HTC Touch Diamond2 Review
When HTC announced the refresh to the original Touch Diamond back in February it looked like a major update with some great new features especially the hardware. Well here we are a few months later with the device in hand and we have spent a few days testing it and trying the new features so sit back and read on for a full and detailed review with lots of pictures and screenshots.
What’s in the box
- HTC Touch Diamond 2
- Battery 3.7VDC 1100mAh
- USB Cable
- Additional Stylus
- AC Adapter (UK)
- Screen Protector
- Quick Start Guide
- Getting Started CD
- User Manual CD
To start with we have recorded an unboxing video with a quick look around the hardware, see below:-
The external parts of the Touch Diamond2
The front of the phone has a beautiful high quality metal finish, at the bottom we have the phone end and send buttons, the end button also doubles up as the home button, a Windows key which is a requirement for future devices that will support Windows Mobile 6.5 and a back button. Above the keys you can see the zoom slider, this is a touch sensitive panel that you slide your finger along to zoom in and out of pictures and web pages.
The top part of the front you can see the ear piece grille and the front facing video camera. The screen is 3.2” and has a resolution of 800 x 480.
The right edge of the device you can see the external speaker grille and the stylus. The stylus is not magnetic like the original Diamond, it does not get sucked into the phone with a satisfying clunk, you have to physically push it home. One feature that does remain is the phone coming out of standby when you remove the stylus.
The left edge has the volume up and down rocker switch and the worlds HTC Innovation. There is no dedicated camera button on this device.
The bottom of the Diamond2 has the lanyard connector, the microphone and the damned annoying EXT USB which is the charging point and the headset connector. No 3.5mm headset jack to be found so it’s adaptor at the ready if you want to use your high quality wired headsets.
The top of the device has the on / off button and here you can see some similarities with the build quality of the Sony Ericsson X1, the colour and material used are very similar and it does look and feel like a quality build.
Looking at the phone from the back, you can see that it no longer has the uneven backing with the diamond cut edges that the original was named around, this is a step in the right direction as the original phone never sat flush on the desk due to the uneven backing. The 5 Megapixel camera lense is at the top and there is no longer a plastic cover over the lense, this was another problem with the original Diamond so HTC are learning from previous mistakes which is good to see. The black plastic as you can see really, no I mean really attracts finger prints.
Under the battery cover you can see the SIM card slot and the slot to the left is the MicroSD card slot. The back cover has to be removed to swap the MicroSD card however there is no need to remove the battery so a hot swap would be possible.
TouchFlo3D Software
So lets take a detailed look at Touch Flo 3D and the screens that we can use and what they bring.
The main home screen is straight forward, indicators along the top for various things like battery, phone signal strength etc. Under that we have the network that the phone is currently connected too then the large clock which is styled like an old flip type analogue clock, its a very nice and clear home screen. The date and call history are also shown plus any upcoming appointments. If you swipe upwards on the clock a smaller clock appears that gives you more room on the home screen for information.
Clicking on the alarm icon on the home screen takes you to a finger friendly alarm clock setting page, much better than what we have seen before when the stylus was the only useful way of setting an alarm. Also there is a new world clock page.
Clicking the Windows key brings up the HTC program launcher, its a simple grid array of shortcuts to programs, you can add new programs as well as remove them but you cannot arrange them easily, the only way to arrange the icons is to remove them all and start adding them in the order that you want them, shame you cannot just drag them around. Clicking on all programs brings up a finger friendly list of all the installed programs that you can scroll through very smoothly. We could not find a way of just accessing the original Windows Mobile program menu without totally disabling TouchFlo 3D.
The contacts screen gives you a type of quick dial screen via pictures, you can flick through your contacts easily, click on a contact and a new screen opens up and you can easily see all correspondence with that contact, be it phone calls, text messages, emails etc.
Messaging and Mail tabs are pretty straight forward and give you the option of viewing your messages, or create new ones, nothing new to see here.
