HTC Touch Diamond
May 6, 2008, 6:10 AM by Rich Brome
updated May 6, 2008, 1:18 PM
In depth and hands-on with HTC's new flagship phone, the Touch Diamond.
Basics
At an event in London today, HTC announced the Touch Diamond, the company's new flagship phone for 2008. The Touch Diamond has impressive specs and hardware, although the new user interface - TouchFlo 3D - might be the most important feature.
The hardware starts with a flat black slab that's quite thin, but houses impressive features such as HSDPA 7.2, HSUPA, and a VGA display. It's hard not to compare it to the iPhone. The iPhone lacks such fast data, but of course that's rumored to be changing soon. The form factor is roughly the same, though, and it's designed to be used the same way: with your fingers. The screen even rotates automatically just like the iPhone.
The software is where it gets really interesting. It's based on Windows Mobile 6.1, but that's not obvious at first. You can run Windows Mobile applications, of course, but for the most part HTC has gone to great lengths to replace the Windows Mobile menus with their own interface that's both prettier and easier to use.
Hardware
In the speech announcing the Touch Diamond, HTC touted its thin profile. Much like Apple with the MacBook Air, they made some compromises to make it as thin as it is. You won't find a standard round headset jack or memory card slot, for example, and the battery is only 900 mAh, which is quite small for a phone with a large, power-hungry VGA touch display. (Unsuprisingly, HTC claims they've optimzed power usage so the small battery won't be a problem. We'll see.)
The hardware of the Touch Diamond is indeed thin, but only enough to be competitive with, say, the iPhone. It's not "remarkably thin" or anything like that. It is a nice size in the other dimensions. The width is especially nice; it's thinner than much of the competition. The design on the back might look like something done with texture, but it's actually a terrain of slightly different angled surfaces. It doesn't create a funny shape or feel, though; the tallest edge only sticks out 0.25 mm.
It's very light and comes with a super-slick case.
Like so many phones these days, it's an absolute fingerprint magnet. It took over a minute of polishing before we could take decent photos of it.
The controls are mostly decent. Just like many new phones (I'm thinking Nokia N96 here) the keys are physical keys, but a solid sheet of thin black plastic covers them, and sheer distance is what separates the keys enough to tell them apart. This works fine for the home, back, send and end keys, but not so great for the d-pad. Up and down are a bit stiff to press, but they're usable. The left and right keys, however, are very difficult to press reliably. All directions of the d-pad are so stiff that, at first, I didn't think there were physical keys at all. Bottom line: it's not a great d-pad. Of course you can do just about everything by touching the screen, but those that prefer the d-pad alternative might be disappointed.
The VGA display is incredible. Packing that much resolution into such a small area makes pixels so small you'd need a microscope to see them. That means photos and web pages appear with sharpness and detail that you have to see to believe. You can zoom all of the way out and still read the text on most web pages... if your eyes can even handle it.
The touch screen is not capacitive like the iPhone, so you have to mind how hard you press. It can act unreliably if you press too lightly or too hard.
The Diamond is designed for your fingers, but it does have a stylus. The design of the stylus is actually quite clever. A magnet holds it in place so it doesn't sneak away when you're not looking. The phone also knows when you remove the stylus, so it will automatically unlock the screen if it's locked, and open up a notes field if you were looking at a contact, for example.
The phone will come in multiple radio configurations. The first one is for Europe and Asia, where it will launch in June. That version doesn't have GSM 850, nor is it 3G compatible with US networks. However HTC made it clear that there will be other versions, and they plan to launch the Diamond with most major carriers worldwide, including North America.
TouchFlo 3D
HTC's TouchFlo interface from last year wasn't much more than a relatively modest shortcut system. The "Cube" let you access some common functions easily, but didn't come close to replacing Windows Mobile for most tasks.
The new TouchFlo 3D interface is clearly based on the original, but it's been vastly improved and expanded. It still doesn't replace Windows Mobile, but it does take a giant step in that direction compared to past efforts. It does completely replace the main programs menu, which is a welcome touch. Now you can easily choose and arrange icons for your most-used applications on a custom menu set up exactly how you like it, and even the list of additional programs has a slick look with finger-touch interaction.
TouchFlo 3D does suffer from the same basic problem as all "UI replacements" on Windows Mobile, though: it only goes so far, and when it ends, the switch to Microsoft's UI is quite jarring. For example, when you're browsing your text message inbox, there's an incredibly slick 3D effect to it, but it's only a preview of your inbox; it's not threaded to include messages you've sent. When you want to reply, you're thrown into the standard Windows Mobile text messaging application. Since the Diamond uses Windows Mobile 6.1, you do see threaded messages in that view, but it's not nearly as pretty as the TouchFlo 3D parts of the UI.
Spiffy graphics and slick 3D animation permeate TouchFLO 3D. Music can be browsed by flipping through album art (a lot like Apple's CoverFlow) and text messages flow in a spinning 3D "string".
