PERFORMERS OF THE FORE

It has everything that we have come to expect from high-end, business phones—a camera, music player, high speed Internet, multiple connectivity options and business must-haves like Office Mobile. But where the Touch Diamond holds all the cards is user interface.

The TouchFLO 3D interface provides quick access to people, messages, emails, the Internet, photos and videos, music, weather, settings and programmes. Contacts, favourite music, videos and photos are no longer an uninspired line of text or boring icons, with album artwork, video stills and snapshots of your friends and family coming to life at the touch of your fingertips. The touch user interface responds perfectly to finger movement while scrolling through contacts, browsing the web, and launching media—all vividly displayed as photos and artwork powered by the 3D graphics processor.

HTC’s new flagship product promises to make browsing the web and using web-enabled applications as easy as making calls on the phones. It comes with a new customised mobile web browser to enable easy viewing and effortless navigation of websites in the way they were designed.

Moreover, you can zoom and pan websites with one-hand and automatically view optimised content, especially created to fit the display. Turning the Touch Diamond sideways automatically rotates the web page view from portrait to landscape, thanks to the g-sensor that rotates the screen automatically.

The Touch Diamond also comes with a customised, HTC-developed YouTube application. Its HSDPA internet connectivity capability means the Touch Diamond can offer a rich online experience, allowing access to Google, YouTube and Wikipedia as freely as a broadband connection does. However, it must be noted that in the absence of any 3G networks in India, web browsing on such phones is severely hindered and can even prove frustrating at times. We did, however, manage to access content on YouTube and browse the Internet but not at speeds the phone is capable of when supported by a 3G network.

At 11.35 mm of thickness and a metallic body with unique geometric facets, it is a serious style statement. It also packs a serious combination of features and functionality. Its 2.8-inch, 640×480 pixels touch screen, with four times more pixels than most phones, provides near-print quality viewing of photographs and excellent web browsing.

The 3.2 megapixel, auto-focus camera promised much until we found out it has no flash. It might insure clear and consistent photography in certain light conditions but is wasted without flash. The Touch Diamond comes with 4GB of internal storage, which allows you to preserve more photos, music, files and exchanged data than ever before.

With the GPS bug biting all manufactures, HTC is not to be left behind and the Touch Diamond comes with an integrated ultra-sensitive GPS, which promises to help you find your destination as quickly and efficiently as a dedicated satellite navigation unit. HTC Weather provides a constant view of weather at home and abroad.

HTC seem to be filling gaps with the Touch Diamond: the headphones supplied are good and comfortable. As with the Touch Cruise, this phone too has an audio booster—which enhances music output quality—that can be activated only when the headphones are plugged in. Living up to its ‘iPhone-killer’ tag, in addition to its rotating screen, the Touch Diamond also displays album artwork, making listening to music a richer experience.

It will be available through Airtel in 25 cities across the country for Rs 27,500.

-Pallavi Jassi
There is a certain amount of familiarity that runs through all Nokia models including its N-series. The latest, N78, may not win prizes for its candybar design, but it is a features-rich phone.

Weighing 101.8g, N78 comes with some of the N-Series features and a few additional, improved virtues of its own, the sound quality, for instance—loud and static-free. While its power button—like in all Nokia model—is located at the top, its answer key and end call button are oddly placed on the margins. This could be confusing, especially for regular Nokia users.

The keypad is probably the N78’s weak point since the keys are very small and hurt the fingers while messaging or dialing. The Navi wheel feature, of course, eases the pain a bit, particularly when scrolling. It is not exactly a wheel, just a normal-looking square key. But run your fingers along the edge of the square and you scroll quickly through the menus. Useful when you are going through lists, like your music.

The 3.2 MP camera—the only one in its class with Carl Zeiss optics—is all that one expects of it. Together with the 2.4 inch display, it provides for high clarity and excellent sharpness of images and the video. There is also the Location Tagger application, which appends the location data in longitudes and latitudes to the photo, thanks to the integrated Assisted-GPS. The ‘Share online’ feature integrates with both the camera and photo applications, allowing for one click uploads to the Web.

The phone has GPS and Wi-Fi (802.11b/g) built-in. The GPS, of course, works only in the open where there are no obstacles to the phone interlinking with the satellites for determining location. Maps can be accessed for a cost and the GPS works pretty decently to ease direction finding. If you have the connections, web browsing is a quick experience. The N78 is a HSDPA 3G phone, but that has to wait. Indian companies do not yet offer the ultrafast connectivity promised by 3G.

It also has PDF and zip readers and QuickOffice for viewing Microsoft Office documents.

Although music isn’t the phone’s main focus, it is one of its best features. With audio playback up to 24 hours, the music (on a 2GB memory card provided with the set; it also supports microSD memory cards of up to 8GB) plays on the Real Player and the sound quality is certainly good and gets even better with the earphones plugged in. And the video playback at 30fps provides clear images. One special feature of the phone is the FM transmitter function for transmitting the audio straight to a standard radio. The inclusion of an FM transmitter allows you to send to audio output via an FM signal to any FM receiver.

A hallmark of Nokia devices, the battery is good and boasts a talktime of 4.5 hours with a maximum of 320 hours in standby mode. The games, however, are missing in this phone.

Overall it’s a good smart phone, certainly as good as the N82, but many may cringe at its price of Rs 19,900. Maybe we can hope for a price cut.