The web browser page is a launcher for Opera Mobile 9.5 with the added addition of the Push Page. You can set bookmarks here that will auto download / update web pages so that you don’t need to wait for them to load. For example you can set various pages to load up at 6am, you wake at 7am and can access those pages without having to wait for them to download as they already have at 6am. A nice feature but hardly a killer one.
The Calendar application is much nicer than the standard Windows Mobile offering, a nice use of colours make it stand out and now when you go to the day view your appointments are shown along with a graphical display of the current weather, this is a nice touch.
The stocks tab displays err stocks.
The camera application gives you a viewer for your pictures and launch buttons for the camera and video recording. The camera takes brilliant pictures. Its an autofocus 5 megapixel lense and below are some sample pictures that we have taken, very impressed with the colours and exposure. The camera is also very responsive, one negative is the shoot button, or lack of it as it is an on screen button and makes it a little difficult to prevent camera shake when you have to press the screen instead of a hardware button.
Video recording is done in VGA, 640 x 480 and is not that impressive, a little jerky but ok for spur of the moment videos.
The music tab is an ok application and hasn’t changed since the original TouchFlo 3D, it is usable but Kinoma is a far better media player than this.
The weather application is again the best weather application we have seen, it looks amazing and again hasn’t changed from the earlier TF3D, thats no bad thing as it still looks beautiful, and as they say, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
The final tab is the settings which is a finger friendly version of the standard Windows Mobile settings page, easy access to a lot of the set ups and configurations screens, click on all settings and there you are back in the standard settings screen.
Hey this is a phone after all, lets talk about that, the phone keypad is nice and large and easy to use, press a number and the phone beeps and gives a slight haptic buzz to register the key presses, an incoming call brings up a slide to answer / ignore screen and also displays the callers picture if you have one saved for that contact. You can also mute the ringer from this screen too.
Signal strength, seems pretty average fair, not as good as the iPhone on the same network in the same area, sometimes the Diamond2 completely dropped the signal where the iPhone never does, but compared to the Xperia X1 it is still a good performer. Voice quality was excellent.
You can also make video calls if your in a 3G area and know someone else with a video enabled 3G phone. To be honest it is not that popular and never has caught on.
Text Input
The standard QWERTY has been improved and now gives you haptic feedback and the letter pressed appears above your finger so you can see what letter you have selected, this makes typing a much better experience. Other input methods available are the phone keypad, the awful tiny Windows Mobile keyboard, Transcriber, Block Recogniser and Letter Recogniser.
Graphics Benchmarks
We tested the Diamond2 with the VSBenchmark program but to get it to run we have to switch the phone into VGA mode as it does not support WVGA (thanks to Me in the comments of the unboxing), we would have used SPB Benchmark but for some reason it would not complete the tests. Here are the results of those tests:-
Other Software of note
Internet Explorer Mobile 6
Well what can you say, this will be an earlier version to the version we will see with the release of Windows Mobile 6.5 and to be honest just as well. Its just not a good experience. It is slow, buggy and nearly unusable, pages are slow to open and sometimes flash works and most times it doesn’t. It totally bogs the device down to a standstill.
Below are two screen shots, one on the left is IE6 Mobile and the right is Opera Mobile 9.5, see the difference.
Added to the poor rendering, the accelerometer does not work with it and the zoom bar works a little but not very effective, both work perfectly with Opera Mobile 9.5, this is not a program you will want to use.
Google Maps
Other software to note is Google Maps and that works well with the AGPS, it acquires a satellite fix extremely quickly and works well without any noticeable lag. The actual screen of the device displays a really high amount of data due the the high resolution.
YouTube
The usual YouTube application that we have seen before on HTC devices is again present and it does work well so no complaints and it is certainly a better way to view videos than trying to use the IE web browser as mentioned above.
The rest of the software within the programs directory is pretty standard stuff like the RSS Reader, Office Mobile, FM Radio, Windows Live, Teeter, Messenger, Adobe Reader LE and Audio Booster.
So overall what do we think?
HTC have produced another excellent device, the handset oozes build quality with the exception of the plastic battery cover. The screen is simply stunning and the sensitivity of the resistive screen is the nearest thing to capacitive we have seen. Its a joy to use and its a powerful phone too.
