HTC Touch Diamond worth the money?

Gerard_Smith

Just wondering if anyone has any personal experience with the HTC Touch Diamond? I'm looking for a good touch screen smart phone that isn't the iPhone and the touch diamond looks promising. Is it actually worth the hype? Also does anyone know if a usb to 3.5mm adapter is supplied with the phone or would it have to be bought separately?

strecker

I guess it really, eh, depends...

I don't have one , but the reviews are quite mixed... It seems HTC added a rom update that got rid of the initially reported slow ui; so you'd want to find out what rom version it has...

also: the 2.8'' screen may be great to look at, but if you do a lot of "writing" on the phone (email/forums etc), you really wanna try the onscreen keypad.... You're not saying if you have any experience with wm devices, and what features you're after?

Samsung's Omnia is just around the corner, and it packs a bigger screen, a better camera and some other nifty features...

so, anyway: have you had a touchscreen-only device before? A wm device? What features are you after?

mind you: I'd buy a Diamond just to lay my hands on a working opera mobile 9.5 browser but that's me...

Gerard_Smith

I use my iPod touch all the time (I'm posting from it now). My problem with the iphone is not with the device its self it's with the contract. Basically I'm looks for an experiance as close to the iPhone as possible but does not come with the monthly bill. Opera 9.5 at least seems pretty darn close, all it's lacking is the pinch.

strecker

People are so gonna laugh now, but I recently got my hands on an asus p550 (aka vodafone v1520)...its a massive ueber-brick: 3.5'' screen, good processor and ram - very fast and stable, though (as with most wm's) the battery needs daily attention ... Anyhoo, I got spb's pocket plus and mobile shell 2 on it; for fingerfriendly music I use mort player and s2p. Installed the Diamond's onscreen keyboard, and touchpal for stylus free writing... Though the opera mobile 9.5 beta is still very buggy, the phone's a total delight imho - for me it beats every touchscreen device I've ever tried. Big, solid, responsive and I rarely need a stylus.. Sure, the sound is soso, but acceptable to silence out the environment while shopping...

what I'm saying is: who knows... With all the shortcomings of wm, the one advantage is that you can really improve functionality and appearance to a point where the casual observer wouldn't recognise it as a wm phone! And it has copy and paste/use as modem/save page/sync with any computer/mass storage/change battery etc etc
still, for heavy texting I use treo and nokia e61, as a real frontfacing qwerty currently cannot be beaten - though I hope that Nokia might come up with sth for their touch ui...

Black_Knight

Its class! Worth the money, im not sure, depends how much you will use it! My dad has it, its got so many neat cool features on it. He uses it for GPS, watching youtube, Photo album, Music, loads of stuff.

Pricewise compared to the Iphone, its bit expensive, but im not an Iphone supporter so im not gonna back them up.

thehomeofDob

Check the XDA Developer's Diamond forum, it's got loads of threads about improved ROMs, software upgrades and utilities. I'm saving for one now, the only thing that isn't going for it is the battery, but you have to sacrifice something (and if you're using it on anyone but 3 then you can turn the 3G off when you don't need it fairly easily).

mkennedy

Black_Knight wrote: »

Its class! Worth the money, im not sure, depends how much you will use it! My dad has it, its got so many neat cool features on it. He uses it for GPS, watching youtube, Photo album, Music, loads of stuff.

Pricewise compared to the Iphone, its bit expensive, but im not an Iphone supporter so im not gonna back them up.

Hi Black_Knight.
I thought about getting one as well but i heard the battery-life was abysmal.
Is it?
Also the 4gb storage limit put me off as well (The Touch Pro isn't limited to 4gb but then it's heavier/bulkier with the keyboard).

Other than that the size and weight of the Diamond look great (closer to phone size than PDA).
The UI looks lovely.
And the functionality, as you say, seems top-notch (apart from the 4gb thing- WTF?).

So what is the battery-life like anyway.

