HTC Touch Diamond 2 Mobile Phone Review - A Business Focussed Handset That Also Entertains

The HTC Touch Diamond 2 is an upgraded version of the HTS Touch Diamond. Weighing in at 117 grams, it measures 108mm x 53mm x 14mm, and includes a large WVGA LCD screen measuring 81mm which displays 65,000 colours at a maximum resolution of 450 x 800 pixels. The screen is as large as physically possible in the body of the phone, with an ultra-sharp widescreen display, allowing the user to enjoy websites, photos and videos.

The phone is compact, sturdy, and yet sophisticated in appearance.

The Touch Diamond 2 uses Wi-Fi technology where hotspots are available, and its on-board Internet browser to access the Internet. USB and Bluetooth make printing and connectivity to other devices such as laptops or personal computers easy.

The integrated camera has a 5-Megapixel capacity with autofocus, video recording and a video player which supports MPEG4, ASF, AVI and 3GP formats. Separate, preinstalled albums are provided for photos and video. There is also a second VGA CMOS camera for 3G video calls.

With its support for polyphonic and mp3 ringtones, this little mobile phone is sure to please. It is a quad phone - designed to work on the GSM 850, GSM 900, GSM 1800, GSM 1900, HSDPA 900 and HSDPA 2100 networks. It is therefore useful for the person who frequently travels abroad, however the actual coverage will depend ultimately on the network provider selected when purchasing the handset.

Message services that come standard are SMS and MMS. Instant messaging allows chatting through the phone without the need for a personal computer.

The office assistant services are reasonably standard compared to similar mobile phones - the Touch Diamond 2 includes a phone book, calendar, alarm clock, and a document viewer which supports standard formats, including PDF, MSWord, MSExcel and MSPowerpoint. The zoom facility allows close-up views of internet pages and documents viewed and the voice to text feature is regarded by happy users as a particularly good one.

The Touch Diamond 2 shows a communication history 'tree' associated with the individual contacts in the phone - very useful if you are inclined to forget when you last spoke to someone and what you talked about at the time.

The Touch Diamond 2 has capable music playing facilities - supporting many formats of audio data, including WAV, MIDI, WMA, QCP, MP3, AMP, AAC, AAC+ and eAAC+.

Pre-installed games are part of the package, and more games can be downloaded straight from the internet for use on the handset.

What we didn't like:

The Windows-based user interface has a tendency to freeze, and is slow in response when it is used.

What we did like:

This is a good looking little phone which is a useful office assistant. It can store messages, contacts, photos and videos, and open documents in different formats for reading during commuting hours. It has 512MB read-only memory and 288MB RAM which can be increased by the use of a microSD memory card. From fully charged - the battery life will allow 5.5 hours of talk time and 360 hours stand by.

The sharp display makes watching videos and choosing photos for storage a pleasure. It is also much easier to surf the internet using a widescreen formatted view.

by Carlson Osbourne