TouchFlo3D is a great home screen / overlay to the operating system and this time it does go that bit deeper which makes the whole Windows Mobile experience so much better. The flow of the icons and flick responses are now instant without any of the lag we had seen previously. The camera produced some great results in good light conditions and was much more responsive than previous HTC cameras, but the lack of a flash will render it pretty useless in poorer light conditions.
As a phone it worked perfectly, great audio quality, hangs onto the signal with above average results, the integration of contacts, text messages, emails etc is also another great feature. Battery life while not fantastic would easily get through a day of heavy use with push email, web browsing and moderate phone use.
Not wanting to dwell on the point for too long, but no 3.5mm headset jack is a pain and one omission that we can never understand or forgive, its just plain annoying now, especially as there is no adaptor included.
For a high end phone the packaging is not very impressive either and a few people are complaining about the lack of a case in the box, not really a problem as lets be honest who ever uses the stock case anyway, for a phone of this price and style it deserves much more.
So should you buy it ?, if your a Windows Mobile lover and don’t input lots of text this is the crème de la crème of keyboardless Windows phones, if you do input lots of text it may be wiser to wait for the Touch Pro2 which should be here in a few months. Sure it has a few flaws, like the accelerometer only works in a few applications, a better music and video player should have been included and that 3.5mm headset jack, the biggest flaw though is Windows Mobile 6.1, its just not good enough for this top end hardware and this is the kicker, HTC have confirmed that this device will get an update to Windows Mobile 6.5 and because of that, this device should be very appealing.
It is currently on sale for £ 394.00 so is actually cheaper than the Touch HD by roughly £100.00 so based on that it is good value as the specs are similar with the exception of the screen size which makes the device more pocketable and a 3.5mm headset socket.
Be warned though if your in the USA, this model does not support your 3G bands so if you import one your looking at an Edge only device.
Thanks go out to Clove who have supplied us this review device
Specification of HTC Touch Diamond2
Operating System –
Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
Processor –
Qualcomm MSM7200A, 528 MHz
Memory –
RAM – 288 MB
ROM – 512 MB
Display –
3.2-inch TFT-LCD touch-sensitive screen with 480 X 800 WVGA resolution
Operating Frequency –
HSDPA/WCDMA:
Europe/Asia: 900/2100 MHz
Up to 2 Mbps up-link and 7.2 Mbps down-link speeds
Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE:
Europe/Asia: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
(Band frequency, HSUPA availability, and data speed are operator dependent.)
Connectivity –
Bluetooth 2.0 with Enhanced Data Rate and A2DP for wireless stereo headsets
Wi-Fi: IEEE 802.11 b/g
HTC ExtUSB (11-pin mini-USB 2.0 and audio jack in one)
GPS –
Internal GPS antenna
Expansion –
microSD memory card (SD 2.0 compatible)
Other-
FM Radio, G-Sensor
Camera –
Main camera: 5.0 megapixel colour camera with auto focus
Second camera: VGA CMOS colour camera
Battery –
Rechargeable Lithium-ion battery 1100 mAh
Dimensions –
107.85 X 53.1 X 13.7 mm (4.25 X 2.09 X 0.54 inches)
Weight –
117.5 grams (4.15 ounces) with battery
Warranty –
2 Years
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The overall score of the 1st diamond is 2615. This means the hardware and drivers for the Diamond and Diamond 2 are likely to be very similar. Maybe the largest improvement is the screen. If we consider the ASUS P565 scores 4816. Of course the ASUS has an 800 mhz processor and probably a hardware accelerated GPU.
The question is does this device have the processing power to run next generation software such as 3D games or hi def video. Will new software designed with devices with the GPU accelrated 1ghz snapdragon in mind have any chance of running on this device. Could this device become redundant completely with the release of vastly more powerful devices including some coming from HTC.
Good review Chris, liked the benchmarks.
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Nice review, I just don’t see why anyone would buy this with iPhone 3.0 round the corner and very likely an updated iPhone.
For corporate I think they want a real keyboard for e-mail.
