HTC Touch Diamond to be free on Orange?

I just picked up a copy or Orange’s July catalog and discovered the HTC Touch Diamond now appears in the main section of phones available on contract. What’s more, the catalog says that the Diamond will be free on all contract worth £40+ per month. However, what it doesn’t say is whether this requires a 12, 18 or even a 24 month (do people sign up for 24 months?) contract in order to get it free. Assuming it’s 12 months then that really is an excellent deal when you consider the SIM-free price of the Diamond.

The other thing you’ll notice on the page scan above is that it states that the Diamond is ‘Mobile Instant Messenger Compatible’ – this clearly means that Orange have hobbled Windows Mobile again and removed Windows Live Messenger from the ROM.

You may recall, we discovered that Orange are planning to charge to use ‘Orange Messenger’. Costing we’ve hear will be: Unlimited use for £4 a month or £1 a day with Unlimited bundles. Or, if you’re not a regular user you can sign up to use it for 5p per message. At 5p per message that will soon become expensive!!

You may also notice in the scan below of the Diamond spec as listed in the catalog there is an error on the listed internal/external memory. Just in case you are buying from Orange – the Diamond doesn’t have a MicroSD card slot but has 4GB rather than the listed 256MB of internal storage. I also think that the listed 16.5 days of standby time is rather optimistic – I get about 2 days from my Diamond!