Google Phone

The picture, which is probably photoshopped (even if it's a real product), looks pretty good — nothing too crazy though. It has a concealed qwerty keyboard under the display, and a couple standard buttons that look a bit like Google Talk icons. The screen appears to switch between portrait and landscape view like the iPhone — probably using an accelerometer.

The screenshot taken by the poster contains a few more details that may be of interest:

Google makes relevant information and communication tools easily accessible wherever you are

The Google Phone brings the power of the internet in your pocket, in a simple and intuitive device. It combines the traditional voice and SMS capabilities of phones with all the exciting Google services from the PC such as Search, Gmail, Maps, Blogger…

The Google Phone, designed by Samsung, is a very thing and stylish handset with a large screen and a QWERTY keypad so that it provides a real internet experience.

All these internet services will be available under a simple Internet monthly flat fee, comparable to PC Broadband products, giving you transparency and control over your mobile bill. Thanks to simple, relevant advertising, Google will even give you a 3 month discount on your mobile Internet monthly flat fee

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Pocket Power

The technology industry is constantly promising us the world. Not a day goes by that I don't hear about some revolutionary new hardware, software or concept that will change the way in which we live our lives. Unfortunately though, more often than not, these promises either amount to nothing, or take an absolute age to come to fruition.

Take the concept of convergence as an example. For the best part of a decade I'd heard IT and consumer electronics companies talking about the convergence of the two industries, thus creating products that borrowed from both areas in order to create a new platform for consumers. Of course that convergence is now common place in pretty much every home, in the shape of HDTVs, gaming consoles, and any number of wireless devices. And yes, our lives probably are that bit better as a result of the concept of convergence becoming a reality, but it doesn't change the fact that it took an awful long time to actually arrive.

Something else that the technology industry has been promising us for many years is the concept of a fully featured and connected mobile computer in our pocket, and I think that this concept is also pretty close to reality. Right now we're seeing a new age of mobile devices hitting the market, devices that are so feature rich, that they would have been the reserve of science fiction only a few years ago. The sheer power and usability of the latest generation of smartphones is staggering, even for someone as entrenched in the technology industry as myself.

To give credit where it's due, RIM is probably the company that really changed the perception of mobile devices when it introduced the first BlackBerry handset. Before the BlackBerry came on the scene, the idea of having your email delivered to your pocket was sheer fantasy. OK, so there were ways to access your email using devices like the Psion Series 5, or the Palm Pilot, but having email sent directly to your pocket, simply and easily came with the BlackBerry. In fact, we should really thank the fragmented mobile phone industry in the US at the time for this breakthrough. With differing standards and incompatible networks, the ubiquitous SMS communication that had swept through Europe simply didn't work in the States, so the concept of mobile email seemed to be the obvious answer.

Despite the fact that I still believe that there are relatively few people that need access to their email anytime and anywhere, it didn't stop the BlackBerry becoming a scarily addictive accessory for millions of us. Over time push email and BlackBerry handsets moved out of the corporate world, with consumers deciding that they too wanted email anywhere. Meanwhile other platforms started to offer push email services too, desperately trying to break the BlackBerry stranglehold.

By contrast, I think that Windows Mobile actually held things back rather than enhanced the situation. Microsoft's insistence that its mobile OS should look, feel and act the same as its desktop operating system just resulted in a poor user experience. OK, so for business users Windows Mobile isn't a bad solution, and it does pretty much everything you need it to, but for consumers it's hardly the most user friendly interface. The problem with Windows Mobile is epitomised by the fact that even now, there is no scalable browser bundled with the OS, leaving users to download and install Opera Mini if they plan on mobile browsing.

Credit where it's due though - if it wasn't for Windows Mobile, we wouldn't have seen as many advancements in mobile hardware. HTC for instance, is one of the most innovative mobile hardware manufacturers in the world, and if it wasn't for Windows Mobile, we probably wouldn't have seen half the smartphones that populate the market today. I guess it's fair to say that Windows Mobile was a necessary evil. And of course, there's always the chance that Windows Mobile 7 will be a streamlined, user friendly, stylus free affair - but then again, probably not.