Chris,
If you take a picture does it use the accelerometer to orientate the picture?
Kieran
@Kieran the accelerometer does not seem to work in the camera application or the album viewer, it does however work in the TF3D album viewer, pretty poor use of the accelerometer to be fair
[...] vidjeli izgleda još bolje i atraktivnije. Uglavnom već su se na nekoliko mjesta pojavile razne recenzije HTC Touch Diamond 2 na internetu, a iskustva su više manje pozitivna. Strpite se malo dok ne [...]
[...] vidjeli izgleda još bolje i atraktivnije. Uglavnom već su se na nekoliko mjesta pojavile razne recenzije HTC Touch Diamond 2 na internetu, a iskustva su više manje pozitivna. Strpite se malo dok ne [...]
Chris, thanks for this detailed review. It looks like the Calendar application in TouchFlo only has Month and Today views (where the Today view is similar to the Agenda view in WM) . Can you also get to the Week and Day (with the hour grid) views of Windows Mobile, and maybe also the Year view? I actually like the standard calendar views in Windows Mobile because they look so simiar to Outlook on my desktop pc – however require the stylus.
Similar question about the e-mail view: Can you get a list view of all the mails in your inbox? The “envelope” view doesn’t seem very useful to me (I’ve never used TouchFlo before, so I could be wrong)
Stefan, The Calendar application does indeed only show month and today views, no weekly views or hourly views.
The Email tab you can flick through current emails or click on inbox and it takes you to the full email list which is standard Win Mo
The HTC Diamond 2, what a piece of beauty… I long for one here in the US and can’t wait to run windows mobile 6.5 on it! It is all I want for Christmas. Do you think HTC knows anything about Christmas in July?
[...] http://www.tracyandmatt.co.uk http://www.slashgear.com http://mobiletechaddicts.com var [...]
I liked d phone a lot. But m nt satisfied with d camera. Dere is no flash. Dis has changed my mind.
N if u cud plz.mail me d actual cost of d phone!
Thank you for an excellent review! Truth be told, I was already leaning towards this phone when I first read the raving review on TracyandMatt, but then after they went on about Touch Pro 2 (for 3 pages +) I was stuck as to which one to go for; now that I’ve read your reviews on both, I think I’m definitely going for the Diamond 2!
This is mainly because the camera seems to be better on this phone than the Touch Pro 2. However, I still think it’s a great pity that there’s no 3.5 mm headphone jack. Did I read that there’s no adapter included either? Any suggestions about the best place to buy these from? (Ebay/Amazon?)
Dream phone would be something like the HTC Diamond 2 with a 3.5 mm jack *and* a spectacular camera. For all the talk about high-end phones, none of them seem to come with decent cameras.
Will certainly be checking back to Mobile Tech Addicts in the future for phone reviews!
[...] use of my mobile phone. The mentioned reviews vary from this to good and comprehensive reviews like this. Apparently, while some reviewers try to introduce a product as unbiased as possible and based on [...]
what about the head set, you haven’t given any details about the head set.
Very nice review. I’m realy considering to buy one, but I just have one question:
Does the e-mail application work for a hotmail account or is it only outlook?
I am changing iphone 3g 3.0 with diamond 2. The only good thing iphone has over diamond 2 is screen, nothing else.
chris dat waz wiked review about d phone. i wanted to ask you some thngz, that if the screen of diamond 2 *scratch Proof* or isit just the simple screen and 2nd if they provide the memory card along with the handset or not and lastly how best is the media player of this phone ?
would b great if yu can kindly reply to them..
cheerz pall
I bought this phone last week after a long study. I was basically looking for a phone that has windows 6.1 and a 5 MP camera and I wanted it to be more of a phone size and look than a PDA. After having it for a week, I must admit that I love it. The only thing that I am a bit concerned is its battery life. At the moment I have to charge it every day though I am only using it moderately. Is there anyone else who had a problem with its battery?
I just got the phone (Diamond 2) and it’s the biggest regret. HTC has taken the phone 2 steps back especially in terms of being user friendly. Some examples:
1. Indicators along the top for various things like battery, phone signal strength volume etc does not work at all. I had to make several trips to telco shop – they opened 2 new sets and all had the same problem. I called HTC and visited their repair centre – only to be told it’s normal!
