The Touch Diamond is a mobile phone that’s more than just a phone. I’ve had one since Sept 08, and here are my views on it.
The phone is made by HTC – you’ve never heard of them, but they do make some pretty special devices, and often their products are rebranded. For example, my phone is sold by O2, and is called the O2 Xda Ignito.
If Ignito is a compression of ‘incognito’, then it’s probably not a bad name for the phone as at a glance it does not look particularly glamour-boy. It’s a small phone, with similar dimensions to my old S-E K810i. Maybe a bit wider, but thinner. It’s not the monster size of an iPhone. It finished in black – rubbery, non-slip matt on the rear, glossy on the screen side. The dimensions are good for me. It discretely fits in any pocket, even with its protective leather sleeve. (I do use the sleeve whenever there is a chance I’ll put the phone in a pocket with anything sharp that might scratch it. It is hardy – it won’t scratch easy – but I want to look after my toys.
The big plus to this device is Windows Mobile: apps galore. Full internet over 3G or wireless. It comes with Opera as it’s "main" browser, but IE is installed too. I’m not going to list and discuss all the installed apps; just the ones that get me by.
My phone, going back a couple of generations, has also been my alarm clock. One thing the Touch Diamond does incredibly poorly is alarms. Ok, blame Windows Mobile I guess. The out-the-box alarm app will only play .wav files (who still uses wavs?) and doesn’t have a snooze. Fortunately there are many developers out there willing to tinker up all sorts of applications. I found one, pTravelAlarm, which does the job perfectly. It wasn’t free, but for the $10 I wasn’t going to quibble. (Strange how there is so much free software Windows proper, but very little for mobile devices.)
Another app I use frequently is the Weather. This is a pretty built in gizmo that fetches the 5-day forecast for 10 configurable cities using 3G or wireless. It’s cute, and accurate enough. For more granular met-reps, I’ve downloaded and installed the WinMo version of Weather Watcher, which I’ve used on my other computers for a long while.
An honourable mention for apps is the Google Maps application. The cool thing about it is that it automatically locates you based on your range to the cellular mast.
Let me now go on moaning about all the things I don’t like about the Touch Diamond.
I’m not sure the cellular signal is the best you get amongst phones. It seems to drop out a lot, but then maybe that is just the usual (dodgy) locations I tend to use my phone.
The software is slow. A lot of the time you can’t be sure a button has been pressed. Have I actually hung up a call? It might sound like it, but the screen hasn’t updated yet. Likewise, if too many apps are running in the background it seems to grind to a halt quite quickly. The phone functions in particular should take priority over other software running. One would think…
Use it a bit – phone or apps – and it starts to get rather warm. Not sizzling, but toastier than a normal sort of mobile phone.
The address book / contacts list is a bit fiddly to use. You can’t look up a contact in a hurry. In fact, this is not a phone that can be used while walking / driving / pretending to listen to someone else. You need to concentrate and be very accurate with pressing often tiny buttons on the screen.
The ringtone and vibrate seem to be mutually exclusive. Bit of a nuisance for me as I tend to keep the phone in a trouser pocket ,and if out and about, I don’t hear it ring. But I don’t want to have to remember to take it off vibe when I take it out of my pocket, and back on when …. You get the picture.
The camera is rubbish. The auto-whitebalance doesn’t seem to work. The shutter lag very slow, and unpredictable. My S-E had a flash which helped. No such luxury here.
There is no direct headphone jack – you need to use the supplied mic/headset attachment, but at least you can plug in any headphones.
The battery will last two days, and I’ve proved it. However, I was in the middle of a call when it died without any warning whatsoever. A little beep at 10% would have been nice.
When you’re on a call, with the phone to your ear, you run the risk of touching the on screen buttons. A little proximity sensor would prevent me from putting people on hold accidentally.
Now for some good features.
The round button at the bottom is a 5-way rocker, and it also seems to operate like an iPod’s wheel in some instances. I’ve only found this feature to work in the browser to increase/decrease font size. Would be cool to twirl instead of clicking to scroll. But then to scroll on most screens, you just have to swipe a finger across the screen. It doesn’t work too well for me sometimes though – the finger pressure needs to be 100% right, and see my rant about software speed. If the phone is running slowly, and you’ve got a long way to scroll, use the rocker or you will end up selecting something instead of scrolling over it.
Connectivity. Having wireless and 3G is pretty useful. I was in a bar the other week, and the landlord was kind enough to dish out his wireless password. Needless to say I was able to Google every topic of conversation.
Overall, the Touch Diamond is a fair all-rounder device that fits neatly in any pocket. It’s far more than a phone and does a lot of nifty stuff, but in my opinion, it doesn’t do anything particularly well. There’s nothing exceptional about the Touch Diamond. It is definitely a *cool* device, but nothing about it really stands out.
I will continue to use it through the rest of my contract – that’ll probably be early 2010 – but I do long for the ability to press a tactile button and *know* that I have definitely just answered an incoming call.
