HTC Touch Diamond Review – This Diamond is Definitely Not in the Rough

Do you ever have days where you just love your job? I’ve appointed myself Technical Review Guru on the Prowl and I have to admit I’ve also had days where the latest mobile phone I was putting through its paces was doing nothing much besides boring me to tears. Useful, functional, does what the tin says – and boring.

And then I have days where I get to review a piece of machinery that has my cynical eyebrow climbing over hyped up advertising words like “exhilarating design” but still has me downright, well – exhilarated to be playing with. And so it goes with the HTC Touch Diamond.

I’m a bit of a soft touch myself for a highly visual design ethic and that was definitely the first thing that leapt out at me about the HTC Touch Diamond. To my geeky eye it was total candy. The 2.8 inch touch screen is framed by brushed metal and features faceted edges, and while I wouldn’t quite call it “stunning”, it is pretty impressive. At the risk of outing myself as a total geek, the shape of the facets reminded me for some reason of the Star Trek Enterprise. Embarrassing - but true.

I guess its also a bad sign of how much of a geek I really am because I’m also highly attracted to cool. I didn’t feel the least bit Trekkie handling the HTC Touch Diamond and instead just loved the slick coolness factor of it.

And in true geek fashion – functionality was a must - and this baby has it in spades. For starters, the high speed internet access is HSDPA. That means that accessing the internet is almost fast enough to have a broadband like feel to it. I was amazed at how easily I was able to even watch videos online, with an ease and a speed that rivaled my highly belled and whistled PC at home.

The built in camera is a perfectly usable 3.2 mega pixels, even for the fairly advanced digital photo enthusiast. The camera is entirely auto focused, which may be a plus for some and a drawback for others, since it doesn’t allow for any kind of a manual override.

The 4 gigabytes of onboard storage space are a personal must in my complicated world. That means that I won’t be spending more time and energy that I should be managing my data, files, music, photos and videos. The extra elbow room for storage instead means that I’ll be managing my goals and objectives and using the phone to meet them. That’s a bare level minimum demand that I personally have for the technology that I use; it has to be a partner in producing my goals.

The touch screen itself brags that it has 4 times the resolution of most screens, and I did find it lovely to use and to look at. During testing the screen proved to be sensitive and I do find that the touch responsive screens help me to work more efficiently.

I have some more testing to do, but so far I can say that this phone is worth a closer look.