HTC Touch Diamond2

Reviewed by

Bonnie Cha

on 05/22/2009

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Page 2

Features
Since we reviewed the European version of the HTC Touch Diamond2, there are some features that are missing from the smartphone, namely U.S. 3G support. Our review unit supports Europe and Asia's 900/2100MHz HSDPA bands (AT&T's 3G network works on the 850/1900MHz and T-Mobile's on 1700/2100MHz), so if you were to get the unlocked smartphone and use it with a T-Mobile or AT&T SIM, you'd only get EDGE data speeds but there is built-in Wi-Fi. HTC also added something called Push Internet Technology to help speed up downloads and rendering of Web pages on your smartphone, though we didn't necessarily notice a huge difference or any benefit to it. (See Performance section for more.)

The phone also offers quad-band world roaming as well as a speakerphone, speed dial, smart dialing, voice commands, three-way calling, and text and multimedia messaging. The address book is only limited by the available memory, and each entry can store multiple numbers, home and work addresses, e-mail, IM screen name, birthday, spouse's name, and more. For caller ID purposes, you can pair a contact with a photo, a caller group, or a custom ringtone. Bluetooth 2.0 is also onboard for use with support for mono and stereo Bluetooth headsets, hands-free kits, object push, file transfer, personal area networking, and dial-up networking.

The Touch Diamond2 has an integrated GPS antenna and similar to the previous Diamond models, it includes the QuickGPS utility, which downloads the latest satellite information over the Internet to help speed up the time it takes to find your position. Google Maps also comes preinstalled on the device so you can see your location on a map, as well get text-based turn-by-turn directions, traffic data, and conduct business searches.

For now, the HTC Touch Diamond2 runs Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional Edition, but HTC said at GSMA 2009 that it will offer a Windows Mobile 6.5 upgrade when the new mobile operating system is available. In the meantime, you still get the standard Microsoft Office Mobile Suite for editing native Word and Excel documents, and viewing PowerPoint presentations. In addition, it offers Microsoft's Direct Push Technology for real-time e-mail delivery and automatic synchronization with your Outlook calendar, tasks, and contacts via Exchange Server and support for POP3 and IMAP accounts.

In addition, the smartphone features Windows Live integration, the Opera Web browser, a dedicated YouTube app, a couple of games, and other PIM tools, including Adobe Reader LE, a Zip manager, a voice recorder, a calculator, a notepad, and a task manager. You can, of course, download additional apps to the smartphone; for some suggestions on titles, check out Download.com.

HTC upgraded the Touch Diamond2's camera from 3.2 megapixels to 5 megapixels.

Finally, while the music and video capabilities pretty much remain the same as its predecessor, the Touch Diamond2 does get an upgrade in the camera department from 3.2 megapixels to 5 megapixels. As before, you get a wide range of camera settings and tools, including white balance and brightness controls, ISO settings, flicker adjustment, and various resolution and image-quality options. There's also a camcorder mode.

Picture quality was quite impressive.

We were quite impressed with its picture quality despite some initial worries. The trepidation was because there's no dedicated camera key so you have to press the onscreen capture button, which we've found can cause some movement when trying to take the shot. Also, there's a bit of a lag from the time we pressed the button to the time the image was actually captured, so we thought for sure we'd end up with blurry shots. Not so much. Photos came out sharp and with decent coloring, much to our delight. Video quality was OK but a bit dark and grainy.

Performance
We tested the quad-band (GSM 850/900/1800/1900) HTC Touch Diamond2 in San Francisco using AT&T service, and call quality was mediocre. We noticed a background hiss on our end and voices sounded tinny and far away at times, though we could still carry on conversations and use an airline's voice-automated system. Meanwhile, our friends reported some crackling on their side. Speakerphone quality wasn't much better. With the right-side speaker, the call sounded lopsided and there was some hollowness to the audio. We successfully paired the smartphone with the Logitech Mobile Traveller Bluetooth headset and the Motorola S9 Active Bluetooth Headphones.

One of the biggest differences we noticed about the Touch Diamond2 was in general performance. Armed with a 528MHz Qualcomm MSM7200A processor and 512MB ROM/288MB RAM, the smartphone was quite responsive and felt downright snappy for a Windows Mobile phone. There was a bit of a delay with the camcorder and watching video clips, but unlike some other Windows Mobile devices we've tested, it never tripped up over simple tasks like menu navigation. Web browsing over AT&T's EDGE network was, not surprisingly, a little pokey. On the other hand, the phone's GPS receiver found our location almost immediately.

The Touch Diamond2 features an 1100mAh lithium ion battery with a rated talk time of 5.6 hours and up to 15 days of standby time. In our battery drain tests, the smartphone was able to give us 7 hours and 50 minutes of continuous talk time on a single charge.