Bman

I got this awesome phone for Christmas and have been having an amazing time playing around with it since. I will probably create this thread into a review and comment place for it, once I get a chance.

Anyone else have this phone or have got to play with it? What you think?

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Electronic Punk

I was looking at this phone myself and more recently the touch hd, but I think I am going to wait and see what they come up with next.

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kcnychief

I want the Fuze, but alas, not in the cards atm. Diamond seemed cool though - hope you enjoy it

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indyjones

Have you got the HD then? That's the phone I am currently thinking of buying But I can not find one anywhere to have a look at working
What do you think of it?

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Electronic Punk

Nope, I have the Tytn 2 so in no particular rush to upgrade

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Bman

The Diamond is better then the HD lol

Ton's of stuff with this phone, might be awhile before I can do my review hehe

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indyjones

In which way? :P

Glad you like it though, they are meant to be good phones

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perris

2 funny

then you wouldn't ever be buying anything

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Electronic Punk

Well whats the point going from windows mobile 6.1 to windows mobile 6.1, may as well wait for 6.5 or 7

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indyjones

7 is gonna be a while, still 6.5 will bring some nice new features to the table, though I think it will be 7 that will be able to (hopefully) beat the iphone UI. Though there are plenty of other drawing points with windows mobile devices

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Bman

What does 6.5 bring? And can you update a phone from 6.1 to 6.5 like a normal computer? This is my first Windows Mobile device.

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Electronic Punk

Not much is known at the moment other than a new version of internet explorer - which may or may not compete with Opera Mobile.
It will still be WinCE 5.x

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indyjones

Its leaked, (as in the browser) it is much much better than the old ie, but not necessarily better than opera, it does brink office support for flash to the table though

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Electronic Punk

Well that part wasn't really leaked as it was included in an image released by MS I believe.

I haven't really been bothered enough to try and use it though

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Bman

HTC Touch Diamond
Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional
Processor: MSM7501A-528MHz
ROM: 1.06.661.1

This is my review of the HTC Touch Diamond (North America) smartphone. Now I am no professional reviewer, so many things might not be all that greatly said. Yet I don't care lol.

Introduction

Now I spent quite awhile looking around and researching new and older phones. After a couple a months I came across this website, http://www.htc.com/www/product/touch...duct-tour.html and fell in love with the phone. Yet it turns out that that exact version is not available in Canada, at least I don't believe so. I only noticed the differences once I got it on Christmas. The main difference is that my phone does not have the beautiful diamond cut back, and the front of it is a bit different as well. I will show some images of it at the end of this review. Now lets get started.

Size/Weight/Feel

Now the first thing you notice about this phone is the amazing design of it, now of course my version isn't as great as the diamond cut back version, but its very nice. It has a smooth grippy back to it, small enough to fit your hand without dropping it and light enough to do whatever you want with it. It's only 11mm thick, which is small enough for a phone to be. I was not sure where to put this but I find that after awhile the phone gets quite hot, nothing that will burn you or explode, but warm enough. This might be because I have never used a smartphone or anything like this before, I assume many of them get warm/hot.

Personalize, ETC

This phone off the bat is quite customizable, you can change the theme, the wallpapers, ringtones and a few other things. Which is pretty basic for any phone to have these days, it does it quite well. All those settings are easy to find on the tab bar at the bottom of the phone. Now of course that is not enough for me, I have to go farther. I found this amazing community for tweaking and hacking this phone. I have complely changed the look of this phone, custom icons, no curtains at the top or button, new theme, new clock, performance increased, many other features played with. They have many applications to customize it that is easy to install on the HTC Touch Diamond, just drag and drop, run. Simple. I will show some shots of how the phone OS looks now.

