Officially presented to the world on the 6th of May, in London, HTC Touch Diamond is a stylish smartphone that combines an exclusive design and advanced features with the latest 3D    Full-touch user interface. Called TouchFlo 3D, Diamond’s unique finger-touch interface together with the 2.8 inch VGA display (640 x 480 pixels) will offer users a “mobile adventure” never experienced before.

HTC Touch Diamond comes with both GSM and 3G connectivity, but in India it works only on the GSM frequencies, since neither Airtel nor any other carrier have deployed 3G networks yet. Anyway, Airtel’s GSM / EDGE services should still provide decent data transfer speeds to the future owners of the Diamond.

Besides the features already mentioned in my previous post on [cref htc-touch-diamond-in-india HTC Touch Diamond], HTC’s new flagship device also comes with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, GPS and A-GPS navigation, Google Maps, a 3.2 Megapixel camera with auto-focus and video recording, 4GB of internal memory, Media player, easy YouTube access, FM radio with RDS, Bluetooth 2.0 with EDR, Opera browser, email, Office Mobile and so on – all in a slim case that measures only 102 x 51 x 11,5 millimeters and weighs 110 grams.

Peter Chou, President and CEO of HTC Corp., said about the release of the high-end device: “The Touch Diamond is a breakthrough in innovation that packs the functionalities of a complete phone and offers an entirely new Touchscreen and mobile Internet and browsing experience for consumers. The launch of the Touch Diamond in India marks a new era in mobile phone evolution which will further catalyze the growth of Internet on mobile in the fastest growing Telecom market in the world.”

Key features

• 2.8″ 65K-color VGA display
• TouchFLO 3D Home screen and gesture controls
• 4 GB of internal storage
• Wi-Fi
• Qualcomm MSM7201A 528 Mhz CPU and 192 MB DDR SDRAM
• Dedicated graphics chip (64MB RAM reserved for graphics)
• HSDPA 7.2Mbps
• Built-in GPS receiver
• Standout design
• Compact and lightweight
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• 3.15 MP auto focus camera
• Active magnetic stylus
• Touch-sensitive scroll wheel
• MS Office Mobile document editor
• Opera 9.5 web browser
• Standard miniUSB slot and Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP
• Comes with the amusing Teeter game
• YouTube client
• Excellent video playback performance

Main disadvantages:

• Poor battery life
• Fingerprint nightmare
• Average sunlight legibility
• No memory card slot
• Questionable build quality
• Tri-band GSM support only
• No TV out port
• No standard 3.5mm audio jack
• Back panel design has negative impact on usability and camera image quality
• Back panel finish started to wear off in a few weeks of usage
• Limited scroll wheel usage

Complete technical specs of HTC Touch Diamond phone:

The HTC Touch Diamond is about the size of half a deck of playing cards. Users will be able to operate it with one hand while walking down the street. The Touch Diamond includes a circular navigation wheel to help consumers navigate its menus. HTC also layered its own TouchFLO 3D software over the Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system – to reach work email but also see an easily navigable interface. To encourage mobile Internet browsing, the Touch Diamond offers speedy upload and download connections, Wi-Fi and a glass screen with about four times better resolution than HTC’s previous Touch phones. HTC improved touch screen innovation with its new 3D touch interface called TouchFLO 3D. TouchFLO 3D provides animated access to people, messaging, email, photos, music, weather and more. Users can zoom and pan Websites with one-hand and automatically view optimized content that fits the display. Turning the device sideways automatically rotates the web page view from a portrait to landscape view. The Touch Diamond includes a customized new YouTube application for watching videos as well as Google Maps for mobile for mapping and traffic data.

Re-defining the perception of advanced mobile phones… the HTC Touch Diamond^TM signals a giant leap forward in combining hi-tech prowess with intuitive usability and exhilarating design.

Featuring a sharp 2.8-inch touch screen housed within a stunning formation of brushed metal and flawless faceted edges, the HTC Touch Diamond is as beautiful to behold as it is to use.

With HTC’s vibrant touch-responsive user interface, TouchFLO^TM 3D, and ultra-fast HSDPA internet connectivity… the HTC Touch Diamond offers a rich online experience to rival a notebook computer, allowing you to interact with Google, YouTube, and Wikipedia as freely as you would with a broadband connection.