Right now though, we’re seeing some of the best mobile devices to ever hit the market. As with all Apple products, there’s a massive amount of hype surrounding the iPhone, but for the most part, the device itself lives up to all the marketing and fan evangelism. When the original iPhone launched last year it really did change the face of mobile user interfaces, proving that you didn’t need a mechanical keyboard, or a stylus to operate a fully featured smartphone. More recently, the iPhone 3G has addressed many of the shortcomings of the original handset, while sporting a surprisingly affordable price tag.

But by the look of it Apple isn’t going to have everything its own way. The recently launched BlackBerry Bold is a superb smartphone, with a screen that’s every bit as captivating as the iPhone’s. However, while most corporate users will have trouble convincing their IT departments to support an iPhone, the Bold will slip seamlessly into any corporate exchange setup. Data rates on the Bold are lightning fast, while the integrated GPS is one of the best I’ve seen in a phone. And let’s not forget that the even newer BlackBerry Storm has just broken cover, which offers a full touchscreen interface, just like the iPhone - could this be the handset that bridges the gap between corporate and consumer smartphones?

Even an old stalwart like Nokia has made some pretty major leaps in recent months. The excellent E71 for example took the battle directly to BlackBerry when it came to corporate email devices, and even now, after the launch of the Bold, the E71 still looks like a very attractive alternative to the ubiquitous BlackBerry. Meanwhile, the N96 is continuing Nokia’s push into the mobile entertainment market, after the significant success of the N95 8GB. I doubt that too many O2 customers will be choosing one over an iPhone 3G though.

As if all this development in mobile technology wasn’t enough, we’re just about to see another major player enter the market and push the envelope even further. With T-Mobile getting set to launch its G1 handset, we’re just weeks, or perhaps days, from seeing Google’s much anticipated Android mobile interface hit the retail market. I’ve spent some time with the G1 already and so far I’m very impressed with what Google has brought to the table. Much like Apple with its iPhone interface, Google’s Android is a simple, fast and ultimately user friendly mobile operating system, that should win many friends.

It’s also worth noting that the G1 itself is a pretty decent handset, although it was inevitable that the hardware on which Android launched would play second fiddle to the OS itself. That said, it comes as no surprise to see that HTC is the launch partner, and I sincerely hope that we’ll be seeing as many Android based HTC devices as we see Windows Mobile handsets over the coming year.

With Android being open source from the outset, it also has the potential of evolving faster than any other mobile operating system, while also winning over hobbyist developers. We’ll have to wait and see how many hardware manufacturers adopt Google’s mobile interface, but judging by what I’ve seen so far, I can’t imagine that many would choose not to. One thing’s for sure though, like the original BlackBerry, or the iPhone, the launch of Android will move the game on, and push every player to make better hardware and software. And with that in mind, maybe the mobile industry is about to make good on its promise of fully featured, connected, mobile computers in all our pockets.

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LG KT520

LG appears to be going great guns at the moment with its mobile phones. The KS360 quirky might not have achieved top-notch scores but its consumer focussed sliding keyboard proves the company is prepared to innovate, while the 5-megapixel camera toting KC550 was designed to bring high quality photography to the masses.

Now we have the KT520 which as I write is exclusive to O2 and costs £90 on Pay and Go. The phone is tri-band GSM with 3G. It isn't designed to rock anybody's world with its fancy and innovative features. Instead it is meant to be a foil to handsets like LG's Secret, and to be a solidly mid-range mobile.

Click to enlarge

It certainly has a mid-range ambiance to it. I'm not too delighted with the chunky feel of this mobile in the hand. Even given that this is a slider I'm not happy about its 15mm or so of thickness. It is also a bit tall for my hands at just under 102mm when closed, growing to just over 135mm when opened. Width is OK at pretty much 50mm and it is a mere 97g in weight which is welcome.

The light weight can be put down in large part to the plastic body. LG has gone for a traditional black and sliver livery that works well enough, but even with the rounded corners the feel is just a little on the cost-cutting side. The slide mechanism is smooth, though.

The screen measures 2.2 inches diagonally and delivers a standard 240 x 320 pixels. I've no real complaints about it except to say that LG could probably have squeezed something a little larger into the casing - albeit with a concomitant price hike.

Beneath the screen you'll find a button bank. Call and End keys are very close to the bottom of the handset, which, as they are likely to be the most frequently used keys on this mobile, is a bit of an awkward position for them. I'd have liked them further up. The softmenu keys are a long way below the softmenus to which they correspond. To be fair this won't make a difference in everyday use, but it does look a little strange.

