Last Updated October 21, 2008   Product Rating   Beautiful design Vibrant touch screen display EV-DO Rev A support TouchFLO 3D interface GPS-enabled   Sluggish performance at times No expansion card slot Small QWERTY onscreen keyboard

HTC seems to always be on the cutting edge of cell phone technology and with the HTC Touch Diamond, it certainly lives up to its reputation. The new Sprint version of the Touch Diamond improves upon the unlocked version that was popular over the past summer. Improvements in the performance and design of the device have put it at the top of the wish lists for many gadget lovers. Sprint's CDMA version of the Touch Diamond will cost you $249 (after a two-year contract and online/mail-in rebates), which is pretty competitive with other phones on the market today.

To start off, the design of the HTC Touch Diamond is perhaps what made it so popular to begin with. It's jet-black, glossy front panel and "diamond-like" cut edges and angles on the backside make it a piece of eye candy for sure, but the Sprint version has gotten rid of the diamond edges and has replaced the back with a nice smooth rubbery grip. The top and bottom edges of the Sprint version are now rounded as opposed to the straight edges of the unlocked version...but we don't mind either one physically or visually. In total, the device measures 4 x 2 x 0.6-inches and weighs in at around 4 ounces, which makes it pretty lightweight and easy to pocket and hold in your hand.

There are no dialing or keyboard buttons on the front or anywhere on the HTC Touch Diamond because you use the onscreen keyboard to type/dial (more on that later), there is a navigation scroll along with a few of the usual buttons (home, back, hang up, connect), and an absolutely beautiful touch screen display that measures 2.8-inches vertically and has a resolution of 640x480. We can rightly say that the HTC Touch Diamond has one of the best displays we have ever seen.

Since we're on the subject of the display, let's talk about the touch screen. The Touch Diamond has a modified version of Windows Mobile 6.1 running the HTC 3D TouchFLO interface, which is something that HTC has custom designed just for this phone. Along the bottom of the screen is a navigational menu that allows you to "scroll" with your finger through various features of your phone, including calling, texting, and photos. Everything about the TouchFLO interface is very iPhone-like...meaning you can "flip" through your music and photos and pan/zoom via finger movements just like on the Apple iPhone. It's very easy to use the 3D TouchFLO interface for basic navigation and tasks, but it can be a little cumbersome using it for more complex tasks in unfamiliar applications. The Home screen for the Touch Diamond is specially modified for Sprint. It includes a very large digital time clock, call history menu, and one-touch access to dialing, your contacts, texting, emailing, and the Sprint TV service as well. The onscreen QWERTY keyboard comes in two modes, full and compact. You'll probably want to always use the full QWERTY keyboard because it's the easiest to use, but if you have average-to-large fingers, you might have some troubles regardless. The keyboard is a little small onscreen and key mis-presses are common, but not unmanageable. As with any touch screen device, there's always a learning curve.

The HTC Touch Diamond (Sprint) comes loaded with the full version of Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, which means it has full Microsoft Office file editing and Microsoft Outlook Mobile supports Direct Push e-mail as well. The device runs a 528-MHz CPU and has 203MB of RAM, with about 125MB left over for user applications, which is very handy. Despite the TouchFLO interface, the device still runs Windows Mobile under the hood, which means that it isn't immune to all the quirks and performance issues of any phone that runs Windows Mobile. The performance glitches weren't as bad as the unlocked Touch Diamond, but there were still freezing issues and slowdowns occasionally.

As we mentioned before, the HTC Touch Diamond comes pre-loaded with support for Sprint's mobile TV service ($15-$25/month subscription) which goes great with its Sprint EV-DO Rev A high-speed broadband network, which the Touch Diamond supports. Remember that to get the broadband speeds of EV-DO, you'll need to be in an area where Sprint has EV-DO enabled cell towers, which is most metropolitan areas. It also comes pre-loaded with Sprint Navigator as a GPS navigation program featuring voice-enabled turn-by-turn directions for $2.99/day or $9.99/month. The Touch Diamond also supports music downloads from the Sprint Music Store and the device itself supports many audio and video formats including AAC, MP3, WAV, WMA, MPEG-4, and WMV files. There is also a 3.2-megapixel camera on the back that supports video and picture taking. The photos taken with it were of good-to-excellent quality compared to other similar cameras.

The call quality of the HTC Touch Diamond is pretty good as well without any major (or even minor for that matter) issues. Call quality was reported as good-to-excellent on both ends. Expect to get in the area of about 3-4 hours in continuous talk time, which is average with phones of this caliber.

Overall, the HTC Touch Diamond (Sprint) is a very worthy phone because of its sleek style and innovative touch screen interface. It may not be that "iPhone killer" everyone is looking for, but it definitely comes very close. If you're in the market for a new phone and want one that innovative and will "wow" your friends, this is one to look at.