By June 8, 2008

HTC Touch Diamond review (Part 3)

HTC Touch Diamond review (Part 3) – “Touch-flo 3D”

One thing that sets the HTC Touch Diamond apart from other Windows Mobile devices is the unique Touch-Flo 3D user interface. This builds upon the success HTC had with the original Touch and later the Touch Dual and Touch Cruise and integrates further into the Windows Mobile OS.

Lets take a closer look at the Touch-Flo 3D interface by examining each screen in turn. Note that I’ve reduced the size of the screen shots by 50%.

Home Screen

This screen effectively replaces the Today screen and shows you the date, time and Operator name. You’ll also see that it tells you when your alarm is set for, has a link to call history and shows you the next event in your diary. Unlike the today screen this page wont show you whether or not you have unread email or SMS on the main page but if you look to the bottom the number of unread emails is shown in a green circle over the email button.

HTC Touch Diamond home screen

HTC Touch Diamond home screen

People

This tab allows you to add your favourite people or contacts to a roladex style system that lets you thumb through your contacts if your contact has a photograph associated with it then it will be displayed here, otherwise you get to choose what image to display instead.

HTC Touch Diamond people page

HTC Touch Diamond people page

Messages

This tab provides you with a preview of your text messages and gives you quick access to compose a new text message.

HTC Touch Diamond messages page

HTC Touch Diamond messages page

Mail

The mail page is where you access your email accounts. As you can see in the image below you get a preview of the last message in your inbox on the screen. The icons down the side denote the three email accounts I have configured and the icon at the top starts a new email message. Buttons at the bottom of the screen allow you go to the inbox for the choosen account or, from the menu button, send/receive, switch accounts or start a new message.

HTC Touch Diamond mail page

HTC Touch Diamond mail page

Internet

The internet page is pretty self explanatory with a link to the web browser (Opera 9.5) and the excellent YouTube client.

HTC Touch Diamond internet page

HTC Touch Diamond internet page

Photos and Videos

The photos and videos page lets you browse through any photos you have stored on your device providing they are in the My Documents/My Pictures folder. You can scroll though your photos by swiping your finget up and down on the page then you can tap on the image to bring it up full screen. Once you have the image fullscreen you can zoom in and out by spinning your finger around the dpad and you can move the picture around the screen by dragging it.

On this page you also have an icon to start the camera in either still or video mode. At the bottom of the screen you have buttons to open the album, which gives you a typical preview of images or you can start a slideshow of the currently displayed images.

HTC Touch Diamond photos and videos page

HTC Touch Diamond photos and videos page

Music

The music page give you direct access to the music files saved on your phone so there is no need to go into media player, you can select songs or whole albums to listen to from this page and you even get to see the album art for your files if they have them.

You navigate through stored music on this page in much the same way as you would an iPod or iTunes, by swiping your finger across the screen. Buttons at the bottom get you in to your media library or the menu allows you to access controls for repeat, shuffle, track properties, playlist and audio booster.

HTC Touch Diamond music page

HTC Touch Diamond music page

Weather

Once again this page it pretty self explanatory. The main image tells you what the weather is like today (there are some nice animations to be seen here) with other buttons offering 5 day forecast and the menu allows you to add/remove locations, change the temperature units and change how the information is updated.

HTC Touch Diamond weather page

HTC Touch Diamond weather page

Settings

The settings page does what it says on the tin. From here you can sync with ActiveSync, edit the sound settings, alter the background image or wallpaper, open up Comm Manager or download updated weather information. Each of the pages accessed from here are also HTC customised pages that are very easy to use and navigate.

HTC Touch Diamond settings page

HTC Touch Diamond settings page

Programs

The last of the main touch-flo 3D pages is the Programs tab. Here you can add shortcuts to the programs that you most commonly use. You can add up to 18 shortcuts to this list and you can easily add or remove them as you see fit.

HTC Touch Diamond programs page

HTC Touch Diamond programs page

Comm Manager

Finally I’m going to briefly mention Comm Manager. This is yet another example of how HTC have done away with the standard Windows Mobile interface and replaced it with their own customised version. This is a welcome change and shows you at a glance whether the phone is on or off, if your data conection is active or if you have WiFi on. I think that new WM users are going to find these pages a lot easier to use.

HTC Touch Diamond comm manager

HTC Touch Diamond comm manager

I think that’s enough on the Touch-Flo 3D interface for now. This review unit has to go back in just a few more days but fortunately I’m told that my retail unit is on its way. I’ll tell you more about the retail version as soon as it arrives and I’ll let you know what the differences are, if indeed there are any!

Review by: Matt

See Part 1 of the review.

See Part 2 of the review.

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Posted in: Reviews

About the Author:

More than 20 years in the IT industry. Blogging with a passion and thirst for new technology since 2005.
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