HTC Touch Diamond 2

The best iPhone-botherer yet?

The camera is another big improvement. It's been beefed up to 5Mp from the original Diamond's 3.2 and while it still falls short of the best-in-class cameraphones from Nokia and Sony Ericsson, it's still good, and way in advance of what's available on the iPhone. There's no flash, and it's not great for quick snaps, since it takes about three seconds to load, and a further four to take a pic with autofocus.

The 5Mp cam may be flash-less, but it's HTC's best by far

The results, however, are better than we've yet seen from an HTC camerphone, with a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1552 pixels offering sharper images with greater detail and fuller colours.

There are no options for editing your pics after you've taken them, but browsing through them is a joy. You can switch between pics in your gallery by brushing your thumb across them and zoom in either by drawing a circle with your finger on the screen - clockwise to zoom in, anti-clockwise to zoom out - or by using the zoom bar.

Viewing video is particularly worthwhile on the exceptional screen, and it can handle all the usual format suspects, including WMV, ASF, MP4, 3GP, 3G2, M4V and AVI. There's also an app which optimises the YouTube experience for the handset.

The music player allows you to browse your collection by brushing through record covers, iPhone-style, and again offers all the usual formats, including AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, QCP, MP3, WMA, WAV, MIDI and M4A - does anyone use any of these beyond MP3 and AAC? There's an effective ten-band graphic equaliser for optimising the sound you hear – you can adjust the bands individually or select one of the 21 preset options.

The screen is gorgeous

The headphones, however, are nothing to sing about and replacing them isn't straightforward as there's no 3.5mm headphone jack, though you could use a wireless Bluetooth pair - the Diamond 2 does A2DP. There's an FM radio on board too, with 20 presets and the option to listen in mono or stereo, plus a sleep timer so it will switch itself off after a set time.