Windows Mobile

This is my first phone I have ever used with Windows Mobile on it, and of course its the latest 6.1 version. And I have to say I like it very much. I always hear people having issues with it or just hating it. Well, with all the tweaking and hacking I have done, and the excess programs running and all that I have not had the system crash once. And I beleive it has only froze (and then unfroze) once or twice, and those were my fault. It seems like a very smooth OS, even with the awesome TouchFLO system in place. If you don't know what that is, its the awesome system that allows for that awesome window animations, and icons, and the tab sliding and all those cool features. One downside of the system is the load time, it shows Touch Diamond screen with some red code for a couple seconds, then the providers screen for a couple seconds, and then the Windows Mobile screen for even longer, then into windows, and then the TouchFLO system takes a little bit of time to load. So quite long, but I did some hacking around and cut the total time in half. So if it bothers you enough it can be changed

Battery Life

I got this phone charged, almost full, so it's hard to say if the battery life is 100% correct. I have never let it die 100% yet. But I have been using this phone none stop, playing music, watching videos, capturing stuff, editing files, texting, phone calls, anything and everything I can do on it, and the phone lasts almost the full day, I need to do more testing with this. I assume with a normal user the battery should last 1.2days. Now to me that sounds like crap and I think batteries should be much better then that. So the battery on the HTC is the only real downside I have came across with the phone. Though its normal with many phones.

Keyboards

One big issue many touch phones is the keyboard. I find this phone to be better of the bunch. This phone actually comes with 5 or 6 different kinds of keyboards that you can choose from, including a full QWERTY pad. Now I have really only played with the full QWERTY pad because I hate all that T9 stuff, and it gets a bit of getting used to to accomplish any writing with your hands, the letters on the side of the screens seem to be very hard to hit, but if you use the stylis its quite an amazing keyboard. I actually have a hack installed that allows the gsensor to be used for any program I want (since its normally only for images and things) so when I am texting i have the keyboard in landscape mode, very cool (but that hack is a bit buggy). The other nice thing about the stylis is that it actually goes into the phone when your not using it, and looks good still. Oh and for iPhone users, that cut and paste is amazing! Also, I played with some other touchscreen phones and this phone for scroling works like a charm! One more thing lol, you can even change a setting for when your dialing a number that it vibrates, making it feel more like touching a button.

Apps/Email, ETC

Most applications that came with the phone worked right off the bat. The email program accessed my gmail account without issue, Live Search works like it should, IE and Opera work great, and so forth. The only thing I haven't got to work with the phone yet, and might be an issue with my provider and not the phone, is the GPS system. So I will let ya know if that works out in the end or not. Basically all apps work great, but there should be more by default

Screen

I just wanted to add a little about the screen. In terms of size, its the largest screen I have used, smaller then the iPhone I believe but its a very good size (screenshots will show). And of course it gets very dirty quite fast, but is easy to clean. I have no issues with the screen, the gloss isn't even that bad, the only time it has bothered me is on a bright day in the car, and thats it.

I don't know what else I can tell you about the phone, and I know I am probably forgetting lots of stuff, probably main important stuff. If I have forgotten anything or if you want to know anything about the phone please ask and I will write back. Also, if I think of anything this post will be updated And you know I could talk about it all day long, this phone has everything, it would take awhile to mention every little detail.

PS. In the process of writing this I had the phone freeze and I had to pull the battery out and put it back in. That is a first, I hope it does not continue lol And sorry for the bad shots, I will try to get better ones.

Attached Thumbnails

         

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Bman

And here is a couple more shots.

Attached Thumbnails

       

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perris

nice revue bman

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indyjones

Quite right, its only working on the blackstone/touch hd so far as i know though..

Bman nice review, as for your different battery cover is it possible that you have the extended life battery already hence the different cover? Nice review btw

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Bman

No because the camera is in a different spot on the back then the diamond cut version, that is what I thought originally, but nope.

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Tuffgong4

Thanks for the review. I will either be getting the Touch Diamond or the Touch Pro in the next few weeks...I found a great hack to allow the accelerometer to work on almost all applications as opposed to just the ones that work by default. I like the size factor of the diamond but not the lack of physical keyboard. Also I like the fact that it has 4GB of internal storage as opposed to needing a microsd card (mentally I assume it would be a drain on the battery to have an external storage slot, I could be wrong)

Sprint's stock on the touch pro has been up and down up and down so I may have their stock problems make the choice of the touch diamond for me.

How do you like the keyboard? Responsive? Accurate?

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