In between the softmenu and Call/End keys sit a Clear key and a switcher. The latter is very useful as you can use it to move quickly between applications that you've already opened on the phone. There's another handy option on the left softkey when you are in the home screen. Labelled ‘My stuff', this takes you directly to a list of folders containing images, sounds, videos, games and apps, downloads and flash and other stuff stored on the phone and on a microSD card.

As usual for LG, menu options are hardwired into number-pad keys, so you can either tap the corresponding number key or use the D-pad to get around. The numberpad keys should suit anyone who does a lot of texting. They are large and give out a little click when pressed. I'm not convinced about their durability, though. There is a lot of flex around the number pad as you press keys, and mechanical longevity could be suspect.

The D-pad has a little trick up its sleeve. A central select button and surrounding directional pad, complete with arrows to remind you about its up, down, left and right functioning can be made touch-sensitive.

You can configure this feature to be off, on, or only functional for Web browsing. You can also set its speed to high, medium or low. Turned on, you move your thumb around the sensor to make selections. It's not exactly a new idea, and while it is nice to see it implemented on a lower cost mobile I did find it a bit fiddly. The D-pad's select button has a sensitive area with a circumference of about 8mm, which I found to be pretty small to work with.

The music player is adequate. There is 30MB of on-board memory and a microSD card slot for you to add more. The player automatically found tunes stored all over the place on my microSD card which is just how I like things. Having to put songs into designated folders is a no-no where ease of use is concerned.

Loudspeaker volume is not as high as on some handsets but perfectly good enough. The quality of the provided headset is reasonable, and the equaliser settings, of which there are several, do make a noticeable difference. LG falls over by not offering user defined equaliser settings and, more importantly, by having a proprietary connector for the headset. This is the same connector required by PC cable and mains power. The player supports the genres tag but not composers.

There is a front camera for video calls, and the lens for the main camera is on the back of the casing. It is a bit of a downer that the lens isn't kept scratch-safe inside the slide mechanism. It shoots to 3-megapixels and benefits from autofocus, but there is no flash and no self-portrait mirror.

Both indoors and out results were iffy. The coloured dish is a bit lacking in vibrancy and its background should be white rather than the dull off-white it is in the photo.

Outside, the chair photo is not uniformly the brilliant white it should be, and the flower photo reveals a multitude of sins. The flowers are overexposed, and focus is out. The phone was about 15 inches from them and it decided to focus on the slightly further away leaves. Distance shots were more acceptable, but the camera has some very clear limitations.

There's no Wi-Fi - well you wouldn't expect that on a mid-range phone, really. Mobile email of the POP variety is supported alongside SMS messaging.Yahoo! OneSearch is built in; an RSS reader supplements the Web browser plus there's a voice recorder, calendar, to do list, memo tool, alarm, calculator, stopwatch, unit converter, world time utility, date finder (it tells you the date 'n' number of days into the future), and LG's Secret Memo application that lets you protect info with a security code. LG provides a cable so you can connect the phone to a PC.

Verdict

There's nothing outstanding about this mobile, and its one headline feature, the D-pad sensor, is a bit iffy. Still, on the other hand, for £90 this isn't a bad little phone. Just don't expect too much from its camera.

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Nokia 5320 XpressMusic

Nokia is hitting the mobile phone headlines again at the moment. Its N96 is making waves and the newComes With Music all you can eat music download service is also kicking up a bit of a storm.

Comes with Music is currently compatible with just three Nokia handsets - the only just announced 5800 XpressMusic which is Nokia's first touch-screened handset, the N95 8GB and the 5310 XpressMusic. I'm looking forward to testing the service in due course, but in the mean time music fans who also like Nokia mobiles have another addition to the XpressMusic range to contemplate - the 5320 XpressMusic.

When I've looked at earlier handsets in the XpressMusic range, I've been a little nonplussed. Take the 5310 XpressMusic for example, which turned out to be a case of great hardware, shame about the software.

So had Nokia got it right and come up with a rival for the best of Sony Ericsson's music focussed handsets this time around? I don't think so.

The 5320 XpressMusic is not meant to be a high end mobile. If anything it is a case of Nokia trying to get mid-range users hooked on mobile music. So you shouldn't expect anything groundbreaking.

