Watch the HTC Touch Diamond in slow motion...

Full specifications | Add your review

We've had the HTC Touch Diamond Windows Mobile 6.1 smartphone in the Mobile Computer office for just over a week now and I'll be posting a full review in the next couple of days. In the meantime, I made a hands-on video report earlier today to show what the Touch Diamond looks like in a better context than a photo on a white background.

In the video I talk a little about the Touch Diamond's design (this is HTC's attempt to compete head-on with the iPhone) and more importantly, its TouchFLO 3D user interface. Now this slick Windows Mobile 'skin' has been widely criticised for being slow and HTC recently released a ROM update intended to fix it. So is Touch FLO 3D any snappier as a result? In a word, no...

The Touch Diamond we have in the office is a retail model with the final ROM, and its TouchFLO 3D UI still painfully slow. The review makes no bones about this, but to really convince you, I thought it would be better to show the HTC Touch Diamond's slick UI in action on video. 

As you'll see, TouchFLO 3D is far from snappy even when there are no applications running, but with a couple open in the background, it soon slows to a snail's pace – and this is a phone with a 528MHz processor, remember. So, it looks like HTC still has a way to go before it can produce a smartphone UI that's as snappy asthe Apple iPhone's, but of course the iPhone isn't running Windows Mobile...

Update: It would appear that the HTC Touch Diamond's screen is glass rather than plastic, but it still has a transparent plastic top layer (required for the touch-sensor). It feels a little better than the flexible plastic screens of other Windows Mobile smartphones, but your fingertip still touches plastic, not glass. 

We couldn't find any prices for this smartphone. Click for our full smartphone price comparison