitive bar below the screen, which also lets you zoom when viewing documents and photographs. 

Even better is the onscreen keyboard which, although slightly fiddly, gently vibrates as you type, and offers better correction software. As such, it’s easy to enter text, with most mistakes ironed out with impressive accuracy.

The Touch Diamond 2 is as well equipped as the original, with 3G/HSDPA connectivity that allows web pages to load quickly, further helped by HTC’s Push Internet technology. It works by checking your favourite websites for updates, and downloading them throughout the day, reducing the amount of time needed to load pages.

You’ll find the usual run-of-the-mill applications pre-installed, including Microsoft’s Office Mobile suite, letting you create and edit documents on the go. Setting up email addresses couldn’t be easier, using a simple wizard, and even those who don’t like Windows Mobile have to concede that few devices are easier to sync. Once Active Sync is installed on your laptop, all you have to do is drag and drop files, quickly and efficiently moving and editing documents between the two. 

Office use is further enhanced by Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, and GPS lets you take advantage of the large screen and use it as a navigation device. The camera now features a resolution of 5 megapixels – up from 3.2 – and autofocus helps to bring images into sharpness. It takes a while to get going, however, and there’s no dedicated shutter button.

With a mixture of wireless functions turned on, and under moderate use, we managed to get a couple of days use out of a single charge – around a day more than the original Touch Diamond.

Build quality is better than most of the Touch Diamond 2’s rivals, making use of aluminium and glass. The Diamond-shaped imprint on the rear has been replaced, with the latest model offering a plain glossy casing instead. It’s subtle, yet stylish, and feels more substantial in the hand than Apple’s iPhone 3G. It’s also of a much higher standard than the original Touch Diamond and Touch Pro.

Overall, the HTC Touch Diamond 2 is a deeply impressive handset. It may have taken two years for the Windows Mobile community to even get close to matching Apple’s iPhone, but if you can overcome any prejudices about the OS then this is definitely one of the best touchscreen phones we’ve seen to date.