Hands-On: HTC Touch Diamond 2
We raided the HTC Booth to get a look at the Touch Diamond 2 and sure enough they had it there, riddled with anti-theft gear. Nevertheless you can get a good feel for the hardware from the pictures. The screen really is incredible, touch responsiveness was so good you could be forgiven for mistaking it for capacitive (almost). We're liking the buttons on the bottom and much prefer the zoom bar to the zoom wheel on the previous Touch Diamond. We suppose we'll get used to this "no dpad" thing in time.
As for the software, it's all here (well, all of it except some of the Touch Pro 2's enhancements). You can see some shots of the new contact-message-collation screen and we even managed to find Windows Mobile underneath all that TouchFlo 3D (it was difficult). One notable thing: the Diamond 2 takes a page from WinMo 6.5 and does away with the Start Menu and Program Listing completely. The Start Menu takes you directly to your TF3D list of customizable shortcuts (which, really, is more convenient than those hexagons), from which you can hit "All Programs" to get a text list of your programs.
Bottom line: the Touch Diamond 2 that we handled is impressive. So impressive that we expect HTC shouldn't have a problem hitting their "Early Q2" launch target. Also, truth be told, after the TG01 and a few other devices we've handled here, it was a relief to handle an ambitious WinMo Smartphone that didn't require somebody standing by reminding us "It's still in beta, or maybe alpha, you know, it's not ready yet." The Diamond 2 looks ready.
Yeah yeah, blah blah. Pics after the break!
