HTC Touch Diamond Cell Phone Review - Multimedia

The Touch Diamond is a business-oriented device first and foremost, thought its multimedia capabilities are definitely present and accounted for. There are 2 music players to choose from between the TouchFLO Sprint Music front and Windows Media Player, which doubles as the video player as well. Disappointingly, the Touch Diamond had difficulty playing back some high-bitrate video files, and the accelerometer doesn't automatically switch video orientation when the phone's position is changed.

Accessing Music Software (4.79)
To test how easy it is to get to the music player software, we time how long it takes to go from the home screen in the unlocked state to the moment when a song starts playing. Phones with dedicated music controls usually do the best in this test, but the Touch Diamond didn't do too bad for itself at all with a time of 4.18 seconds, beating its predecessor by a little more than 3 seconds and just a hair slower than the iPhone 3G.

TouchFLO music pane

Note that we used the music playback software accessible as the 4th menu option after the home screen in the TouchFLO interface. The Touch Diamond also comes with the Windows Media Player software, and a shortcut to it. This is the opposite of what was observed on the HTC Touch, where Windows Media Player was faster to load and get a song playing. With our times in this test on the Touch Diamond, the TouchFLO music interface has seen an increase in speed since we reviewed the HTC Touch. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Dedicated Music Controls (1.0)
The Touch Diamond no dedicated music controls aside from the volume up and down buttons on the left side. When in the home screen with music playing in the background, no other buttons control any aspect of music playback and serve only to navigate through the interface as they would without any music playing in the background. This isn't surprising, since this isn't a music-centric phone, and this is the same behavior you see with the iPhone 3G that is meant to be a multi-media phone.

Music Software Functionality and Organization (6.20)
There are 2 programs to play music on the Touch Diamond - the first is the TouchFLO Sprint Music application that's the quickest and easiest to access from the home screen, and the second is Windows Media Player, a standard application on Windows Mobile devices. The Sprint Music application has the eye candy appeal inherent in the TouchFLO interface, and you can view your entire music library by artist, album, genre, and more on it, but it doesn't offer the clearer file structure that Windows Media Player does. Those with a relatively large music library (at least what portion of it you can cram into the Touch Diamond's 4GB of internal storage with room left over for your documents and other files) will most likely use Windows Media Player to organize and play back their music, which is what we score here.

Now Playing playlist

Windows Media Player on the Touch Diamond will be familiar to users used to Windows Mobile devices. You can easily select the storage location for your music files and start playing music once you've found the desired folder and files. You can create and edit playlists, move files, view the details of individual music files, and more. Windows Media Player recognizes the tags of the WMA, AAC, and MP3 test files we saved to it.

Menu during music playback

Unfortunately, you can't search for music, but you can view your music by artist, album, and genre. Your music library won't automatically update when music is added, but the Update Library command in the menu easily remedies this. You can sync with Windows Media Player software on your computer, and album art is supported, and you can rate individual songs, though you can't create smart playlists based on the ratings you do assign, and there are no equalizer settings, presets or otherwise. In general, the Windows Media Player software is quite functional though not very intuitive.

Online Song Downloading (8.0)
Over-the-air song downloads are possible through Sprint's Music Store. The store is easy to get to with the link on the TouchFLO interface's Sprint Music tab. Music can be previewed before purchase and downloaded right to your phone. Each song purchased includes a second download for your PC and prices are on par with other music services at $.99 per song.

Streaming (2.0)
Just like the HTC Touch, the Touch Diamond can stream Windows Media audio, but not MP3 or Real audio, for which it earns 2 points.

Podcast Support (0.0)
The Touch Diamond does not come with any podcast download or organization software, though podcasts could be synced as media files through Windows Media Player on your computer.

Music Sync with PC (7.0)
As expected with a Windows Mobile device, music can easily be synced with the Windows Media Player desktop software.

Music Formats and DRM (4.5)
The Touch Diamond can play WAV, WMA, AAC, and MP3 files. The only DRM formats it supports are those by Microsoft and Sprint.

Music Interruption (10.0)
When a call comes in or is made while music is playing, the music stops immediately to allow the call audio to be heard. When a call is ended or rejected, music begins playing again. There is no gentle fading in and out as found on the iPhone 3G, so if you listen to your music loudly, these transitions could be a bit abrupt, but we appreciate this functionality on the Touch Diamond nonetheless and it earns full points here.

