Taiwanese mobile phone company, HTC, lunched as many as three smartphones at the Mobile World Congress. According to speculations in the tech world, HTC is rumored to lunch over 10 smartphones in the year 2010. If Mobile World Congress lunches are any indication to go by, it might just be true.

The HTC legend is the successor to the hugely popular HTC Hero, although, it has many differentiating features. The chin is less prominent in HTC Legend, but the striking aspect of the phone is that it’s body is carved out a single aluminum block, making it the first Android based phone with a unicasing. The trackball has been replaced by an optical track pad.

HTC Legend

Legend boasts of a 3.2 inch AMOLED screen which promises a rich experience with it’s enhanced graphics and a capititive touchscreen. It runs on Android Eclair v2.1.

It has some other nifty features like smart ringer sensor. The phone hides a G-Sensor which on detecting that a phone has been picked up, reduces the ringer volume.

The Friendstream window gets all your contacts’ Twitter, Facebook streams on one platform, very similar to the SenseUI. With Friendstream, you don’t have to go to the contacts page to access the integrated contacts.

Leap is an application that allows you to get a thumbnail sized version of your home screen which is also a great addition as it saves time.

HTC Legend is expected to hit the markets in April 2010, i.e this month.

Popularity: 1% [?]

The Diamonds looks like an HTC Touch pro on a sever diet. It misses out on the hardware QWERTY & has a smaller battery which is why it is slimmer & a lot lighter. The rear seems to be more solid & is finished in glossy black but a look at the front face & you cannot tell the Diamond & the pro apart.

The name Diamond comes from the sculpted rear that has been cut at various angles to give the appearance of many sides-like its namesake. Built quality is good & the touch Diamond looks clean. It has 4GB of internal storage but no expansion. The screen is a little devoid of colors but bright & crisp enough.

HTC Touch Diamond

Fonts are clearer than on the touch viva, although not the best around. Once again the lack of a dedicated keyboard cannot made up for by the onscreen one, simply because of the prohibitively small screen size. The call buttons are touch activated & very well laid out & amply backlit, while the home & back button also aid navigation. In fact most other non-HTC devices do not have a back button & we feel this is a nifty & very utilitarian feature that is simple to implement & should be standardized on all WM devices.

The camera on this phone is decent, actually a lot better than we expected; it out performs some of the other 3.2 megapixel units in this test. The antenna is of mediocre quality & we had slight issues with clarity in zone 2.

The earpiece volume itself is quite good. The hands free is good enough for casual music listening & to make calls but music lovers obsessed with quality will find nothing of interest here. The lack of Expansion beyond the 4 GB of inbuilt memory may also turn some people off.There,s nothing special about this handset to make it stand out.

At a price tag of $350 users would surely expect more & we would expect a QWERTY keypad to make usability better.

Popularity: 1% [?]