HTC Touch Diamond Cell Phone Review - Software

The Windows Mobile operating system offers a high level of flexibility with the customization its settings allow and the thousands of third-party applications out there that can allow it to do almost anything you want or look any way you want. Unfortunately, the TouchFLO interface, while pretty, does not enhance the operating system beyond adding eye candy and only serves to slow the phone's responsiveness down in most areas. The Touch Diamond comes equipped with document software to keep business users productive and offers a good web browsing experience with a feature-filled browser.

OS (8.5)
The Touch Diamond runs the Windows Mobile operating system, version 6.1. This earns the Touch Diamond a standardized score of 8.5. On top of Windows Mobile, HTC has added their TouchFLO 3D interface. While this addition makes it unique among Windows Mobile devices, it doesn't add significantly functionality aside from prettying up the surface of Windows Mobile, so we award no extra points for it.

Home Screen Score (8.0)
The Touch Diamond's default home screen is fairly informative, showing a variety information about the device's current status and some PIM alerts and information. The status bar at the top shows you the basics you'd expect - data network connection, celluar signal strength, speaker/vibrate mode, and Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and battery status, as well as immediate access to the task manager to see open programs and close them right from the menu. Icons for missed calls and missed messages are alsow shown here. The main portion of the screen shows the current time and the date, and indicates if any alarms are set. Below this, links to call history and the calendar application are immediately available, with appropriate additions if there are missed calls or upcoming appointments.

TouchFLO home screen

Below of this are tabs that can be scrolled through to get to People, Messages, Mail, Sprint Music, Photos & Videos, Sprint TV, Internet, Weather, Settings, and Programs. The pretty icons and ability to scroll through these right from the home page are nice to have, but a busy user would probably rather have more information about upcoming appointments and outstanding tasks instead, as well change the icons presented to easier access to frequently-used applications. Thankfully, the TouchFLO interface, which is essentially a plug-in, can be turned off and the home screen can be customized through the Today settings panel and turned into an impressive view of just about any information you'd like to display there, and the Touch Diamond earns a high score in this area due to the level of home screen customization that can be done. 

TouchFLO Start menu

Extensibility (9.0)
The Windows Mobile platform is highly extensible, with literally thousands of programs available from the mundane to complex to help you organize information to helping you while away the time with a game. Java apps can be installed, as well as Windows Mobile-specific apps, earning the Touch Diamond 9 points in this area. The only caveat is that the Touch Diamond is still a new device, and not all existing applications may be compatible with it immediately, so you'll want to confirm that any applications you have in mind for it will work before going on a spending spree to stock up.

Customizability (9.0)
In terms of the look of the feel of the Touch Diamond, there's not much the TouchFLO interface allows you to change beyond the wallpaper of the home screen. But once you turn this off, you can apply themes to change the entire look and feel of the interface. There are a few themes included already, but literally hundreds, if not thousands, more are available through online software vendors like Handango.com. In addition to themes, you can change font sizes throughout the interface, and assign a wallpaper image, of course. You can also find application plug-ins that can add additional information to the home screen beyond the options already present in the Today Settings panel. The Start menu can be customized to hold the applications you use the most. Like its predecessor and most Windows Mobile devices, the Touch Diamond scores well here given all of this.

OS Responsiveness (4.0)
As has been mentioned in various portions of this review, there is a fair amount of lag when navigating just about anywhere on the Touch Diamond through the TouchFLO interface and even beyond it into Settings panels and when navigating between fields in the Contacts application and more. It's so bad at times that you can't determine if a screen press registered or not, and you may press an icon or button again and then the OS will jump past the point you wanted when it finally catches up. We experienced had a few lock-ups and crashes during testing that required the use of the reset button and/or a reboot.

All of this is a bit annoying, and worlds away from the more snappy responsiveness seen on devices like the Nokia E71 and iPhone 3G. Compared to the HTC Touch, the TouchFLO interface has improved somewhat, but it's still not to a point where it responds as you'd expect during normal use.

Browser Features (10.0)
The Touch Diamond comes with 2 browsers loaded out of the box - Opera Mobile and Internet Explorer. Opera Mobile is the default that opens when any links in messages are clicked, and we focused on this one for our testing and scoring. As with its predecessor, it can easily handle standard HTML and WAP pages, Javascript, and frames, but not Flash or Java out of the box. It cannot subscribe to RSS feeds, nor does it offer to manage them in any way. It can save images on web pages to internal storage, or send them in a message. It can handle encryption and cookies and manage passwords and automatically fill in fields.