2. You cannot select sms messages to be deleted by scrolling through them. Its either ‘ALL”, ‘ALL BELOW” or “SEVERAL”.
3. If you key wrong words in a sms, you cannot highlight the words to be deleted. The only way to do it is to backspace. So if you need to delete 10 words, it’s 10 keystrokes!!!!
There’s lots more I will not waste my time writing. Overall, I’ve never felt so frustrated buying a new phone. To make matters worse, the helpdesk don’t even have a set to work on. Good thing my telco allows me to change another brand – no more HTC for me.
Tim – I would advise you against getting it. I’m sure you will regret, just like me.
I have been using this phone for 2 months now – it was supplied by my employer. It’s the only device of it’s type I’ve used so perhaps they are all the same.
The interface is terrible. It’s illogical and inconsistent so you never know what to expect or where to expect it and the touch sensitive screen operation is erratic. The only thing that works properly is the touch keyboard
I agree with Julian Lee and Ian. This is a mistake.
I only bought it because it has Windows 6.0.
My brother in law is crazy about Iphone and he tells me that it is the best. But my problem is that there is no windows 6 on Iphone. So whats your suggestion?
The phone is good, but it got a shitty battery which does not even last for 24 hours with minimal usage(not using music and wireless, just basic use).
@Manish,
battery life is a problem with all smartphones, because of large bright LCDs.. with heavy use, iPhone sometimes has to be recharged twice per day! ask anyone who has one.
i m buyin htc diamond 2 for my bday iz it a gud idead coz b4 reading the comments above i was vry sure of buyin it but now m lil dicy.. plz suggest me the rite thin..
ppl believe me, iphone doesn’t worth a dollar, iphone sucksssss. i bought it 4 days ago n it’s already dead, the screen is all blue. anyway i bought a HTC DIAMOND 2 after that, and really guys it’s the best mobile phone ever.
great phone !!!! but im new to windows mobile operated phones. need a bit of advice such as where can i get more apps from, having trouble with games (java class not found) keeps comming up when i try and download a game.. and can you watch videos on other website apart from you tube?
It looks like a great phone with a decent review. But having heard some of the shortfalls, I think I’ll wait for the touch Pro 2. As for the Iphone lovers, I’m sorry to say but I currently using one and it’s nothing more than a shelas toy. Looks pretty, classy, every girl just blah blah about it but it’s probably because it’s an apple and apple has spent $$$$ advertising it. It freezes very often especially when you’re on the phone and someone else called in or trying to access the menu in an active call. The Speaker volume is terrible especially when you use a case. You won’t hear it if the phone is in your pocket. The speaker phone is useless. If you turn it on and talk while driving, road noise will cancel out the voice. And worse of all, try scrolling! you’re trying to scroll the phone list and it started dialing instead. And the camera @3.2 meg, I thought this is the year 2010! any cheapie phone on the market has a better camera than this. Switch to an Iphone and you’ll be like me. I still don’t get how Apple managed to promote it and got many sold. Comparing an Iphone to HTC or another brand is like Comparing Apple Computers to IBM. Buy an Iphone and you also pay premium prices for accessories from Apple. Nothing else work with it. I am not so sure about the Diamond 2 but from the review, but it sounded much more than a shella’s toy.
Well overall the Set is pretty nice dimensionally and Graphically. The only issue which i am facing is the battery time..12hrs of charging only gave me 3hrs
which is pretty BAD…dont know why as i got the set BOX PACKED…any suggestion anyone..?
I bought the diamond 2 here in the US. It is working very well with the network over here. I haven’t had any problems with it. They might have fixed some of the problems like the signal bar, battery bar for the US market. The only thing is the IE 6, you have to have all bars for it to upload the window quickly. But overall, it is good equipment. Get one from http://www.giconn.com/agama.
I bought HTC Touch diamond2 3 weeks ago..It’s good if the battery stays for 15 days as they advertised….. It doesn’t last for the whole even in stand-by mode.