BTW, IIRC HTC are bringing out a couple of more devices by the end of the year.
If they bring out a Diamond with better battery life and storage i'll be all over it.

mkennedy

strecker wrote: »

People are so gonna laugh now, but I recently got my hands on an asus p550 (aka vodafone v1520)...its a massive ueber-brick: 3.5'' screen, good processor and ram - very fast and stable, though (as with most wm's) the battery needs daily attention ... Anyhoo, I got spb's pocket plus and mobile shell 2 on it; for fingerfriendly music I use mort player and s2p. Installed the Diamond's onscreen keyboard, and touchpal for stylus free writing... Though the opera mobile 9.5 beta is still very buggy, the phone's a total delight imho - for me it beats every touchscreen device I've ever tried. Big, solid, responsive and I rarely need a stylus.. Sure, the sound is soso, but acceptable to silence out the environment while shopping...

what I'm saying is: who knows... With all the shortcomings of wm, the one advantage is that you can really improve functionality and appearance to a point where the casual observer wouldn't recognise it as a wm phone! And it has copy and paste/use as modem/save page/sync with any computer/mass storage/change battery etc etc
still, for heavy texting I use treo and nokia e61, as a real frontfacing qwerty currently cannot be beaten - though I hope that Nokia might come up with sth for their touch ui...

OT but since you mentioned Opera Mobile...
Any way of playing Youtube videos in Opera Mobile 9.5.
Tried to play them back with the Flashvideobundle app but couldn't.
Flashvideobundle seems to only work within IE mobile.
Any ideas.

strecker

the flash video bundle won't work with om 9.5 - opera have their own flash lite 3 plugin - just like in HTC Diamond, but for the current beta they have disabled it (makes sense: they're trying to fix all the other bugs first, to make 9.5 work on as many wm devices as possible. The video thing would just distract from that, cause they'd have to plow through sh*tloads of "bugreports" re. settings, and streaming et c that really have nothing to do with the browser!)...

so, in short: afaik NO!

Gerard_Smith

Two things, one though I do have a windows partition I am a Mac user. Still that shouldn't be much of a problem as long as the Touch Diamond can be used as a removable disk drive. The second is the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack. I mean, where would you even go for a mini-USB to 3.5mm adapter?

mik_da_man

E-bay have em...

mkennedy

As previous poster says, you get mini-usb to 3.5mm adapters on ebay for less than a tenner.

Black_Knight

Doesnt the Diamond come with earphones! My touch cruise came with them! Pretty sure dads Diamond has them too!

wheresmybeaver

After much research I got a Touch Diamond recently, and so far I think its great. I wasn't interested in the iPhone due to the ridiculous restrictions placed on the device by Apple (even when jailbroken), the lack of basic features like using as a modem, Bluetooth features, etc etc and the expensive O2 contract. The Diamond also has HSDPA which is crazy fast, and goes nicely with my O2 data bundle.

For a WM phone, its tiny. Doesn't look ridiculous when held to your ear. The main thing that concerned me before buying was how it was for sending messages. As it turns out, there's a standard T9-style keyboard on there, so its easy enough to type on the big buttons. After a few days I'm writing out messages at a similar speed to my last phone that had an actual keypad.

I also use the GPS daily for work (lots and lots of driving to random places), and it works very well. Can't comment on battery life though because its plugged into the car charger all day long, so battery is never low.

I'd been reading the xda-developers forums for a few weeks to suss it out and I see that newer ROMs have better features, bug fixes and speed / smoothness improvements. But honestly, I don't have the balls just yet to risk bricking my new phone. My preinstalled ROM seems plenty fine so far, so I won't risk a flash until I've a good enough reason to.

Long story short, I highly recommend this phone. Its not quite as simple to use as the iPhone but it certainly has plenty more features and is endlessly configurable.

mkennedy

Black_Knight wrote: »

Doesnt the Diamond come with earphones! My touch cruise came with them! Pretty sure dads Diamond has them too!

Yeah but people often like to use their own 3.5mm ones- the accompanying headphones with a lot of phones are generally fairly basic.

Gerard_Smith

wheresmybeaver wrote: »

After much research I got a Touch Diamond recently, and so far I think its great. I wasn't interested in the iPhone due to the ridiculous restrictions placed on the device by Apple (even when jailbroken), the lack of basic features like using as a modem, Bluetooth features, etc etc and the expensive O2 contract. The Diamond also has HSDPA which is crazy fast, and goes nicely with my O2 data bundle.

For a WM phone, its tiny. Doesn't look ridiculous when held to your ear. The main thing that concerned me before buying was how it was for sending messages. As it turns out, there's a standard T9-style keyboard on there, so its easy enough to type on the big buttons. After a few days I'm writing out messages at a similar speed to my last phone that had an actual keypad.

I also use the GPS daily for work (lots and lots of driving to random places), and it works very well. Can't comment on battery life though because its plugged into the car charger all day long, so battery is never low.