Browsing Interface (10.0)
Opera Mobile works well on the Touch Diamond, offering a good browsing experience, showing pages mostly as they'd be rendered on a computer with the ability to double tap to zoom in to a particular area, similar to the iPhone 3G. The internal accelerometer detects when the phone has been rotated on to its side and switches the view to landscape mode automatically. Oddly enough, scrolling up and down in web pages cannot be done using the D-pad, only by scrolling/swiping up or down on the screen. Scrolling isn't entirely smooth, with an occasional lag in responding to screen touches and often requiring firm pressure to be recognized. In the Settings menu, the font size can be adjusted between 3 levels.

Browsing a page

The browser keeps a good amount of history, automatically sorting visited pages into Today, Yesterday, Earlier this week, Last Week, and Older groupings. You can't search through the history, but you can selectively delete entries easily. Bookmarking is easy, with the ability to create folders as well, and editing existing bookmarks and moving them is possible.

Browser menu

The browser menu is accessed through an icon in the bottom right and can be navigated using the D-pad or the touchscreen. From here, you can access Settings, downloads, page info, History, Saved Pages, and more. Other menu items at the bottom allow you to go back to the previous page, bookmark the current page, go home, and switch between open tabs. The Privacy menu in Settings allows you to delete cookies, cache, and all history at once.

As mentioned above, Opera Mobile offers tabbed browsing so you can have multiple pages open at once. All in all, the Touch Diamond offers a good browsing experience with most of the advanced features you'd expect in a smartphone.

Browser Access (10.0)
For this test, we count how many steps are required to access the browser and get to a specified website with the phone interface and settings at their defaults. We start on the home screen with the phone in the unlocked state and count each key or screen press required. This method eliminates network connection access and speed as factors as they would be in a timed test. From the home screen in the TouchFLO interface, it first takes a single touch on the screen on the shortcut icon bar at the bottom, then held to scroll to the right and released over the Internet tab - we count this as one step since this can be done in a single instance of screen contact. After this, it takes 3 more steps to get to a selected web site. This is an improvement over the HTC Touch with 7 steps, and is on par with the Nokia E71 and iPhone 3G.

Gaming (6.0)
The Touch Diamond comes with 3 games out of the box: Bubble Breaker, Solitaire, and Teeter. Compared to some of the phones we've reviewed recently that only included trial versions of games, it's nice to see a phone come with 3 full versions out of the box. Bubble Breaker and Solitaire are your run-of-the-mill games that often come standard on Windows Mobile phones, and they rely on the stylus to tap and drag to advance the game, but Teeter is one that requires the use of the Touch Diamond's accelerometer to move a ball around holes to a target at the other end of the screen. This is a cute, if not entirely exciting, offering to showcase the accelerometer. Of course, hundreds more games are available online, and you can have a pretty robust gaming experience, for a cell phone anyway, with the Touch Diamond.

Teeter accelerometer game

Calculator (6.0)
The Touch Diamond's calculator has not changed from the HTC Touch and offers fairly basic calculation ability, but nothing that would replace a financial or scientific calculator.

Calculator

Alarm (8.0)
Just like the HTC Touch, the Touch Diamond offers 3 alarms that can be set for any number of days in a week, and any ringtone can be set as the alert sound. You can also set it to repeat the sound, vibrate, and flash the backlight. We've always liked the alarm functionality in Windows Mobile devices and the Touch Diamond is no different.

Alarms

Document Software (6.0)
As expected in a Windows Mobile business-oriented device, the Touch Diamond includes mobile versions of Microsoft Excel, PowerPoint, and Word, as well as Adobe Reader LE. Word and Excel allow viewing and editing of documents on the device itself, while PowerPoint and Adobe Reader LE allow viewing of their respective document formats only.

Other Software (3.0)
Like the HTC Touch, the Touch Diamond includes Windows Live and File Explorer, which are both worth mentioning. Windows Live offers web-based search and mapping services, and File Explorer lets you view the file structure and files stored on the device. The included MP3 Trimmer application was mentioned in the Making & Receiving Calls section, and allows trimming of MP3 files right on the Touch Diamond to crate ringtones on the fly, which we really like.

MP3 Trimmer application

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