I think I will be allright with its battery cos I used iPhone b4 and seriously, iPhone has the worst battery in the world. I charge it once a day in the first 2 weeks, then twice a day after 4 weeks, at last.. even 3 times!! and the system became unstable
Now the iPhone’s HOME button doesnt work..craaap otherwise it doesnt have nice camera, you cant edit even sometimes read office files
the only thing good is it has a multi touch screen…
I will absolutely buy HTC D2 several days later…WM FTW!
I bought this phone with so much excitement only to be disappointed by a short battery life . I have had 2 touch screen phones and this is by far the only phone with the lowest battery life. I am disappointed.
hey ppl i must say that i have used many htc phones even the latest out htc hd2, but the diamond touch 2 is just out of this world, who would have thought that htc would have came up with something like this, so many great features on the phone itself. loving it, i have used the iphone aswell and i still prefer htc touch diamond2. besides i have heard that apple is going to be shuttind down soon..
how to delete more than one picture in 1 time.
Having owned three smartphones before means that I had certain expectations of the HTC TD2. It is fully specced and can do everything other smartphones can do. The catch comes in usability – in other words how easy is it to perform the different functions. The usability of this phone is VERY POOR! It is now lying in my cupboard and I bought a new battery to extend the life of my old smartphone.
It is very difficult to select a contact from a list using the dynamic scrolling. You nearly always select a contact by accident when you scroll down to a contact low down in the contact list. There should have been a vertical scrolling section on the screen where you do not select but only scroll. The text entry mechanism leaves much to be desired. You have a very small window in which the text that you enter is displayed. You sometimes cannot scroll up to see what you have written as part of the current message.
I even tried to improve the usr interface with the SPB Mobile Shell 3.5 but it could not hide the poor usability of Windows Mobile 6.1
Try to play with one before you buy – else you may make a very expensive mistake. Like I did!
comprei um htc touch diamond 2 a duas semanas estou contente com ele so foi uma disulusao a bateria durar tao pouco um dia e meio mas pelos vistos ja e da marca do pda exclusive foi a loja passado 3 dias trocaram e tem sempre o mesmo erro a marca htc havia de corrojir a bateria e lançar uma nova porque pelo preço havia de ter uma bateria de maior doraçao
THis phone is really shit. I bought one in august 2009 and in april 2010, the touch screen has stopped working. When I first bought it, I could not see the name of the person calling or texting me. I could only see there phone number. Then I changed the software to windowns 6.5 and the problem was solved. So I was a happy chappy for a few weeks before the texting became a problem. Basically everytime I wanted to write a text message, it will take me atleast 1min before the window will open and I could write. There are so many problems with this phone. I am really hoping that this phone kills itself so that I can qualify for a refund. DO NOT BUY
i have had the diamond 2 for about 9 months it has been sent back for repair 7 times taking atleast 3weeks a time! i have had hardly anyuse out of this phone, battery only lasts for few hours as long as you dont use it! It conects to the internet all the time which is charging me all the time, when i recieve a message i have to remove the batery and turn it back on for it to work and then take about 5 mins to type the message consisting of a few words, too many problems to list this is the worst phone i have ever bought i advise anyone thinking of it to think again! x
MMM..I bought my diamond2 four month ago, and now i am facing a problem. The screen is out and no picture after experiencing slow down during surfacing the internet for a while. HTC need improvement.
I’ve make a very expensive mistake. I should have listen to my brother. There are dozens of cheap phone out there which is far more better than HTC.
I’ve had my HTC Diamond 2 for just over 10 months and for the last three months it has been dropping calls mid way through and also not allowing me answer many incoming calls. It was sent for repair today and apparently it will take 4 weeks to get it back. Probably wont stick with HTC again (my other HTC phone went wrong after about a year).
hi,
i have send my htc diamond 2 for repair of screen in just 2 month of purchase.
pathetic batery life, planning to purchase extended battery with thick case covering.
phone is smart, performance is good, but battery sucks.
could anyone tell me if i can download free apps on this phone