CTIA Fall 2008
HTC officially announced two new handsets this week at CTIA, the Touch Diamond, and the Touch Pro. Both of these phones have already been announced for GSM networks, but these two are CDMA variants for Sprint's network. There are some minor, but noticeable differences.
Sprint Touch Diamond & Touch Pro
The GSM Touch Diamond lives up to its name with a diamond-patterned backplate. The CDMA variant loses this backplate and substitutes a plain, soft-touch backplate. It is just a hair thicker than the GSM version, which gives it room to accommodate a larger
battery.
Otherwise, most of the features and functions of the Touch Diamond work the same as its GSM brethren. It has a highly glossy (and smudge-prone) front face. It uses the Sprint version of HTC's 3D TouchFLO user interface. There's a carousel that runs along the bottom of the screen that holds most of the phone's applications and tools. You can swipe your finger sideways to scroll through this interface or press each individual icon to bring it up. Scrolling across is definitely more fun.
The 3D aspect of the interface is most apparent in the music and gallery applications, which tile album artwork and pictures in a very appealing and artistic way. Flipping though album covers or images is very enjoyable.
We did notice some serious lag, however, with most aspects of the UI. Whether it was scrolling through the menu or actually interacting with some of the applications, there was a noticeable delay at times. Unfortunately, we were using a final builds of the software and the hardware, so don't be surprised if yours lags a bit, too.
The D-pad on the Diamond is a dimple about the size of a dime. It illuminates to cue you in on different status indicators, or to let you know that the phone is charging, etc. I found it a bit weird to use, and had a hard time finding exactly where the directional was. It was often much faster to simply use the touch interface to get what you needed.
The four buttons on the front surrounding the D-pad are large and easy to activate.
Sprint adds its Music Store and Sprint TV to the Touch Diamond's many capabilities. It is definitely a higher-end device that the regular Touch, and has a powerful camera and connectivity options. For fans of HTC and Windows Mobile, it's a solid, if slightly laggy, smartphone.
The Touch Pro adds a slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The front fascia and functionality is identical to the Diamond. The entire phone is much thicker to accommodate the slider and keyboard.
The keyboard is one of the finer we've seen on an HTC device. It has a full five rows of keys, and most buttons from a full-size keyboard are represented. The keys all felt great, with nice travel and feedback.
With the added thickness is also added weight. It is a meaty phone. You'll definitely notice it in your pocket if you carry it around town.
We shot some video of both phones together. You can check it out here:
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