HTC Touch Diamond Cell Phone Review - Hardware

The Touch Diamond did surprisingly well with speedier text entry than expected on its not-quite-capacious touchscreen, with two hands or just one. We're not a fan of the hidden D-pad buttons, but the screen is absolutely divine in all its VGA-resolution glory. We reserve the big boo and hiss for the lack of a standard headphone jack, despite an included, albeit clunky, adapter.

Text Words Per Minute (7.94)
To test words per minute, we enter standard text into blank note or other application that accepts text and time how long it takes us, and calculate words per minute from this. We select the fastest possible method of text entry, which was a virtual phone keypad with T9 enabled on the Touch Diamond. Using any of the QWERTY keyboards required the precision of the stylus, whereas the standard phone keypad allowed the use of 2 fingers at once, and the T9 system did some heavy lifting to figure out the words we typed. With this set-up, we were able to enter our test text in an average of 24.19 seconds, which calculates out to 39.68 words per minute. Though this is slower than the Nokia E71 and iPhone 3G, this surpasses its predecessor, the HTC Touch by a good margin. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

T9 and Auto Complete (10.0)
The Touch Diamond offers T9 predictive text entry and word completion. T9 guesses the word you've started to enter and lists them above the keyboard so they can be selected without requiring you to enter any more letters to complete the word.

One-Handed Typing (7.70)
To test one-handed typing, we time how long it takes the enter the same text as used in the Text Words Per Minute test using just one hand. The standard phone keypad with T9 enabled still resulted in the fasted text entry, so this is the method we used for this test. Typing one-handed didn't slow us down much at all, resulting in an average time of 24.94 seconds, which equated to 38.48 words per minute. The only thing we had to make sure of was to use a finger nail to press the virtual keys since finger touches are often not recognized. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Keypad Backlighting (4.0)
The Touch Diamond does not have a standard keypad, but there is backlighting for the buttons it does have. This backlight does not automatically turn on with the screen's backlight, only activating when a button is pressed. If you're using the touchscreen in the dark, you'll have to feel for a button and press it to get that backlight to turn on, and it lights the keys evenly with a nice white light - no fancy colors that belie its business-like demeanor here. There are no separate settings specifically for the keypad's backlight.

D-Pad/Joystick (7.0)
At first blush, the Touch Diamond's D-pad is hidden, with only the center select button being obvious. However, there are 4 directional buttons surrounding that center select button. These buttons are also touch-sensitive, allowing scrolling and zooming when you move your finger in a circular motion around the center select button, though this functionality is limited to certain applications only.

The D-pad's buttons offer more travel than expected and good tactile feedback. The only issue is the relative size of the up and down buttons compared to the left and right buttons - they are smaller and may be harder to press reliably with larger fingers without hitting the center select button at the same time. They also share the same plastic face with the home, back, send, and end buttons, so you'll just need to be mindful of avoiding those if you're aiming for the D-pad buttons.

Touch Screen (7.0)
The Touch Diamond's touch screen isn't as responsive as we'd like, requiring firm presses and the use of a fingernail instead of a finger pad and the TouchFLO interface doesn't help by being slow enough to make you wonder if a press registered. While some aspects of the interface are easy enough to use with a finger, many of the icons are smaller to make using the stylus a much more reasonable, and less frustrating, proposition. As with its predecessor, the Touch Diamond's screen is not nearly as responsive or as easy to use with fingers alone as found on the iPhone 3G.

For entering text, you can select between a number of different options in the Settings menu: Block Recognizer, Compact QWERTY, Full QWERTY, Keyboard, Letter Recognizer, Phone Keypad, or Transcriber. Block Recognizer is similar to the Graffiti text entry used on Palm OS PDAs and Transcriber uses handwriting recognition. Most of these entry methods require the accuracy of the stylus instead of a finger.

Text input settings menu

Jog Dial (0.0)
The Touch Diamond does not have a jog dial.

Soft Buttons (0.0)
The Touch Diamond does not have physical soft menu buttons, only virtual ones activated by touching the bottom left and right portions of the screen, for which we do not award points.

