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/touchdiamond/product-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.