Can you cram it with music? Well, yes if you think cramming involves stuffing its 140MB of memory and 1GB microSD card with music is going to provide enough storage space for you. You can opt for a bigger card as the phone supports SDHC cards. I tried one of SanDisk's new 16GB microSDHC cards and the phone had no problem with it. The problem comes in getting to the microSD card slot. This is on the left edge of the casing but its cover is difficult to lift without first removing the battery cover.

Can you listen to music in a satisfactory way? Well, the phone automatically looks for tracks when you put a microSD card in the slot and updates it library, saving you the bother of doing this manually.

There is a 3.5mm headset jack into the phone and another just past the headset's mic. The provided headphones are not that great and sound quality was vastly improved when I switched to a decent set. The provided in-ear buds came without any cushions and I found them incredibly uncomfortable to wear. Of course you can use a Bluetooth stereo headset if you prefer.

There is an equaliser. It has pre-sets for bass booster, classical, jazz, pop and rock. You can make manual settings and save them with whatever name you like. This is all good, but sadly the equaliser had no discernable effect for me. I am sure this is the phone's problem and not my ears, even though Nokia says the phone has a dedicated audio chip.

Battery life was pretty good. I got eight and a quarter hours of non-stop music played through the handset loudspeaker after a full battery charge. The speaker is quite loud and though a little distorted at top volume it isn't a disaster.

There is a novelty in the ability to control the music player by voice. Nokia calls this ‘Say and Play'. You say an artist name, artist and song title, artist and album title or playlist name and the phone plays your selection. In theory. I wasn't too impressed with its performance. It didn't do well identifying classical composers and was generally a bit hit and miss.

You use this service by holding down the My Own key and then speaking. The key can be programmed to launch whatever you like on a short press. It sits above the screen rather than on one of the edges, which is the more usual location for this kind of key. This is largely because the phone supports N-Gage and the key doubles up as a gaming button. There's also an FM radio with RDS , for those times when listening to your own tunes gets a bit boring.

So, all in all this is a competent music phone, with some positive features, even if it doesn't set the world alight with novelty.

In terms of looks and handling there isn't a huge amount for Nokia to crow about. The 5320 XpressMusic is nowhere near as nicely designed as the 5310 for a start. The casing is plastic and the upside of this is that the phone is light at just 90g. But it doesn't feel like particularly solid phone. It is a little fat to be called swanky at 15mm, though at 108mm tall and 46mm wide it is comfortable to handle.

The screen is a little on the small side at just two inches across the diagonal, but its 320 x 240 pixels are sharp enough and the screen is bright.

Side buttons enable you to control volume, shift between tracks and pause/play music. When you are viewing the music player screen all but the volume control functions are accomplished using the D-pad. The D-pad is 8-way, incidentally, largely for N-Gage purposes.

The button pad is flat apart from the raised D-Pad. Its buttons are irregularly shaped with the Nokia Menu, clear, 2, 4, 6, 7, 9 and 0 buttons having rounded edges and the remainder simply fitting into the space they leave behind. This lends the phone a distinctive look and doesn't negatively affect usability, which is reasonably good except for the fact that the softkeys aren't near enough to the edges of the phone for my liking.

This is a 3G handset with a front-facing camera for video-calling. It is quad-band GSM with EDGE. The main camera is a bit of a let-down. It does have a dedicated side button, but thereafter the good news fades away.

Its maximum resolution is 2-megapixels and quality is mediocre. A twin LED flash helps with low-light photographs but as ever you need to be close to the subject to feel its benefit. There is no autofocus.

The coloured dish photographed under normal household lighting is dull, grainy and lacklustre. Outdoors the chair lacks uniformity of colour and definition is poor. The flowers are good as far as colour reproduction is concerned, but are over exposed.

There is lots of other stuff on this handset including Nokia's web browser, which performed fairly well at its 3G speeds, QuickOfffice and the Adobe PDF reader for reading documents in a range of formats, plus clock, calculator, calendar, Nokia's Active Notes for embedding HTML and other multimedia into notes, unit converter, RealPlayer, and a voice recorder. Nokia Maps is here too, but there's no GPS in the phone.

Verdict

The 5320 XpressMusic doesn't break any new ground for music phones but there is lots of software built in. You might want to hold out for a Comes With Music handset, though.

