True: XDA-Devs do have a lot of experts and is a great place for ROMS

False: They don't bite at XDA....... they do if you don't use the search facility - then it's flame-wars!

seriously though, if you follow the guides it's quite easy to update your rom and the good thing is if you don't like a particular ROM then you can easily swap it for another or back to your original ROM

you will see speed improvements and usually all the ROMS come with the main tweaks needed to make the phone zip

Having gone through all the SPV range of winmo devices - i'm delighted with my Diamond.

I guess it's personal choice but for me it's just what I'm looking for.


Size is great
Screen is great
Not had any major problems with battery life (it's not as bad as I feared from reading all the negative threads on this)
GPS is great
Camera is better than all my previous Winmo devices
TF3D works fine for me, it can lock-up or be slow sometimes, but overall it's still well-usable and i for one will be keeping it
Used bluetooth speaker to play music for hours yesterday without any major loss of battery

so overall, if you're used to winmo and want a smaller device, i'd recomend the diamond, and with the ROM development going on i'm sure this device will only get better.

Called at 11.30 - after i received the text - and was told that I couldn't have the offer I'd originally been quoted!!! after several re-calls I eventaully got it for £20 a month for the first 9 months then £25 a month after for the Racoon 35 (600 mins, unlimited texts/data) and it's arriving tomorrow!.... yay!

no let's see if it's got any orange bloatware on it!!

Ditto - if you don't know what you're doing, you soon get flamed on XDA-devs! - some seriously knowledgeable people on that site and I don't think i'd ever have got the most from my PDA's if it was'nt for them!

Yep - it's at other London termini stations too (I work for Titan so "i'm in the know"

just glad to see that they're doing some marketing at all really! ...... now I wonder whether they'll push it on T.V??

Just spoke with Orange CS - they still have'nt got it showing on their system!! - they knew that the shops would have it but did'nt have any idea on prices/contracts etc through them - was told to request the email facility off the orange web-site to tell me when it's available!

nice one..... what price did you pay for it?/was it free on a contract?/ let us know the deal you got please!!

Cool.... did they give you any idea on Price with a contract??

Just thought I'd share this info, i'm sure other's will have contacted Orange/other networks to see when the Diamond will be released but here's what I was told today from Orange upgrades....

"we have been testing the device for the last 2-3 weeks, although I can't give you an exact date on when the testing will be finished, I can text you as soon as it is"

Now.... i've been on Orange long enough to know that I'll probably not recieve the text from them (not the greatest at customer support eh?) but I thought it was interesting that they've been testing it for a while and it sounds like the release is imminent

Anyone else tried Orange (or other networks) and been given release dates??

I've got an SPVM5000 with the new rom update (AKU2) and it did update the clock and gave the usual message box to confirm it.

Bluemeat - yeah I'm using 4.1. It just won't sync my outlook contacts back to the device.

Did the update last night - mainly due to the fact my M5000 kept trying to connect with the internet and running up a £100 wap data bill for February. (God knows how I managed to use 38mb of wap, but Orange are looking into it!)

Anyway, I thought I'd post my findings so far:

Device does seem quicker, menu's pop up faster and I've yet to see the "loading" symbol once!

different front end when you configure the device; new windows mobile blue splash screen.

U symbol on the top bar has been replaced by a 3G symbol.

I don't know whether the device lock option for the today screen was in the previous rom (I can't remember seeing it, or using it) but it's definately there now.

New "Comm Manager". New interface thats replaced the old Phone/Bluetooth/Wifi switcher program. There seems to be a few new options on this. I have'nt played around with it yet but it comprises of: Phone/Bluetooth/Wifi as before but now also has a PDA symbol, Sound/vibrate option, activesync, and Message symbol (which is probably linked to the new push email facility (not tried that yet either!)

Thats about all I've found so far.

However here's a couple of strange things that have happened since the update:

Activesync set up quite easily (I know that's strange in itself!) but it would not allow me to sync my Outlook contacts back to the device. I had to use a contact back up program I got off the BuzDev website. This was'nt a problem for me before.

The other one is I had quite a few tsk files in my windows/documents folder before the update. All of which disappeared after the update except one. Silverado.tsk. Now I got that file originally by using Wisbar Advance 2 and WAD and It's confusing me as to how it was still on the device. Either it has stayed on the device after the update somehow or Orange have shipped this with the new rom??