Volume Control (3.5)
The volume up and down buttons on the top of the left side of the Touch Diamond, and they are flush with the surface with only shallow outlines to differentiate them from the rest of the phone. They're easily accessible with the thumb when the Touch Diamond is held in the left hand. They require a fair amount of pressure to activate and offer little tactile feedback and will require a little bit of effort to use when the phone is in a pocket or bag.

Power and Standby (5.0)
The power/standby button is on the top left of the Touch Diamond, and is almost flush with the surface, though not as much so as the volume buttons. This one is easier to feel by touch alone and it has a less travel that we'd like but decent tactile feedback. While you won't press it accidentally often nor mistake it for another button, it could be better.

Other Buttons (2.0)
The Touch Diamond has 2 buttons above the send and end keys: home and back. Every button surrounding the center select button shares the same plastic face, so there's no way to feel the difference between any buttons aside from judging their relative location on the front of the device. Like the send and end keys, they have good travel and tactile feedback, and the only issues are their lack of physical differentiation so they can easily be operated by touch alone.

Primary Screen Gross Resolution (10.0)
The Touch Diamond's screen offers VGA resolution of a whopping 480 by 640 pixels. It's ultra clear and crisp and a pure pleasure for the eyes. This resolution level surpasses even the iPhone 3G, though the iPhone still has it beat in terms of sheer screen real estate.

Primary Screen Pixels per Inch (11.74)
Pixels per inch describes a screen's pixel density, where more pixels means more information and more detail can be shown on a screen. With its VGA resolution, the Touch Diamond has a staggering 234.86 pixels per inch, far more than every other one of our comparison phones.

Screen Physical Size (6.81)
We measure the actual viewable area of a phone's screen diagonally, and the Touch Diamond's screen comes in at 2.73 inches. This is not a bad size for a smartphone, but it still doesn't offer the relatively expansive view you'd find on the iPhone 3G.

Screen Brightness (10.85) 

To measure the screen's brightness, we set it to its maximum brightness level in a dark room and disable any auto-brightness settings, then navigate to a blank white web page and use a lux meter to measure the screen's output. The Touch Diamond's screen was pretty bright, measuring 127 lumens, compared to the 105 of its predecessor. The Touch Diamond has auto brightness adjustment (the sensor is hidden in the earpiece) as well as 10 brightness levels from which to select. These brightness levels can be set differently depending on whether the phone is on battery or external power. One neat feature activates the screen's backlight automatically when the stylus is removed from its slot. In addition to the brightness of the Touch Diamond's screen, it offers many options here to customize it to your preferences and environment.

Screen Bright Light Performance (6.0)
To evaluate a screen's bright light performance, we set the screen to its maximum brightness level and simulate bright daylight lighting levels and see how visible the screen is and how easy it is to navigate with this lighting level. The Touch Diamond does very well here, with most menus clearly visible and distinguishable. The only issue you're likely to encounter is glare from the shiny screen surface, but adjusting the angle at which you're holding it will help a great deal.

Color Depth (6.0)
The Touch Diamond's screen can show up to 65,000 colors. This is on par with just about all of our comparison phones, except the Nokia E71, which can show 16 million colors.

Secondary Screen (0.0)
The Touch Diamond does not have a secondary screen.

Power & Data Ports (8.0)
The Touch Diamond has a single port on the bottom, and it has a proprietary shape that is also compatible with mini-USB plugs, and it's used for charging, syncing, and headphone connectivity. Charging is possible through wall AC and USB on your computer, options that we like and that are almost expected on smartphones these days.

Headphone Compatibility (1.0)
The Touch Diamond has no headphone jack to speak of, with its single proprietary port the only way to use wired headphones. Stereo headphones are included with the Touch Diamond, and these plug right into this proprietary port. If you want to use standard or 2.5mm headphones, you'll need to use the included adapter to plug them in. It's nice that an adapter is included, but using it is a bit cumbersome and we'd much prefer a standard headphone jack instead.

Internal Storage (7.0)
The Touch Diamond has 4GB of internal storage and 256MB of ROM. More internal storage is always good in our books and we like what the Touch Diamond offers in this area.

Expansion Slot & Format (0.0)
The Touch Diamond does not have an expansion slot. And while we like the 4GB of internal storage the Touch Diamond has, it wouldn't hurt to have some additional capacity with a microSD card slot.

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