I'd been reading the xda-developers forums for a few weeks to suss it out and I see that newer ROMs have better features, bug fixes and speed / smoothness improvements. But honestly, I don't have the balls just yet to risk bricking my new phone. My preinstalled ROM seems plenty fine so far, so I won't risk a flash until I've a good enough reason to.

Long story short, I highly recommend this phone. Its not quite as simple to use as the iPhone but it certainly has plenty more features and is endlessly configurable.

I've read that the phones screen automatically turns off whenever you make a call, is this true? This could be a problem for me as I would be using it with a pay as you go sim.

strecker

Gerard_Smith wrote: »

I've read that the phones screen automatically turns off whenever you make a call, is this true? This could be a problem for me as I would be using it with a pay as you go sim.

he? What do you mean?

the screen turns off so your ears don't start an apps while you're on a call (or even end the call!)! A lot of wm touchscreen devices do that - it's useful!
Or WHAT did YOU mean?

Gerard_Smith

I meant you need to use a keypad to enter a top up code. Not possible if the screen turns off when I dial the top up number.

So top up using a bank machine or by text. The diamond looks like a great phone. I'd buy one but I want to see what SE will be charging for the xperia whenever it finally get's released.

mkennedy

Gerard_Smith wrote: »

I meant you need to use a keypad to enter a top up code. Not possible if the screen turns off when I dial the top up number.

It is possible- just turn the display back on.
As mentioned it happens with some WM devices, and it's a pain in the ar$e tbh, especially since the option doesn't seem to be easily configurable.

Sometimes a regedit stops the display turning off in these devices.

wheresmybeaver

There is software available at xda developers forum that can change this setting for you, along with many other little windows mobile quirks like that. Writing this on a diamond by the way. the opera browser kicks arse!.

Gerard_Smith

Failing that you simply turn the screen back on by pressing the power button correct? Hmm I'm becoming quite tempted now.

strecker

Gerard_Smith wrote: »

I meant you need to use a keypad to enter a top up code. Not possible if the screen turns off when I dial the top up number.

oh, sorry. Now I get it
no problem: I've got a treo at work, a tytn and an asus... You can usually assign a wake-up button or you can disable the screen-switch off, and/or designate a time out period... Gee, these phones have note-taking features where you can write anywhere on the screen, e.g. To take down a number/address that someone gives you while on the phone...

apumalkan

Just something to note, the diamond uses a proprietary htc mini usb like the one below and not the standard one that most products use.



The port is the same size and resembles the mini usb but has a slightly different shaping on one side where as the standard mini usb is symmetrical. a htc usb to 3.5mm jack can be found here:

http://www.clove.co.uk/category.aspx?department=HTC%20Touch%20Diamond&category=CB077B5C-390D-4153-8EDD-44D1B2BEF716

Its midway down the page (one with a mic and one without)

Hope this helps

Black_Knight

I ordered 2 Mini-USB to 3.5mm adapter with microphone off http://myworld.ebay.ie/uk-hitech/

They were pretty quick at posting. Originally posted 1 HTC adapter and 1 nokia adapter instead of 2 HTC ones. Told them about it, they sent a replacement one out straight away for free. Certainly cheaper then the ones HTC are selling themselves. I use it quite often and no problems at all.

The tax man

The standard mini usb style connector fits it and works for syncing and charging at least.

Black_Knight

yup, it does

mkennedy

Black_Knight wrote: »

I ordered 2 Mini-USB to 3.5mm adapter with microphone off http://myworld.ebay.ie/uk-hitech/

They were pretty quick at posting. Originally posted 1 HTC adapter and 1 nokia adapter instead of 2 HTC ones. Told them about it, they sent a replacement one out straight away for free. Certainly cheaper then the ones HTC are selling themselves. I use it quite often and no problems at all.

Got one of those adaptors a while back. Just to let you know it worked fine for about a year but the audio connection started to become unreliable after a while.
HTC's insistence on using mini-usb for headphones is a pain in the ar$e alright.
Think that might be changing with the newer devices though.

Black_Knight

mkennedy wrote: »

Got one of those adaptors a while back. Just to let you know it worked fine for about a year but the audio connection started to become unreliable after a while.

Hence buying 2. Thinkying ahead!

A 3.5mm Adapter would be MUCH handier. Id nearly use it for music if that was the case... but its not.