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Samsung U800

Samsung seems to be a bit of an unstoppable force at the moment, with new handsets popping up with great frequency. Only a couple of weeks ago we had the 8-megapixel flagship model the i8510, which reached the rare status of a TrustedReviews Recommended award.

Now I have the mid-range U800. This handset doesn't have any headline-busting features, but it does really appeal to me in terms of design and usability. There is no flashy Omnia and Tocco style touchscreen and the chameleon-like touchpad on the slider Soul U900 has been forsaken for more standard controls.

But in the place of these ‘look at me' features we have a solid build, a light-weight, portable design, and a mobile that is very usable and manages tri-band GSM connections along with HSDPA to 3.6MBps.

The U800 has a mostly slate grey brushed stainless steel body which, in combination with the pearly white backlight to the keys and buttons, and black plastic sides and bottom ridge, give it a very appealing, if hardly innovative look.

In the hand the U800 feels fantastic. It is just 9.9mm thick and quite narrow at 46mm. It weighs just 92g. If I have a grumble it is that the phone is a little tall at 111mm.

The height appears to have been used to allocate more than the typical amount of space to the D-pad and its associated buttons. The extra millimetres have certainly not been allocated to the screen which is relatively small at just 2in. At least its 320 x 240 pixels are nice and sharp. And it is bright too.

Nor has the extra space gone to the numberpad. This is a flat pad with horizontal ridges separating the button rows. Each button has quite a tactile feel to it, and Samsung's usual plinks and plonks provide further confirmation that you've pressed a key. They are quite loud at top volume, though, and could embarrass you in some quieter environments. The side-mounted volume rocker might get used quite a lot to regulate this.

So it is definitely the D-pad area that has benefited from the U800's tallness. The D-pad itself is nice and large and to its left and right tall keys provide dual access to the softmenus and Call and End features. Hooray for a nice, simple and easy to use button design.

The D-pad keys double up on the home screen so that pressing up takes you to profiles, down to the web browser, left to message creation, right to the music player.

The home screen is a triumph of minimalism. All it shows you is the time in a rather stylised display that is different to anything else I've seen. When you are playing music there is an additional panel reminding you of the current tune and that the D-pad offers playback controls.

When it comes to the general look and feel of things you can choose between three themes and then use the built in creator tool to customise them to the nth degree, changing the background images, icons and fonts, and icon types. You can really go to town here and create a unique look for your phone.

The music player had no trouble finding tunes located in random folders on the microSD card I popped into the side slot. Internal memory runs to 1GB. Sound quality from the built in loudspeaker, which sits on the top edge of the phone, was good. The provided two-piece headphones are a nicely designed in-ear pair, with a 3.5mm connector at the microphone. Their sound quality was pretty good too.

Though not as impressive as the best I've heard, I was pleased with sound quality via the provided kit. This is not surprising since sound output is assisted by Bang & Olufsen ICEpower.

However, Samsung really needs to think seriously about its proprietary headset connector to the handset. It shares the power connector and Samsung really would do itself a favour by building a 3.5mm headset connector right into the phone. And, incidentally, putting that connector on the top or bottom edge of the casing. Its location on the phone's right edge makes it all rather cumbersome to slot this beautifully thin and neat U800 into a pocket, as the headset adds no less than 15mm to the width required. Bah!

There is a front-mounted camera for two-way video calling. The main back-mounted 3-megapixel camera is not enough to set your world alight and it does have a few important problems.

The LED flash helps a little in low light conditions, and the camera controls are mostly easy to use. The D-pad takes on a new role enabling you to access the self-timer, flash, brightness and an ‘icons' mode which you can use to have gridlines on screen, information icons there, or a mostly blank screen for framing shots.

Irritatingly, you can't use the D-pad's select button for shooting, instead relying on the side-mounted button. This is slightly awkward for portrait mode shots. There's no autofocus, shooting anything that is moving is a challenge thanks to shutter lag and close-ups are out of the question unless you like them fuzzy.

Indoors, images were somewhat grainy. The coloured dish, photographed under normal household lighting, illustrates this well. Outside things were better, but the chair is not as sharp as I'd have liked. Colour reproduction on the fruits, which can often be overexposed by phone cameras, was good.

Other applications include an FM radio, voice recorder, Web browser, RSS reader, mobile email, calendar, memo utility, task manager, world clock, calculator, unit converter, timer, stopwatch, five alarms and basic image and video editing. One real plus is longer than average battery life. I got through three to four days between charges providing I didn't thrash the music player too much.