Video Software Access (1.51)
To test how easy it is to use the video player software, we time how long it takes to go from the home screen in the unlocked state to the moment a test video begins to play. As previously mentioned, the Windows Media Player software is a bit buried and has no shortcut key or icon by default to get to it quickly. We fully closed the Media Player in between each timing test to simulate the act of finding a specific video file each time instead of just starting up the last video played, which would have been the case had we left it open in between timing tests. Also, as with just about every other timing test we performed on the Touch Diamond, the general lagginess of the interface was a factor as well. As a result, the Touch Diamond posted terrible times in this test, taking 13.21 seconds on average. This is slower than its predecessor and ever other one of our comparison phones. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Video Controls (9.0)
While watching a video, there are on-screen video controls that can be tapped, or the D-pad can be used to activate them, to switch to full-screen mode, fast forward, rewind, play/pause, and adjust the volume. The fast forward and rewind icons do double duty to skip to next and previous videos as well. There is also a slider bar at the bottom of the video showing the video's progress, and this can also be used to move throughout the video. As with music, there are stars in the top right that can be used to assign a rating to videos. Like the HTC Touch, the video controls here are good, with additional options in the Menu accessed with the right virtual soft menu key.

Video playback

Video Software & Organization (6.0)
Managing video on the Touch Diamond is much like managing music since they both rely on the Windows Media Player application. The only difference is that only one video playlist can be created and updated on the device itself, and it's dubbed the Now Playing playlist. But don't worry too much about this - the Windows Media Player desktop software can be used to create video playlists and sync them to the Touch Diamond.

Video album

Unlike music, videos can't be viewed in the Library by artist, album, etc. They can only be viewed by genre if one is assigned to the video. The video library does not auto-update, but using the Update Library command in the menu will find all video files on the device.

Videos can be viewed in full-screen mode, but they show only in landscape orientation, despite the fact that the Touch Diamond has an accelerometer like the iPhone 3G that can detect the device's orientation. As was the case when we looked at music on the Touch Diamond, the Windows Media Player application is the same and is not very intuitive to navigate but still very functional.

Video Sync with PC (7.0)
Windows Media Player on your computer is again the syncing conduit to manage video content on the Touch Diamond, and it's straightforward to use.

Video Formats (4.0)
To see what files a phone is capable of playing, we load a variety of standard test files in different formats. From this, we found that the Touch Diamond could only play 2 out of our 3GP test files, unlike its predecessor that could play all 3. Unsurprisingly, it had no problems with the WMV and MP4 files, though it could not play our H264, Flash, Quicktime, or Real Media files.

Video DRM (5.0)
Microsoft has developed a Windows Media DRM scheme, and the Touch Diamond is capable of playing files protected with it. As one would guess, it will not play back files protected with Apple's FairPlay DRM scheme.

Video Playback Smoothness (6.0)
To test video playback smoothness, we load test video files with varying bitrates and see how the phone handles them. We were disappointed to see that the Touch Diamond had difficult with the 2 highest bitrate test files, pausing and skipping during playback during landscape and portrait mode. This is worse performance than every one of our comparison phones except the Nokia E71.

Online Video Downloading (0.0)
Direct video downloads to mobile devices is not mainstream quite yet, and neither Sprint nor any other U.S. carrier offers it yet. Additionally, a phone must be capable of storing the downloaded file. With no such service or capability, the Touch Diamond earns no points here, just like our comparison phones.

Video Streaming unscored
The Touch Diamond comes pre-loaded with the Sprint TV application that can show streaming video from various channels. It also has a Streaming Media application that can load streams from Real Time Streaming Protocoal (RTSP) links, and a YouTube application to view YouTube videos. Additionally, the Touch Diamond was able to handle streaming video from all of the standard test sites we visited. Playback smoothness is often a function of signal strength and the quality of the video being streamed, but the Touch Diamond had no problems whatsoever with any streaming content, and will be quite handy for those who like to watch video content on the go. However, we do not score streaming video since the standards are all over the place, and keep in mind that this can use a lot of data that can cause a surprising bill unless you have an unlimited data plan.

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