Most of the touch interaction is also done very well. The swipe-to-scroll effect is implemented almost exactly like on the iPhone. You can just "grab" a list and flick your finger to send it scrolling at any speed. It's much smoother and easier than the scrolling action on competing finger-touch phones from Samsung and LG.
There's a lot - and I do mean a lot - that's clearly inspired (if not downright copied) from the iPhone. (HTC is by no means alone in this; Samsung and LG are copying Apple just as shamelessly these days.) The on-screen keyboard is one example. It looks exactly like the iPhone's, but without the neat pop-up keys and auto-correction. (Although it does have word prediction.) The music player has an album art interface that's not terribly different than CoverFlow, and it offers most of the same options with the same layout. HTC also uses those cute little sliding toggle switches in a few places, as well as a volume slider just like the iPhone's. There's even a zoom in / zoom out effect when opening and closing the full programs menu... just like the iPhone. And of course they worked with Google to create a custom YouTube app... just like you-know-who.
The browser also copies the iPhone, but only in the best possible ways. It's actually a really nice and exciting kind of browser to see on a Windows Mobile device. It's based on the Opera rendering engine, but the interface and touch interactivity are all created by HTC. HTC essentially created their own new mobile browser from the ground up, and they did a great job. You can tap to zoom in and out, view full-screen or with a menu, pan around by dragging, flick to scroll, etc. It's pretty great. A special circular gesture to zoom in does take getting used to, but once you do, it works well.
It also has automatic rotation to landscape mode using an orientation sensor, although this only works in the browser and photo viewer. Perhaps more clever is a feature that lets you silence an incoming call by simply flipping the phone on its face.
There are other, more unique UI innovations, though. The contacts app does have the familiar touch-and-drag scrolling down the right edge, but instead of just letters of the alphabet, it pops up actual names as you drag your finger, which is pretty handy.
The UI does rely on gestures to some degree, which is the kind of thing you either love or hate. If you're used to the iPhone, it does take some getting used to. There aren't as many awkward gestures as the first version of TouchFlo, but there are still some. The main one is a simple up/down swipe in the center of the screen to scroll or flip through items. For example, to advance to the next message in your SMS inbox, you swipe you finger up to "flick" the previous message up off the screen. You need to be careful not to touch too low, though, or you'll hit the main icon bar, and touching too high will activate the status bar, bringing up a special shortcut control, etc. The other main gesture is a circular motion, which zooms in. Oddly, they've carried this motion over to the touch wheel that doubles as the d-pad. You'd think that would let you scroll through lists, but in fact you can only use it to zoom in. Only certain situations call for a "zoom" type of action, so it's only active at all in photos, web pages, and office documents.
The prototypes we used were running un-optimized software, and it showed. There were parts of it that were incredibly fast, responsive, and slick, but then at other times it would stutter and act quite slow. We trust they will iron out most such kinks before release - especially for the more test-happy American carriers. In our experience Windows Mobile is prone to odd pauses, though, so it might be a necessary evil.
HTC is known for offering carriers a high degree of customization. With TouchFlo 3D, they continue to offer carriers numerous customization options, but they've started to take more control over it by bringing it in house. Whereas before, carriers could slap their own totally custom UI on the phone, now HTC is taking charge and insisting that they be the ones to create the custom interface. Carriers can still link the UI into their special music, photo, and ringtone services, for example, but HTC will craft the interface to ensure it integrates well with TouchFlo 3D. They'll modify the color scheme, etc. as well, but there will be a new level of consistency (in quality and usability) in these carrier-customized interfaces. They demo'd one for Orange (a European carrier) and it was quite slick. It seamlessly integrated Orange branding and services, and customized the graphics and animation quite a bit, but maintained the slick look of TouchFlo 3D, and remained just as easy to use.
First Look
This page features live photos from the press conference. See the other pages for our full report on the Touch Diamond.
About the author, Rich Brome:Editor in Chief Rich became fascinated with cell phones in 1999, creating mobile web sites for phones with tiny black-and-white displays and obsessing over new phone models. Realizing a need for better info about phones, he started Phone Scoop in 2001, and has been helming the site ever since. Rich has spent two decades researching and covering every detail of the phone industry, traveling the world to tour factories, interview CEOs, and get every last spec and photo Phone Scoop readers have come to expect. As an industry veteran, Rich is a respected voice on phone technology of the past, present, and future.
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Comments
T-Mobile- HTC Forcea(p5000) pronounced For-see-yuh
Verizon-htc (XV7100)
Sprint-HTC Mongral
AT&T- 9225/9200
Gsmarena.com- had it posted earlier today
"The phone will come in multiple radio configurations. The first one is for Europe and Asia, where it will launch in June. That version doesn't have GSM 850, nor is it 3G compatible with US networks. How...
(continues)
Any word on the Raphael?!!
