Windows Phone Thoughts: No Longer in the Rough: A Review of the HTC Touch Diamond 2

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Wednesday, August 5, 2009

No Longer in the Rough: A Review of the HTC Touch Diamond 2

Posted by Don Tolson in "Pocket PC Hardware" @ 07:00 AM

The View from the Outside

Again, HTC shows us that they believe in a minimalist approach when it comes to the overall look and use of their PDAs. External buttons and controls have been reduced to only what's necessary and blended in artfully to the overall look, so they are visible and recognizable, but not obtrusive.

Let's start with the 'business end' of the Touch Diamond 2.

Figure 2: The front of the TD2 is kept clear of clutter so you can focus on the huge, colourful WVGA screen! In the centre of the top is the earpiece for the phone. On the left side of that slot, you can just see the power/notification LED which glows orange while charging, green when it's charged, and flashing green if there is a message, email, etc. Flashing amber means you're down to 10% or less battery power. The right side of the same slot is the light sensor. To the right of that is the VGA camera for video calling. It's likely this will be disabled/removed on the North American models. At the bottom of the screen, you can just barely make out the zoom bar (magnifying glasses on the left and right side) which works in most image-based apps (Album, Opera, IE, and the camera for instance). Below the screen are the Call Pickup, Start Menu, Previous Screen, and Call End buttons. The Call End button doubles as a Home button when not in phone mode.

As always, it's the little added touches which take a PDA from being merely functional to elegant and supportive. For instance, on the Touch Diamond 2, there are LEDs behind the symbols on the buttons which light up when one of the buttons is pressed or the stylus is removed from the holder. Removing the stylus also wakes up the unit and activates the screen if it is sleep mode. Pressing and holding the end-call button locks the unit from taking input, which requires a two button sequence to unlock. The Zoom bar works in all the TouchFlo-based applications and in Opera and IE. Using it, you can zoom in and out of pictures, photos, and web pages.

Did you notice there's no d-pad? It took me a little while to get used to not having that available for screen navigation, but as we'll discuss below, the TouchFlo 3D interface is getting to the point where you don't really need the d-pad or the stylus.

Figure 3: Here's a shot of the left (as you look at it from the front) side of the unit. Only thing here is the volume up/down bar at the top of the unit.

Figure 4: At the bottom of the TD2, is the hole for the microphone (nope, it's not for soft-resetting the unit!) and the mini-USB power/sync/headphone port which has become trademark for HTC. You can just barely see the detent for the stylus in the lower right corner. I have no idea what the oblong hole to the left of the USB port is for (ventilation???)

Figure 5: Pretty bare on the right side of the unit. You can just see the detent for the stylus in the lower left of the picture. The slot on the right side of the picture is for the speaker.

Figure 6: Gone is the raised, angular back of the Touch Diamond. It's been replaced by a more traditional flat back. The case is still high gloss plastic, rather than the rubberized surface we've seen on other models, so it does attract fingerprints, but who cares? It's the back! The only distinguishing item on the back panel is the lens for the 5mp camera, located in the silver triangle at the top.

Figure 7: Here's a shot of the insides of the TD2. Just below the camera, at the top of the battery compartment, is the slot for the SIM card. Beside that, on the left side of the unit, is the slot for the microSD card -- a VERY welcome addition to the Diamond line. Although I couldn't test it, I would assume it's SDHC compatible and will accept the newer 8G and 16G microSD cards.

I didn't get a closeup of it, but the soft reset button is located in the lower left of the unit, under the stylus. It's a bit of pain having to take off the back cover to get to this, but I never had to reset the unit during the entire time I was testing/reviewing it. The only reset required was a hard reset to set it back to factory defaults just before I sent it back to the provider.

Figure 8: Only thing on the top of the unit is the power switch. If you quickly press it, the TD2 goes into normal sleep mode. If you press and hold it for 3 seconds, it will actually turn the device off which will cause it to go through a soft reset cycle when you turn it back on.


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