It’s not likely that you could find someone that never has heard of Apple’s iPhone. Also, everyone that had some experience with PDA devices based on Windows Mobile platform will tell you that iPhone is nothing spectacular. Thanks to aggressive marketing, iPhone was set as reference point for these kind of devices, as for anything else but for response time on commands.  High response time is result of optimized operating system on which is iPhone is based (OS X).

HTC is very well known to all technophiles of PDA market. Company that in year of 1997 started as OEM manufacturer of mobile phones for most prominent mobile operators in the world, started from mid of 2006 to sell mostly PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) devices under their own brand. This month we tested in our lab two new PDAs from HTC: Touch Diamond and Touch Pro. Both devices have a lot of similarities but if you look at specifications you will be able to conclude that these are almost identical devices, and you would be almost right.

If we observe only obvious (physical) differences we might come to conclusion that Touch Pro model has QWERTY slide-out keyboard with keys arranged in five rows. Slide mechanism cannot be defined as subtle but it definitely is firm and hardy, which is probably of the best importance. Because of small dimensions, keys are small but thanks to descant ergonomic after shorter period of accustoming, it’s possible to type precisely and fast even larger texts. Of course that Touch Pro model is thicker and more massive because of slide-out keyboard, but that should be great news for all those with bigger hands. The positive side of this “brick-like” looks is bigger capacity and autonomy of battery for Touch Pro that goes hand in hand with weight for this device.

Quite differently from most PDA devices, these two models don’t have too many additional keys placed all over device. On the left lateral side are present two keys in form of “rocker” (volume control). On top side is placed only one key for Standby mode if is pressed shortly or if you press it a little bit longer than its function is only Power On/Off. On bottom side is present multifunctional miniUSB port that beside regular functions (charging battery, audio-out and connecting with computer) on Touch Pro model can be used also as TV-out, but you need to provide by yourself cable needed for this type of connection. Front side for both devices is almost identical (Touch Pro has a bit more curved corners) and phenomenal screen that dominates all over it. Screen has 2.8-inch diagonal and supports resolutions from 640x480 pixels. This feature enables extremely sharp picture with decent colour saturation. Unfortunately, HTC decided to equip whole front and screen areas for both models with glare finish, which only makes their usage difficult in sunny conditions. Below screen are 4 keys and one particular of them is worth of mentioning – very useful key with Back function. There is also one round shaped key with central position in relation to other four. This key is actually substitute for regular scroll-wheel/D-pad. Ring around it replaces D-pad and sensitivity on pressure for ring is very problematic. Often happened that we press one of remaining surrounding 4 keys or even central key. Central key is sensitive on pressure (it uses as photo shooting trigger) but also touch sensitive when it has zooming function in applications for picture preview, web pages, messages and also for controlling media player.