HTC just officially launch the HTC Diamond, the latest Windows Mobile Powered Professional device in Singapore. I had the opportunity to be invited for the launch to cover the event. I was both wowed by HTC Diamond’s TouchFLO 3D, a software technology invented by HTC that personalizes the way a user would interact with the device. The HTC Diamond’s must have with it’s latest TouchFlo 3D GUI, HTC’s innovative software revolutionizes the way we use our mobile device, it has an emotional interactive feel that is different from any other mobile device in market today. Whether it is the cool and sleek looks or the features under the hood, the HTC Diamond is the latest Windows Mobile device you would not want to miss. The HTC Touch Diamond will be available from June 2008 at all authorized resellers at a suggested retail price of SGD$1,098.00 (inclusive of 7% GST)
Before you read on about our hands on review, here are the specs in a glance.
The device comes with a Qualcomm MSM7201A 528 MHz processor, running under the hood of TouchFLO 3D is VGA device with Windows Mobile 6.1, ROM 256MB, RAM 192 MB DDR SDRAM, also has built in 4GB internal Storage, weighs a feather weight of 110g with battery, comes with TriBand, 3G, HSDPA/WCDMA, 900/2100MHz for Europe and Asia. It is both GPS and A-GPS ready, has Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, Wifi 802.11 b/g, the camera has a 3.2 Megapixel auto focus lens and a secondary VGA CMOS camera on the front of the device.
The Device is small enough to fit into your hands snuggly and my gosh is it light, but not light the point it feels like a toy, but light enough to carry in your trousers pocket without feeling embarrassed and it does not weigh the ladies down.
The difference with the generation one TouchFLO and the latest TouchFLO 3D is the way the software interacts with the user, it is a whole new experience in TouchFLO 3D, with a graphic GPU equivalent to what you will find in a PSP rendering your graphics is a stunning especially with a VGA screen, HTC seems to have pull out all the graphical creativity of the bag to really bring the interactive user interface to be a personal one with the user and it did. At press room, there was a lot of wows and ohhs when, John Wang, Chief Marketing Officer of HTC Corp showed us personally in greater details about what the HTC Diamond can do.
With a GPU churning out close to 7 million polygons per second(what does this mean – means QUAKE mobile will look as smooth as silk on the HTC Diamond) and because of this, the entire GUI looks smooth from Contacts, to SMS, photos, music and video rendering. HTC working closely with Google and Opera, we got a taste of how fast YouTube and Google Maps loaded, John had a video MV of Madonna and it played live streaming from YouTube on HSDPA, it was smooth and the download was fast. They have a nice feature program called Weather which actually updates over the air the latest weather results of your location or city of choice, the overcast, sunshine, raining graphical display is not just eye catching but gives you a good feel of the weather and I just like looking at it.
The device can automatically detect when it tilts to orientate the screen in portrait or landscape mode as there is a accelerometer built into the device, cool.
I am personally ok with the internal 4GB storage space, but for people whom brings out their kitchen sink of music, photos and videos may be disappointed with the lack of an external storage slot. We mentioned this to John, hopes in future models they will update this to atleast include a MicroSD slot for the power users.
HTC really thought through what some of the things people liked or disliked about their devices, one thing I always hated was the losing of my stylus from my PDA, it just popped out after too much usage to the point I lived without a stylus on my Dopod Universal for almost a year, basically just used my fingers to do all the tapping. Well worry no more, in the HTC Diamond, the stylus has been revamped and it comes with a magnetic catch that catches on to the device – HTC solves one nagging issue there.
HTC not resting on their laurels, somehow they managed to place a detector wire to it because when you pull out the stylus it will switch on the device. According the John Wang, “Why would anyone pull out a stylus unless he was going to use it.” Hmmm that makes a lot of sense, now why didn’t someone think of it, little things like these go along way as it is very thoughtful.
Was the machine slow? No it was not, but than again, I am not sure if I maxed up the internal storage would it slow it down or not.
This is just our initial hands on review run up, look out for our full review when we get our hands on a review unit.