Verdict

I really like the physical design of the U800 but loathe the positioning and proprietary nature of the headset connector. The camera is a bit lacklustre, but music playback and battery life are both good. The remaining apps are a fair set for a mid-range handset but aren't overly inspiring.

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HTC Touch Diamond

Never believe the hype - it's a saying that I place great faith in, because (most of the time) it's true. I've lost count of the number of times a movie that's been hyped as the "must see" of the year, complete with fabulous trailers and impressive special effects, has turned out to be a turkey. It doesn't just apply to movies: it happens in sport (take the Dutch national football side - so often highly rated, so often also-rans), and often in the technology industry too.

Apple is the chief culprit when it comes to hyping its products, but mostly it's worth putting up with because the end product so often delivers. The iPhone, for instance, was so hotly anticipated you'd have forgiven most people for being cynical upon its arrival. Amazingly, in most respects it actually exceeded expectations. But where that product ultimately delivered on the hype, the HTC's Touch Diamond - desperately touted in all corners as Windows Mobile's answer to Cupertino's belle du jour - sadly, doesn't. I'll get my apologies out for delivering the verdict so high up in the review right now, so sorry, but iPhone killer this ain't.

One of the main reasons it's so underwhelming is its build quality, which is disappointingly plasticky. You can take or leave the Nokia Prism-like multi-faceted rear panel, but the cheap, shiny finish is about as far from the iPhone's solid metal build as you can get. Flip the phone over and the theme continues. The flat, flush-to-the-edges screen and sharply-tailored corners are smart enough, but the button panel below the touchscreen again looks poorly finished. Worse still, the four-way directional buttons surrounding the small, circular select key are stiff and often difficult to operate without accidentally pressing neighbouring controls.

I was expecting more, so much more, from a firm that in the past has delivered such fantastic handsets as the TyTn, TyTN II, S710, and the S730. But next to those phones, the Touch Diamond feels much cheaper.

But I'm probably being a little harsh; after all, there are plenty of reasons to like this phone. So here are some of its good points. For starters, it's slimmer and more compact than an iPhone at 51 x 102 x 11mm versus 62 x 116 x 12mm. Its 2.8in screen, though smaller, is sharper at 640 x 480, and lovely and bright too.

And it has to be said that the Diamond's interface - HTC's new Touchflo 3D - does an excellent job of masking the inadequacies of the Windows Mobile front end. So much so, that if you didn't know its background, you'd initially think it was a pretty slick phone. It's certainly a big improvement on the original Touch's thin veneer.

When it first fires up, you're confronted with a nifty clock display with numerals in the style of a flip-number calendar, and a summary of recent missed calls and approaching appointments below it. Along the bottom, in a strip, are shortcut icons to access other enhanced pages. The only remaining remnants of the Windows Mobile Today screen run along the top and bottom edges, with the familiar start menu and status icons at the top and context-sensitive soft keys at the bottom. Naturally, everything here can be navigated with a flick of the finger on the Diamond's hard surface screen.

Click to enlarge

It's not just the Today screen that's had the Touchflo treatment, however. There's slick new styling elsewhere too. On the contacts screen, pictures or silhouettes of people you call regularly are presented in a Rolodex-type graphic - again navigable with a sweep of your pinky. Text messages fly in and out of the screen as you scroll through them, and the first few lines of the latest email appears as a letter poking out of an opened envelope. Fans of the HTC weather display won't be disappointed either - it's here again in all its glory, this time equipped with fancy transition animations.

The input methods are as good as ever, too, with a choice between traditional T9 entry, a compact 20-key QWERTY layout like the physical one available on the Touch Dual (or Touch Plus on T-Mobile), plus a full-sized one-letter per key QWERTY keyboard for when predictive text isn't appropriate. All the keypads are sensibly designed and remarkably easy to use, and as a result I found entering text on the Diamond easy and stress-free, especially when using the 20-key QWERTY pad in predictive text mode.

It's a similar story for pictures and videos, which also see a big finger-friendly boost over the dour Windows Mobile effort. Even the music application is a world away from Windows Media Player's horrible interface, with album art on a rolodex-style front-end and an iPod Touch-style navigation of your music library underlying it. The settings also get the glossy, iPhone-esque treatment: ringtones and sounds, and communications settings, for instance, are available without having to delve into Windows Mobile's confusing menus.