Anyone shed any light on this or am I being the complete noob that I am? :oops:

Here's what I've put on the device:

TCMP - formely betaplayer - superb free video & MP3 player

Morphgear - superb free game emulator (I bought the Game Boy Advance module and it works well). You do need to start the program in portrait mode, but what I do is open the Universal fully (like a book) tap screen rotation so it's in portrait mode with the keyboard open and then start Morphgear. You can then play with the Universal open and re-map the keys so you can use the keyboard.

iLauncher is another great program which i find very useful. It allows you to launch an application from the today screen and assign icons to each shortcut. You could also try Wisbar advance 2 and Wisbar Desktop. These two programs can transform your home screen and there is a lot of skins available at the Lakeridge forum. www.lakeridgesoftware.com/forum/index.php

psShutXP is another free program which allows you to soft/hard reset the device from the today screen.

If you're into football, have a look at www.mbovin.com/teamstats. This is an excellent free program that will give you all the stats/tables/fixtures of the premiership plus other leagues like la liga and serie A.

I've just been trying out Orb as well (www.orb.com) which allows you to access you're music/videos/webcam remotely and it works well. (free)

If you become a PLUS member of modaco there's a few freebies in there such as pocket weather (excellent) Newsbreak (RSS reader) plus a few more.

Also try www.freewareppc.com for loads of free stuff that you can try

finally get yourself some themes (www.pocketpcthemes.com is not bad)

Hope this helps

Getting closer:

http://groups.google.co.uk/group/microsoft...r&start=0&num=3


http://groups.google.co.uk/group/microsoft...r&start=2&num=3

still not quite there yet.

No hot_b. My activesync has been working fine too. I went through the firewall routine and sorted that out, it's been working fine for 4 months and now nothing. It looks like its connecting but after about 30 secs up pops the "cannot find server assigned ip address".

Looks like a hard reset afterall. . . . . . damn!

I'm having exactly the same problem with my HTC Universal. Cannot connect to Activesync and getting the same error message.

I really hope someone can help with this as its starting to do my head in. I've tried changing the network card but none seem to work.

You'll find Buzz on the XDA Developers Forum (just do a google search to find it) - he's been doing lots of tweaks, hacks to the M5000 so it's worth checking out.

I can't make a video call, I know a couple of people with 3G phones but everytime I've tried to call them it says that the video call cannot be made and offers to dial them up normally.

On the one call you made, was it successful? did you have to do anything in the settings options to get video calling to work?

I'm using mobipocket too. Only for ebooks though, the news downloads come out in huge crappy letters so it's not worth using for news at the moment.

Anyone got any emulators working on their M5000, morphgear isn't working properly although there are certain games i can play fairly well on it. Anyone tried any others

The link for the beta of wisbar is:

http://www.lakeridgesoftware.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3077


Here's the link for some wisbar (and other programs) skins:

http://www.lakeridgesoftware.com/forum/vie...8a277d9beb75425


I'd still recommend having a look at www.sbsh.net at the icons available for ILauncher.

http://www.sbsh.net/forums/index.php?showtopic=6993

you can save all icons onto your sd card and run them from there and they make you're screen look fantastic.

You have to download the Beta version 2.4.1.12 from the forum. I tried the version from the main site and it did'nt work either. The above version has been running fine on my device.

There's a lot of theme's out there that say they're VGA screens but they've only been done in Portrait mode, so I've had the same problem with some theme's just not working correctly on this device.

There are two places to go to get some great themes which really show off how good the screen is:

Go to www.lakeridgesoftware.com, go to the forum's and download the latest beta of Wisbar advance 2 and also have a look at some of the skins in the forum, Expea and Expea 2 are outstanding. These skin packs also include skins for Pocket Breeze, Pocket Plus, Weather Panel, ILauncher and Resco Keyboard, as well as Wisbar Advance and Wisbar Desktop.

I'm also using ILauncher at the minute (www.sbsh.net) instead of Pocket plus to launch all my programs from the today screen, mainly because of the icon packs in Expea 2 which really show off how good the screen is. Again if you got to the forums on sbsh.net then you can download the latest beta of iLauncher, it's also worth having a look at the ILauncher resources pages and checking out the One at a Time (I think it's called that) topic, there's loads of icons for ILauncher that a guy called Jukov has done that look fantastic on this screen

Hope this helps

The back light kept switching off for me too and I did'nt want to keep touching the phone to keep the screen on (using mobipocket reader at the time).

I hadn't noticed that in the Advanced setttings in Power, the device was set to: "On Battery Power: turn off device if not used for 3 minutes"

It might be something you've checked already but it's something I'd missed on "first glance"

I always got great results using PocketDivx Encoder and Betaplayer on my M2000. This is not the case on the M5000, I've selected VGA device on the PocketDivx list but the playback is not good at all. I've had better results on my E200.

I thought I'd start a topic on what people are using to encode and watch videos on their M5000.

Or to see if there are any workarounds to get decent results on the device.

Yeah, Betaplayer and pocketdivx encoder are what I'm using on my M5000, although I was getting better results with the same software on my M2000.

I'm going to have a search about today to see if there are any better methods of ripping and watching videos on the M5000.

Will post findings