Sprint HTC Touch Diamond Review

The Touch Diamond is an attractive looking phone. It has a high-gloss black finish on the front and soft touch maroon finish on the back. While attractive, the high-gloss black finish on the front tends to collect fingerprints. As a result, you’ll likely find yourself cleaning the display often, though we didn’t notice performance degradation in terms of response even when the screen was dirty. Compared to the original HTC Touch, the Touch Diamond is noticeably narrower but has the same height and thickness as the Touch.

On the left side of the Touch Diamond, you’ll find a volume rocker that is flush with the side of the device. The right side of the Touch Diamond is clean, save for the stylus in the bottom corner. This stylus is magnetic, so you don’t have to worry about it falling out like you would with other phones. Some users may feel that the stylus is a bit on the short side, since it’s not one of the longer, retractable styli that you’d see on some devices. Even though the stylus is shorter than some, it didn’t cause us any grief.
 

On the top of the device, you’ll find the power button. A multi-purpose mini USB port which serves as the charging, data, and headset jack is on the bottom of the device. There’s no 3.5mm audio jack on this phone. Instead, HTC opted to include a pair of USB headphones and a 4-in-1 adapter that allows you to plug in your own set of headphones. The back of the device has a slightly curved, soft red finish and the 3.2MP camera.
 

Given this phone’s multimedia capabilities with the Sprint Music Store and Sprint TV, we wish HTC would have included a standard 3.5mm headphone jack on the phone. The included USB headphones do the job, but there are plenty of instances in which we’d rather use our own, higher quality headphones with noise cancellation. Although the 4-in-1 adapter provides a 3.5mm headphone jack, it’s also about the same height as the phone itself, which makes it a bit cumbersome if you’re trying to keep the device in your pocket.

Below the Touch Diamond’s 2.8-inch VGA touch screen, you’ll find four flush buttons (home, back, call send, and call end) along with a touch-sensitive scroll wheel / D-pad combo. The back button is unique—we don’t usually see this on Windows Mobile devices. As you would expect, this button simply returns you to the previous screen. Although handy, there were plenty of times a dedicated hardware OK button may have been more useful, particularly since trying to close applications with one’s finger isn’t always easy given Windows Mobile’s small on-screen OK button.

The scroll wheel / D-pad looks like it’s raised, but really, it’s not much higher than the rest of the device. The center of the D-pad is indented. To use the D-pad in a traditional sense, you press the flat area next to the circular scroll wheel for up/down and left/right controls. The scroll wheel is very useful—you simply run your finger around it to zoom in and out of Web pages, Word documents, and more. The area around the D-pad acts as a notification light to let you know when a call is coming in, when you have new email, and more. It also cycles through a pattern of lights while the device is charging.