HTC Touch Diamond vs. Samsung i900 Omnia: Head-to-Head

Gsmarena posted an article comparing the Samsung Omnia to the HTC Diamond. Here are the advantages of each phone over the other and the final conclusion.

Diamond over Omnia:
VGA display (2.8-inch, 480 x 640 pixels)
TouchFLO 3D Home screen (better than Omnia's Touchwiz UI)
Nicer design
More compact body
Lighter weight
Active magnetic stylus (Omnia has no stylus slot)
Touch-sensitive scroll wheel (better than Omnia's optical joystick)
Better sunlight legibility (by a small margin)
Standard miniUSB slot (as opposed to Samsung's proprietary custom plus)
Dedicated graphics chip with 64MB memory
Comes with the amusing Teeter game (uses the accelerometer)
Has pre-installed YouTube client and MP3 Trimmer application for ringtones
Better video playback performance

Omnia over Diamond:
Bigger, though lower-res display (3.2", 240 x 400 pixels)
Has a better, more solid build and finish
Almost double battery life
Better CPU performance (by a nice margin according to software benchmarks)
Quad-band GSM support (Diamond has two versions to cover all the four bands)
microSD card slot (Diamond has none)
8 or 16 GB of storage memory (Diamond has 4GB)
Much better 5 megapixel camera (better processing, higher resolution, face and smile detection, geotagging)
TV-out (Diamond lacks that)
Landscape QWERTY keyboard (Diamond has one but only in browser)
Auto screen rotation is available in all applications and can be switched off
Comes with DivX video support (Diamond has none, but DivX players can be installed)
Has pre-installed a custom Alarms app, a Video editor and a unit converter

Conclusion
Well, it's the final whistle in our head-to-head. Tempted as we are to not leave it a tie and send it to a penalty shootout, we just have to pay due respect to both contenders. After all it's not the score that makes the game exciting. Sometimes a draw can be as interesting to watch, and this one here sure ain't goalless.

Anyway, it's nearly impossible to give a conclusive judgment as to which of these two fine PocketPCs deserves your money better. The Samsung i900 Omnia and the HTC Touch Diamond are both excellent choices with their own set of advantages and shortcomings. The good thing is they hardly overlap, so getting your priorities right is all you need to make the right choice.

You can certainly get the short version of their virtues at the beginning of this review, we won't be repeating all of those here.

The main point to make here is that there isn't a perfect device that's got it all for all consumer groups even in this high-end segment. Instead, when you go after one of these extra sweet devices you should carefully weigh your priorities and pick the one that covers most of them.

iPhone 3G is still to see a reality check, but it's almost sure that these two can give the latest Apple device a good fight. Maybe they still can't challenge the iPhone interface, but they are finally getting closer.

With HTC Touch Diamond and Samsung i900 Omnia, Windows Mobile handsets no longer seem chubby and nerdy. The next generation of PocketPCs match style with the best performance in their class.