It's the best all-round effort at hiding Microsoft's interface away that I've yet seen, and its best feature is yet to come. Included with the Touch Diamond is a tweaked version of Opera Mobile that, incredibly, rivals the iPhone's Mobile Safari browser for usability. You can't use a pinch of the fingers to zoom in and out, sure, but it operates in a largely similar way to Safari, presenting a zoomed out view of a page initially and then allowing you to quickly zoom in and out (here with a double tap) then pan and push the page around with your finger. In fact I found the page rendering engine to be slightly more reliable than the iPhone's on some tricky websites. I visited a number of sites that didn't quite appear perfectly on the iPhone and the page was spot on with the Diamond.

There's even some good news on the hardware front: the stylus (for the rare occasions you need it) is magnetised and snaps away beautifully into the bottom right corner. Take it out when you're on the phone and you can even set it to launch the notes application automatically - a nice touch. The phone also has accelerometers inside that sense when the phone has been flipped into landscape mode. There's even an addictive little game on board that takes advantage of these sensors - called Teeter: you tilt the phone to roll a ball around a maze, avoiding dropping it in holes along the way.

And there are all the usual high-end HTC bells and whistles when it comes to hardware too. You get tri-band GSM, HSDPA with support for speeds of up to 7.2Mbit/sec, Bluetooth 2.0, 802.11bg Wi-Fi and, of course, a GPS receiver. There's a 3.2 megapixel camera on the rear (though this isn't much cop - focus is hit and miss to say the least) and a VGA one on the front for video calls. Under the hood is a 528MHz Qualcomm processor, plus a healthy dollop of RAM (192MB) a decent 256MB of ROM and another 4GB of internal storage too, which will be good for a fair few photos, video clips and music files.

However, you still don't have to dig very deep before Windows Mobile starts to surface - it's a tad disappointing that you have to get the stylus out to set the alarm, for instance, and clicking appointments launches the usual boring style-free Windows display. HTC's Touchflo 3D is also far from perfect. Foibles include no easy way to turn of the alarm when it goes off - the only way I managed this was to poke the narrow status bar at the top, then press the notification icon on the following screen, then dismiss the alarm - hardly what you want when you're half-awake at 6am. HTC's latest software is also far from 100 per cent stable. I had to restart the phone at least once a day because it simply froze and refused to get going again.

And there are other, more serious problems here. The main issue is performance. In adding all these extra whiz-bang features to Windows Mobile, it seems that HTC has seriously compromised the Diamond's responsiveness. I expected the 528MHz processor to absolutely fly, especially with Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional at the helm and a whopping 192MB of RAM, but I was all-too-often left twiddling my thumbs waiting for it to respond. Battery life is impressive from a pretty low-capacity 900mAh lithium-ion unit, but one-and-a-half to two days with light use is still a long way from being completely acceptable. And the phone also runs amazingly hot - after a brief five minute session browsing the web at HSDPA speeds, the rear panel was starting to make my fingers sweat.

Further disappointment comes in the shape of HTC's proprietary ExtUSB headset/headphone connection - you'll have to buy yourself a converter if you want to use anything but the rather rubbishy wired stereo headset included in the over-engineered pyramid-shaped box. In a phone that wants to challenge Apple's finest, this is a major oversight.

Most unusual of all, however, is that there's absolutely no way to expand the memory in this device. While 4GB may be a generous inclusion, surely you'd want to give owners the option to quickly transfer large files and install memory hungry applications, such as sat-nav software, without compromising the phone's media storage capacity. But there's no microSD slot anywhere to be seen.

Verdict

The Touch Diamond packs in a lot of features and is a good effort by HTC to rival the iPhone's touchscreen usability while retaining the power and extensibility of Windows Mobile. But despite the hype, the Diamond is distinctly half-baked.

Granted, the Touchflo 3D works better than ever to turn Windows Mobile into a genuine phone interface. It hides the ugly-duckling Windows interface away successfully, and browsing the web on HTC's version of Opera Mobile is fantastic. But as a complete package, the Touch Diamond just doesn't convince. Not only does the build not reach the standard set by the iPhone or even the previous generation of HTC Touch phones (this is especially disappointing given the £400+ price tag), but the performance is laboured and the software not entirely stable.

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