The Samsung Omnia HD and HTC Touch Diamond 2 were unveiled at Mobile World Congress. What do they have to offer compared to the predecessors?
At Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, HTC took the wraps off their newest phones based on the HTC Touch design. The HTC Touch Diamond 2 (and the accompanying HTC Touch Pro 2) is a feature bump to the original, popular HTC Touch Diamond phone.
Like the original, the new HTC Touch Diamond 2 (specs) is a Windows Mobile phone with an improved graphical interface running on top. In this case, HTC has improved the already-impressive TouchFLO 3D interface, and the new HTC Touch phones will be upgradeable to Windows Mobile 6.5 later this year. This upgrade will be free to existing owners, and will for instance add Internet Explorer Mobile 6, Windows Marketplace and the new My Phone cloud service for mobile backup.
At the same time, Samsung announced their newest all-touch smartphone, the Samsung Omnia HD (specs). While the original Omnia was a Windows Mobile device, the new Samsung Omnia HD is a Symbian device running a touch-friendly interface. In fact, the Omnia HD will use the same Samsung TouchWiz interface that we saw on the original Samsung Omnia. The interface relies heavily on desktop-like widgets, and screenshots of the new Samsung Omnia HD show that the phone will retain this design paradigm, albeit on top of Symbian S60.
What's new?
The two new devices are modest updates to their already-impressive progeny. The HTC Touch Diamond 2 gets a slightly larger screen, now 3.2-inches, along with a dedicated, touch-sensitive zoom bar. HTC claims the device will offer 50% better battery life versus the original. The improved TouchFLO 3D interface will also allow some basic global searching. So, when you are on a call with a business contact, the phone will gather together all voice, text and e-mail messages from that contact and make these available from the in-call screen.
The Samsung Omnia HD sees some more noteworthy improvements than the competition. With its 8-megapixel sensor, the phone could be an impressive shooter, and Samsung has upped the ante by bestowing the phone with hi-def movie recording capabilities. Users will be able to record video in 720p, up to 1280 by 720 resolution. The new Samsung Omnia HD will also use a 3.7-inch AMOLED touchscreen with a resolution of 360 by 640 pixels, aiming to provide more space for TouchWIZ widgets.
Price and availability
The HTC Touch Diamond 2 will be released in Europe and Asia in early Q2 2009, with an American version to follow in the second half of 2009. The Samsung Omnia HD is expected to be released in Europe sometime this summer.
