HTC
Touch Diamond

The Touch Diamond was based on Microsoft’s Windows Mobile 6.1 and featured a touch-screen user interface, called TouchFLO 3D, which built on interfaces previously seen on the HTC Touch, Touch Dual and Touch Cruise phones. The Diamond was a highly consumer-centric product from HTC at a time when Windows Mobile was primarily focused on the corporate market. It underlined HTC's intention to widen the appeal of its smartphones beyond traditional "prosumer" and business buyers of Windows Mobile devices. The TouchFLO 3D interface used on the Touch Diamond significantly improved how users interacted with the phone because it was deeply integrated with the Windows Mobile platform. This allowed users to navigate through multiple menu layers and applications without encountering the standard Windows Mobile user interface. The Touch Diamond was optimised for one-handed use. There were four hardware keys and a scroll wheel below the screen. The screen used resistive technology, so it worked with a stylus, but the interface was also designed for finger input. The home screen was illuminated automatically when the stylus was removed. Although early demonstrations appeared to show the screen working well with finger input, the reality was very different and a poor substitute versus capacitive touch on an iPhone. Because TouchFLO 3D was unable to support multi-touch, a key feature of Apple's iPhone, it was possible to double tap the screen to zoom the display in and out in applications such as the Web browser. The emphasis on flexible input methods was reflected in the phone's three text-entry options. The screen could display a standard 12-key numerical pad, a 20-key hybrid qwerty and a full qwerty layout. The depth of HTC's changes to the user interface, the availability of multiple input mechanisms and the set of installed applications illustrated how far the Touch Diamond deviated from the standard Windows Mobile package and helped distinguish the device from other Windows Mobile phones at the time. It was also notable that the device used Opera as the primary browser, although Microsoft’s Internet Explorer Mobile was also available. The phone also featured an HTC-developed YouTube application. The Touch Diamond featured quad-band GSM technology; 900MHz and 2100MHz 3G connectivity with HSDPA and HSUPA; Wi-Fi; Assisted GPS; a 2.8-inch VGA display; 3.2- megapixel camera; 4GB of flash memory; Bluetooth 2.0 and a Qualcomm MSM 7201A 528MHz chipset.