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HTC at MWC. Touch Diamond 2 and Touch Pro 2

HTC Touch Diamond 2

Show me one owner of the original Touch Diamond who never wanted to see an update to his phone. I guess you won’t find many people who haven’t been waiting for the Touch Diamond II to come.

As far as its physical design is concerned, the Diamond II is considerably bigger than the original phone, however its display and resolution have been boosted as well; so while it’s not the most portable WM communicator, I’d say that all things considered (display, hardware, materials) the Touch Diamond II is a pretty “petite” phone.

HTC Touch Diamond II’s spec sheet:

  • Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
  • Qualcomm® MSM7200A™, 528 MHz
  • ROM: 512 MB
  • RAM: 288 MB
  • microSD memory card (SD 2.0 compatible)
  • 3.2” TFT-LCD touch-sensitive screen with 480 X 800 WVGA resolution
  • HSPA/WCDMA 900/2100 MHz
  • GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
  • Bluetooth® 2.0 with Enhanced Data Rate and A2DP for wireless stereo headsets
  • Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/g
  • HTC ExtUSB™ (11-pin mini-USB 2.0 and audio jack in one)
  • Internal GPS antenna
  • Main camera: 5.0 megapixel color camera with auto focus
  • Second camera: VGA CMOS color camera
  • Capacity: 1100 mAh
  • FM Radio, G-Sensor
  • 107.85 X 53.1 X 13.7 mm
  • 117.5 grams (4.15 ounces) with battery

Without going into too much detail, the Diamond II is good old Touch HD, but in a new, more streamlined and pocketable package. Our only niggle with its design is the touch-sensitive stripe at the foot of the front fascia. Apparently, HTC wanted their latest and greatest phone to have a distinctive feature that would set it apart from a legion of other candybar-shaped Windows Mobile devices. However in this case the end doesn’t quite justify the means – I played around with it for 10 minutes or so and still couldn’t figure out how it was supposed to help me, unlike, say, the navigation wheel found in the Touch Cruise, where it was tied up with the communicator’s GPS navigation department.

However the main part of the update lies inside. Specifically, the Diamond II now boasts two new features: Push Internet and People centric-communication. I suggest you stop feasting your eyes on the live pictures of the phone and learn more about what these new feats do.

Push Internet

The idea behind this feature has been around for a very long while; however HTC is the first vendor to materialize it. Everyone knows how unstable, slow and expensive mobile data connections are, so it actually makes a lot of sense to cache data when the connection quality is passable, so that the user could browse the web even when the connection breaks up. So in essence Push Internet downloads the contents of selected web-pages and allows viewing them in offline mode. Naturally, that’s only the outline of how it works, but I believe you get the idea. It’s still unclear, though, how flexible the settings will be.

People centric-communication

This feat is another demonstration ohow miserable some of Windows Mobile’s standard applications are. This time around HTC have addressed the system's phonebook and implemented a couple of simple tabs that make all data related to a particular contact accessible in one place.

So here is how it works: you fire up the Contact menu and select any entry in there; once in the detailed view you'll see an array of tabs style-keyed to the phone's TouchFLO 3D UI. Effectively, these tabs feature all information that has something to do with the contact in question - from messages to call logs. Furthermore, that's not all, as People centric-communication has got even more on offer, however we don't have time to list all its features here - we'll get back to it when we get our hands on a working prototype of the phone.

HTC Touch Pro 2

Anyone who’s even remotely familiar with HTC-branded phones will have no trouble pointing out the differences between the Diamond and Touch Pro. If you aren’t one of these people, perhaps we should list them – form-factor and slide-out QWERTY keyboard. It’d seem these two phones were made to complement each other - a more fashion-conscious offering and a business-savvy communicator. However, the market saw the Diamond and Touch Pro duo in a slightly different light; basically they asked themselves a simple question: “Why would I need to pay almost 1.5 times more for that Touch Pro, just to have a slide-out thumbboard?” – so most consumers ended up going for the less expensive Diamond. Long story short, while HTC were more than pleased with the sales of Touch Diamond, the numbers of the Touch Pro were somewhat daunting, even though it was considered a more enterprise-oriented solution.

Luckily, today’s release has finally brought in several more substantial differences, including custom software, applications and hardware for both phones.

Specifically, the Touch Pro II houses two microphones and two loudspeakers on either side of the casing, so as to allow the user to utilize it in conference calls. HTC calls this feat “Straight Talk Technology”. While it’s still unclear whether this feature will be sought-after, but the very fact that they are trying to differentiate their phones via various hardware features is a good sign.

Video. HTC Touch's presentation (34 mb)

On top of that the HTC Touch Pro II is a pretty eye-candy phone, even though I usually don’t praise phones with slide-out keypads.

Conclusión

One can put the blame for such small launch event on the global economical meltdown – seeing how Acer rolled out at least a dozen of Windows Mobile based phones, HTC’s two new devices somewhat pale in comparison (although only in terms of absolute numbers, rather than quality). On the other hand, you should keep in mind that HTC are currently working with both Microsoft and Google, which also puts some extra restrictions on how many phones they were allowed to release at this MWC. While their new Diamond and Pro communicators lack the WOW-effect that the original devices had, it’s worth mentioning that these two newcomers also boast a number of software enhancements. So at the end of the day the impact from their synergy is almost just as significant. And, of course, it’s good to see how HTC keep moving forward with every new phone they unleash.

The HTC Touch Diamond II is supposed to hit the shelves some time in April or May, while the Touch Pro II’s release date is set for June/July. However, with the financial crisis raging out there, there is a chance that the price tags of these phones will put many off, including HTC’s most loyal consumers

Artem Lutfullin ([email protected])
Translated by Oleg Kononosov ([email protected])

Published — 16 February 2009

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