If HTC’s Touch didn’t win you over with its iPhone ripoff touch interface that was quirky at best, you can have another go at finger swiping with the Touch Diamond.

If the touch interface was really all that productive we wonder why the extra menu keys like Home, Back, Call Accept and Reject have made their way into this device.

HTC Touch Diamond

Its very well built, very slim, and compact for a Windows Mobile device. This is a truly pocketable PDA, though the lack of a keypad dose hamper any short of serious productivity. The screen sports an ultra high resolution of 460×640 pixels and the result is a very very crisp display – colors are excellent, much better than any Windows Mobile device we’ve used before, and text quality and readability is amazing. The 3D touch interface lags severely, a faster processor (maybe a dual core) and more memory is needed.

Its packed to the gills with software and applications. There’s inbuilt GPS with Google Maps preinstalled, Voice Commender, a YouTube Video Viewer, an MP3 editing software, Adobe Flash and Adobe Reader LE as well as the Opera Browser inbuilt. Incidentally, the Touch Diamond has no memory expansion, a 4GB of inbuilt flash memory has been provided.

Altough this device works well as a touch only device-HTC’s effort at implementing any kind of gesture sensor doesn’t seem to work as well as Apple’s touch interface. In terms of pure interaction the Touch Diamond will always fail when compared to the iPhone. What really works for this device, its compact dimensions, and the fact that its a full fledged PDA (minus keypad). A good bundle of utilities are never bad.

Its not revolutionary different, but its different enough from most PDAs to create its very own little niche away from the competing crowd. If you want a Windows Mobile based device that’s sleek, aesthetic, and reasonably usable the Touch Diamond is very suitable, and perhaps the only choice. If you want a PDA for a lot of office work and mailing then skip this. For $670, the HTC Touch Diamond is admittedly expensive, perhaps prohibitively so. If it appeals to you, wait for the price to fall.

Specifications:
1. CPU : 528 MHz Qualcomm
2. RAM : 192MB, ROM : 256MB
3. Memory : 4GB Inbuilt Flash, Non Expandable
4. Builtin GPS with Google Maps
5. 3.2MP Camera Sensor
6. OS : Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro
7. Weight : 110 grams

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