Well the HTC Touch Diamond 2 has arrived safely this morning from our good friends at
www.Devicewire.com. This time around I'm not planning on publishing a full review myself but instead aiming to give my thoughts and feelings on the machine each day over a weeks use. This may well give a better insight as to how it performs!
So here we go with a few photos, as we know you guys like those as well of my own hallowed thoughts of course!
The HTC Touch Diamond 2 (D2) arrived in a rather nice HTC branded 'locker bag' and the first thought was how small the box itself was, for some reason I expected the packaging to be bigger!
The box follows the typical HTC green and black livery, and on the back carries the full specifications of the D2.
The box itself contained:
HTC Touch Diamond 2
Two part mains charger
Spare stylus
Quick Start Guide
Sync / Charge Cable
Wired Headset
1100mAh LiOn battery
Warranty Card
HTC Touch Diamond 2 User manual (on CD)
HTC Care Brochure
Screen Protector
Getting Started CD
Smart Accessories Smart Performance leaflet
Getting Started Note
Size wise the D2 is slightly thicker than the original Diamond and about 4mm thinner than the SE X1 device. For iPhone owners it is about 2m thicker. Width wise it is wider than the Diamond and the same width than the X1, and about 5mm less wide than the iPhone 3G. It is about 4mm taller than the Diamond, as tall as the X1, and about 5mm shorter than the iPhone.
At this point I guess I must apologise for the quality of the photographs. The pictures were taken on a very bright summers day and I could not get the camera to adjust to the light levels. So what you see is the best one could take in the interest of getting some initial photos up on the site. More may well follow under better lighting conditions.
Okay so here we go with the rest of the initial feelings text, this will all be here at the top of the page so you'll have to pan down to see the relevant photos, as I say this is an overview and not a fully fledged well formatted review! Don't worry though a full review is to follow by one of my esteemed colleagues!
Firstly if I had to pick a few words which has to describe the D2 I'd say 'sleek / sparse / stylish' would cover things. It's a well featured device mainly black in colour with a silver fascia and side edge trim, with minimal buttons and other protrusions.
On the front face at the top you have a speaker surround on the left and right hand side by indicator LEDs, below that the HTC branding and the large (3.2") WVGA 800 x 480 hires touch screen.
Immediately below that is the (-) .... (+) slide bar which serves to act as a magnifier, and below that the 4 buttons:
Start Call
Windows key
back key
End call / Home key
The 'Windows key' is new to WM as such and is as specified by Microsoft for use on all new WM6.5 compatible devices.
On the bottom of the D2 is the mini-USB port (for synching, linking to a PC as a disk drive, charging, or plugging in the headset), as well as microphone.
The Left hand side of the D2 is completely plain apart from the volume up/down control. The right hand side has the main loudspeaker positioned towards the top of the housing, a good choice of position as in prior devices it was on the back or on the left hand side (X1) where it was covered when held in the palm.
The right hand bottom side also carries the housing for the full size magnetic stylus. There is no external camera activation button which is a great pity.
The top of the D2 holds the on / off / suspend button on the left hand side.
The back on the D2 sports the 5.0MegaPixel camera, a first for HTC I think! No frills here though, no flash and no vanity mirror! The back itself slides up and off to reveal the battery socket wherein sits the 1100mAh battery which should give good daily usage. The SIM card of course also fits in here and there is access to the micro-SD card slot of the left hand side. The red reset button may also be accessed here on the bottom left.
Okay powering on.... Despite tales others have mentioned the D2 is not noticeably quicker on it's initial boot, but startup has changed as HTC are now using a new startup / configuration system, which is noticeably quicker, maybe knocking 8-10 seconds off the process. What is strange though is that there is no prompt at all to align the screen, this seems to be an automatic process. Instead the device configures, reboots, and then takes you straight into the connection settings system.
Next I expected the machine to ask for my SIM password, but no, this was bypassed and the phone activated without me entering it, a cause for concern maybe?
Once that has cleared out of the way you notice that the screen is crisp and bright and even though not OLED is reasonably readable in daylight.
From there you are straight into HTC's constantly improving Touch 3D interface. The home screen has the famous flipping clock / calendar display as well as the other usual anticipated tabs including; weather, SMS, messaging, stocks, calendar, picture album, people, web browser, music player and settings.
The start menu (and windows button) brings up a new finger friendly start menu (with an All Programs button to allow the vanilla WM6.1 programs system to be accessed).
Tapping on such items as the flipping clock reveal the new Touch 3d integration whereby HTC have replaced as much of the OS as possible with finger friendly controls, love then or hate them they are here to stay.
One thing which makes the Touch system a dream to use is the sensitivity of the screen that has been improved and is very responsive in use. The secondary great boon is the HTC keyboard (SIP) that is present in the new ROM. This is large and very finger friendly, at last test can be entered and worked with using the finger in a native ROM! Three cheers for HTC on that point alone!
Okay onto the next strangeness noted.... The D2 was configured with my Exchange account on Sherweb and I expected to be prompted to accept the security certificate, no such prompt as offered and it just started downloading and configuring, more MS or HTC automation to make our lives easier I wonder?
Right back to the Touch system, one nice thing that HTC have done is to allow you to customise the Tab settings. Within the main settings tab is a control which allows you to turn off tabs you are not interested in using and also to tap and reorder the positioning of the other tabs. Sweet!
The last initial thing of note is that at home signal strength of the radio is still relatively weak, about 2 bars, but saying that this is significantly better than the X1 which is 0-1 bars.
So those are the initial thoughts and feelings......
From here on in I'll update the thread each day for the next week (if all goes to plan) so if you have any questions or queries please post them in this thread and I'll respond accordingly!
Linear Mode
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