Your contacts, favourite music, videos and photos are no longer an uninspired line of text. With TouchFLO 3D, album artwork, video stills and snapshots of your friends’ and family’s faces are brought to life for you to interact, play and launch at your fingertips.

A 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera will help you capture the perfect moment in style and with a massive 4GB of internal storage you can keep all the files you need. The integrated ultra-sensitive GPS will help you find your destination as quickly and efficiently as a dedicated satellite navigation unit.

Style and substance in a phone are no longer mutually exclusive. The HTC Touch Diamond has arrived.

Highlights

• 2.8-inch touch screen, with four times the pixels of most phones.
• Vibrant TouchFLO 3D user interface, responding perfectly to your finger gestures when scrolling through contacts, browsing the web, and launching media… all vividly displayed as photos and artwork powered by the 3D graphics processor.
• HTC Weather – providing a constant view of weather at home and abroad.
• Surf and download at broadband speed with HSDPA internet connectivity.
• 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera for quality stills and video.
• 4GB of internal storage to preserve more photos, music, files and exchanged data than ever before.
• Integrated GPS for use with maps software for a full turn-by-turn satellite navigation experience.

The HTC Touch was the first real competition the iPhone faced, even if it didn’t necessarily set out to be. HTC was surely trying to capitalize on the popularity of Apple’s all-touch device, but Windows Mobile is a more open though much clunkier UI than OS X, and ultimately the devices were really in a different class. Sure, TouchFLO gave a finger-friendly skin to the Touch, but in reality the iPhone was built from the ground-up as a consumer friendly, media-oriented device whereas the Touch was a Windows Mobile business device that happened to lose the keyboard and get some fancy software. Don’t get us wrong, we loved the Touch, but it just wasn’t iPhone material.

Now comes the second generation, dubbed the Touch Diamond, and it’s obvious that HTC is ready to take on the iPhone properly this time around. Gone is the gimmicky TouchFLO, replaced by a completely overhauled and practical TouchFLO 3D. Web surfing is handled beautifully by Opera Mobile 9.5 instead of Mobile IE; 7.2Mbit/s HSDPA and Wi-Fi makes the experience that much better. Users can browse photo albums and listen to their music directly from the homescreen. Little things, such as resting the phone on its face to trigger silent mode or the phone waking up when the stylus is removed, reaffirm HTC CFO Cheng Hui-min’s description as “the most important product for HTC.

Complete specifications of the phone:

Processor	Qualcomm® MSM7201ATM 528 MHz
Operating System	Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
Memory	ROM: 256 MB RAM: 192 MB DDR SDRAM Internal storage: 4 GB
Dimensions	102 mm (L) X 51 mm (W) X 11.35 mm (T)
Weight	110 g (with battery)
Display	2.8-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with VGA resolution
Network	HSDPA/WCDMA: Europe/Asia: 900/2100 MHz Up to 384 kbps up-link and 7.2 Mbps down-link speeds Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE: Europe/Asia: 900/1800/1900 MHz (Band frequency and data speed are operator dependent.)
Device Control	TouchFLOTM 3D Touch-sensitive navigation control
GPS	GPS and A-GPS ready
Connectivity	Bluetooth® 2.0 with EDR Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/g HTC ExtUSBTM (11-pin mini-USB 2.0 and audio jack in one)
Camera	Main camera: 3.2 megapixel color camera with auto focus Second camera: VGA CMOS color camera
Audio	Built-in microphone, speaker and FM radio with RDS Ring tone supported formats: MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, WAV, and AMR-NB 40 polyphonic and Standard MIDI format 0 and 1 (SMF)/SP MIDI
Battery	Rechargeable Lithium-ion or Lithium-ion polymer battery Capacity: 900 mAh Talk time: Up to 270 minutes for WCDMA Up to 330 minutes for GSM Standby time: Up to 396 hours for WCDMA Up to 285 hours for GSM Video call time: Up to 145 minutes for WCDMA (The above are subject to network and phone usage.)
AC Adapter	Voltage range/frequency: 100 ~ 240V AC, 50/60 Hz DC output: 5V and 1A

 Price: 

Indian price for HTC touch Diamond  varies between 25K  to 29K.

Airtel provides HTC touch diamond at a price of  27.7 k.

(price may vary with time and state)