The Pure offers a 3.2-inch WVGA restive touchscreen, only now it’s clad in a shiny dark-blue plastic body rather than the metal-edged casing of the Diamond2. What you lose in tactile feel, you gain in a display that feels less recessed than we found the original handset’s to be. Physical controls are limited to a touch-sensitive zoom slider sandwiched between the display and four hardware buttons – call, Windows, back and end – together with volume keys on the top right-hand side and a power/lock button up top. On the base there’s HTC’s usual ExtUSB port (which is compatible with miniUSB) and which – with a frustrating dongle – offers a 3.5mm headphone socket. Like the Diamond2, there’s no way to plug in a standard set of headphones.

Wireless connectivity, meanwhile, includes HSDPA 7.2, WiFi b/g and Bluetooth 2.0, together with GPS, meaning there’s no shortage of ways to get online. A microSD card slot is hidden under the battery cover. HTC’s choice of display is just as bright and vibrant as we remember from the Diamond2, and shows off the latest version of TouchFLO 3D. The company’s own finger-friendly UI sits on top of Windows Mobile 6.5, and works well to keep the stylus in its silo most of the time. For all the details – and opinion – on Microsoft’s new smartphone platform, check out our Windows Mobile 6.5 review. That covers the underlying OS, the Windows Marketplace for Mobile app store – paid downloads from which AT&T subscribers can charge straight to their monthly bill – MyPhone backup and all of Microsoft’s other tweaks and amendments to its Windows Phone platform.

What’s less impressive six months down the line is the performance, especially in the wake of the iPhone 3GS. We found the on-screen keyboard – though well spaced, sensibly laid-out and with decent auto-correction – to be sluggish, especially when typing URLs in either of the Pure’s preinstalled browsers. The Windows Phone has both Internet Explorer Mobile 6 and Opera Mobile, and of the two we prefer Opera’s attempt. While IE Mobile 6 has certainly improved over its deeply disappointing predecessor, and now supports Flash Lite, its rendering abilities fall short; CSS proved particularly tricky for the browser, where Opera Mobile had no problems with the same sites.

The Pure’s camera is the same 5-megapixel autofocus unit as on the Diamond2, offering a digital zoom and touch-autofocus. Picture quality falls short of the advanced optics on recent Samsung and Sony Ericsson devices, but is still reasonable. There’s a minor lag between tapping the display (to take the photo – unfortunately there’s no dedicated camera key), the focus locking and the image being snapped. While the digital zoom is fast, it can’t be used during video recording; however, you can pre-zoom before starting to record a clip.

Battery life is a reasonable two days with moderate use, though if you leave ActiveSync turned on for push-email you may find, like we did, that you need to recharge midway through the second day. As for call quality, the Pure is fair but we missed the particularly clear speakerphone from the Pro2. Given the lack of 3.5mm headphones jack, we found it made more sense using a stereo Bluetooth headset than the awkward adapter dongle (that’s included in the box; HTC and AT&T also provide an ExtUSB stereo headset with microphone). Still, media playback isn’t the Pure’s forte, and neither the Windows Mobile Media Player app nor TouchFLO 3D’s mediaplayer can hold a candle to the iPhone 3GS’s version.

The smartphone space is perhaps one of the fastest evolving in tech right now, and the different landscape in which the AT&T Pure finds itself compared to its Diamond2 sibling is a good example of that. Rival handsets such as the HTC Hero and the iPhone 3GS outclass the Pure’s resistive touchscreen, occasionally laggy keyboard and half-hearted PMP functionality, while the Verizon HTC Imagio offers a bigger display and a standard 3.5mm jack. At $149.99 (following a $50 rebate and assuming a new, two-year contract) the Pure is cheaper than the Imagio, but if Windows Mobile is a must-have we’d plump for the Verizon device.

The HTC HD2 is a sequel to the HTC Touch HD. The major features of the HTC HD2 are similar to its previous model but only with a few minor changes. This phone has a massive touch screen measuring 4.3 inches which is much larger than the 3.8 inches in the HTC Touch HD. Apart from that the other major difference is that the mini USB connector has now been replaced by a micro USB connector. Other than these two major features, the other ones remain pretty much the same. The design is also quite similar as both the phones almost alike with the exception of the HTC HD2 having a larger screen. Another point of difference between the HTC HD2 and the earlier similar models is that it uses an updated version of Windows Mobile 6.5.

Memory

Phonebook Practically unlimited entries and fields, Photocall
Call records Practically unlimited
Internal 448 MB RAM, 512 MB ROM
Card slot microSD (TransFlash)

Features

OS Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional
CPU Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 1 GHz processor
Messaging SMS (threaded view), MMS, Email, Instant Messaging
Browser WAP 2.0/xHTML, HTML
Radio Stereo FM radio with RDS
Games Yes
Colors Black
GPS Yes, with A-GPS support; NaviPanel
Java Yes, MIDP 2.0
- Digital compass
- MP3/WAV/WMA/eAAC+ player
- AVI(DiVX/XviD)/MP4/WMV/H.264/H.263 player
- Facebook and Twitter integration
- YouTube client
- Pocket Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, PDF viewer)
- HTC Peep, HTC Footprints
- Voice memo
- T9

The 5 megapixel auto-focus camera is perfect for capturing the beauty of the great outdoors; combined with the dual LED flash it’s also ideal for capturing images in dim conditions. The other features include a great web browser and the facility of sending and receiving attachments via emails. In addition to all this, the HTC HD2 also has a FM Radio and is GPS enabled which making tracking and locating destinations and your friends very simple. The phone also supports Wi-Fi connectivity and offers great internet speed of up to 7.2 Mbps using the 3G support which is very impressive. The internal memory capacity is also pretty large at 512 MB and can be easily expanded up to a whopping 8 GB using the micro SD slot.

The huge touch screen is the feature that mesmerizes all of us. The tactile response is great making using the phone a rather pleasing experience. The screen is also WVGA screen and not a QVGA one like the previous handsets making the images as sharp as a tack and the colors as vibrant as you see in no other phone of its category. The phone although power packed with features is not bulky and weighty. It is sleek and stylish and a great asset that you can show off to all your friends. The phone is a great option for business users as well as personal users. You can easily perform all your business functions with ease with the HTC HD2 as well as perform all your leisurely activities like watching movies as simply. Watching movies is a pleasure on this phone because of its large screen and great resolution.

Overall the HTC HD2 is a great phone which has lots of great features that are both essential and useful. The touch pad is also very good and responds extremely well which is what a touch phone should essentially offer. The set of applications have been put together well and the phone is sure to be a delight to all users.

The Tilt2 is for the people who require a more than decent QWERTY keyboard to meet their texting and mailing needs. The five row QWERTY keypad is good enough to bring a smile on the faces of those professionals who always seek such devices.

As far as the regularities are concerned, the users will enjoy the doubly powerful speakerphone along-with a 3.2megapixel camera. The display is a WVGA option with a tilt-up sliding.

Although this phone targets a niche market, users still might want to grab it for $349.99 on contract after a $50 mail-in rebate. It is definitely not an entry level QWERTY slider so, the youngsters will pretty much ignore it.