HTC Touch Diamond2: The Next Generation

When it comes to smartphones, and particularly touch-screen smartphones, Apple is king. However, with only one phone (well, two) under the company's belt, Apple can't quite compare to HTC when it comes to smartphone variations - the Taiwan-based semiconductor company has practically every type of smartphone ever invented in its portfolio.

Cue the entrance of the Touch Diamond2. Part of the next generation of HTC's touch devices (a group that includes the Touch Pro and Touch HD), the Diamond2 is a looker on the outside, and a workhorse on the inside. Like its predecessor, the candy bar is a quad-band smartphone, complete with high-resolution screen, 3G, and GPS. And by high-resolution we mean 800x480, a huge giant widescreen improvement over the original, which housed a still-impressive 648x480 pixels in 2.8" of screen. Because of this, the actual device is noticeably larger than before - but this is a change for the better.

The standard touch features available on most of HTC's touch devices are also present: TouchFLO 3D, HTC's finger swipe interface, accelerometer with auto-rotation, and handwriting recognition.

New to the phone is a Zoom Bar, a dedicated area just outside of the screen, a microSD slot, better camera (5 megapixel vs 3.2), manual touch focus, and a bigger battery. However, that battery actually translates into less talk time (5 hours vs 5.5 hours), which is a little bit of a disappointment.

It might also be important to note that the Diamond2 runs Windows Mobile 6.1, like any other WM device out there right now. The next version of the OS, Windows Mobile 6.5, won't be available until sometime later this year.

Find the lowest prices on the HTC Touch Diamond2 phone.