HTC Touch Diamond 2

The basics

The HTC Touch Diamond 2 is a Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional smartphone with 3.2-inch, 480x800-pixel resistive touchscreen. Quad-band GSM and 7.2Mbps HSDPA/WCDMA 3.5G, stereo Bluetooth, GPS and Wi-Fi. Main camera is 5MP resolution with autofocus. It weighs 118g.

The good

The Touch Diamond 2 has a screen big and bright enough to dive into, and you'd better pack your armbands because there’s plenty of depth under its sparkling TouchFLO surface. Full-speed HSDPA and a fluid Opera browser rival make surfing a dream, with the zoom strip along the bottom of the screen proving a neat solution for its very sharp, resistive display. The HTC’s 5MP camera is a cut above your iPhone standard, with particularly good colours and detail (and above average video) in bright light – though quality nose-dives swiftly in the dark. The built-in GPS works decently with Google Maps and battery life (up to five hours with 3G) is (just) on the none-too side of shabby.

The bad

Apparently, you CAN put lipstick on a pig. But you wouldn’t want to snog it. HTC’s gorgeous TouchFLO 3D interface looks delightful and handles well, but there’s no forgetting that Bill Gates and pals are responsible for 90 percent of what you’ll use the Touch Diamond 2 for. Text messages and media files appear and disappear like MP’s expense claim forms and some icons are way too small to activate without resorting to nerdish charms of a stylus.

The bottom line

Slap the Touch Diamond down on a table and your mates will fight over its sleek build and expansive TouchFLO interface. Give them ten minutes to struggle with Windows underneath, however, and we don’t suspect you’ll have any trouble getting it back.