By David Ciccone, posted Tuesday, Apr. 21st, 2009
Reader Comments: 9
A new look.. Is it enough...
HTC is following up on its ultra-sexy touchphone, the Touch Diamond, with the new Touch Diamond2, which seems quite worthy of the title of successor. This time around there's much more room for screen, with a huge 3.2-inch 480 x 800 LCD up front, and around back there's a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus. The other main addition is a "touch zoom bar" below the screen -- just like on big brother Touch Pro2 -- which we presume provides expected (and welcome) functionality. There's also the new version of TouchFLO 3D running on Windows Mobile, but under the hood there's the same old 528MHz processor, and the whole kit is actually a tad thicker a 0.54-inches. Still, memory is up to 512MB ROM and 288MB RAM, and if HTC keeps hoisting pixels and sexy on us at this rate we can hardly complain.
The HTC Touch Diamond 2 is available for order from DechoWireless
Just for information; HTC does produce a softer matte black back for the Diamond 2. I wouldn't characterize the screen as huge since it's smaller than the Touch HD screen which is also 480x800. The screen surface is necessitated by the resistive touch sensitivity (definitely install the screen protector right away!) A lot of devices other than Apple iPhones are starting to show up with capacitive touch screens and I wouldn't be surprised if HTC doesn't go in that direction with the next generation of it's devices; the Diamond 2 and Pro are probably near the last hurrah of 72xx based devices for HTC.
The two biggest disappointments are the lack of a real audio jack and the same basic 5MPixel camera - with it's slow lens, no flash, and no VR technology, the camera is useless in low light situations without a fixed mount or where the subject is moving.
Both HTC and Microsoft have said that a 6.5 upgrade will be available for the Diamond 2 and Pro. That brings up an interesting question: will HTC scrap Touch Flo (which with Opera browser it already has most of the features of 6.5 with the exceptions of Marketplace and the lock screen) or will HTC keep Touch Flo rendering the 6.5 upgrade somewhat anti-climatic?
Nice unboxing. Look forward to your full review. Curious about the battery life, especially on exchange. Being an Edge only device in the U.S., battery life may be less on exchange, because if your on a phone call long enough, wifi has a tendency to come on to keep the exchange connection going.
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