It’s finally here! The good folks at HTC have been good enough to send over an HTC Touch Diamond for consideration. I’ve been playing with this handsome little phone for the past few days, and let me just say, it’s the slickest Windows Mobile handset that I’ve ever had the pleasure of using – which is saying a lot.
Compared to my iPhone 3G (a comparison that is inevitable in today’s market), the HTC Touch Diamond is just soo much smaller and compact that I’m inclined to refer to it as “cute.” But, don’t let its svelte profile fool you, the Touch Diamond is about as good as it gets in the touchscreen smartphone world.
TouchFLO 3D is as easy on the eyes as it is on your fingers. Swiping the
interface slides the homescreen to different sets of functions – web, programs, weather, etc. The touchscreen is pressure sensitive but seems to have been calibrated to feel like a capacitance display. The lightest of screen-presses is all that’s required to register a touch-input.
GPS locks on relatively quickly, and is accurate enough to navigate my way around Old Town Pasadena by foot. Google Maps integration allows you to cross-reference search results and even call the business that you just 
looked up.
The on-screen virtual keyboard looks like it’s too small to use at first, but has proven to be quite usable. I may have an unfair advantage from my year of training on the iPhone’s industry-leading virtual keyboard, but that doesn’t detract from how well HTC has managed to design their compact keyboard (although, stubby-fingered users may have more difficulty using the keyboard).
And, let’s not forget the beautiful VGA display. There’s nothing like a side-by-side image comparison with the iPhone’s 3.5″ display to really highlight how much more crisp images look on the HTC Touch Diamond’s screen. Check the gallery below for some comparison shots.
For now, enjoy the pics. Full review to follow.
