203 replies to this topic

[PaulOBrien]

In the flickr viewer in the first post... or here.

P

[weeerob]

Is the Raphael being announced tomorrow? That's the one I'm really looking forward to.

[finisterre]

Paul (MVP), on May 6 2008, 14:58, said:

In the flickr viewer in the first post... or here.

P

Aaah. That big white box is supposed to be a Flickr viewer. I don't see it in IE7 but I do in Firefox.

[zinger5]

i'm not seeing anything about MicroSD expansion for additional storage on the specs. Has this just been missed or have they decided to do away with it?

[rhedgehog]

No SD card slot that I am aware of.

4GB storage internal, so i think they decided to do away with it.
Raphael is to have a microSDHC slot i believe.

[PaulOBrien]

zinger5, on May 6 2008, 15:01, said:

i'm not seeing anything about MicroSD expansion for additional storage on the specs. Has this just been missed or have they decided to do away with it?

No microSD slot on the diamond that we could see, our video of the device will be online soon.

P

[PaulOBrien]

No...

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weeerob, on May 6 2008, 15:00, said:

Is the Raphael being announced tomorrow? That's the one I'm really looking forward to.

[J273]

Does it have the same sort of screen as the iphone or is it like the touch?

[PaulOBrien]

The normal type so far as I can work out?

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[zinger5]

well i guess no MicroSD isn't terrible - it does make it something to go wrong that can't be easily swapped out with a cheap replacement though.

[Syphon Filter]

How readable is the screen? VGA on a 2.8" screen sounds great...but in reality, how usable is it? What does the smallest text size look like on it?

[PaulOBrien]

It looks sweet.

P

[nuttyphilt]

zinger5, on May 6 2008, 13:42, said:

hrm... that price didn't last long at Devicewire.

Gone up to £394.99 now

and now it's £463.99.

That's too expensive I think.

[Syphon Filter]

nuttyphilt, on May 6 2008, 16:03, said:

and now it's £463.99.

That's too expensive I think.

Unsuprising. I reckon that's the sort of price it will drop for offline.

If this is anything to go by the Titanium and the Raphael are going to be mind blowing (in terms of quality/use I mean, not price).

If I remember the Kaiser was about the same price when that launched.

Edited by Syphon Filter, 06 May 2008 - 03:17 PM.

[sxywill2005]

Not impressed...

You can easily grab an 8 GB iPhone unlocked from eBay for £270.

I seriously hope HTC hasn't forgot a MicroSDHC slot as 4 GB is rather paltry compared to Nokia's 8GB N95 and Apple's 8GB and 16GB iPhone's - Both can be picked up much cheaper than HTC devices.

What are the video drivers like  

[PaulOBrien]

Some great little tidbits of info from my recently finished session...

- When the stylus is removed in a call, it starts a note for that person. Removing the stylus turns on the device. There is a magnetic latch for stylus, no more losing the stylus by it falling out!
- When the phone is ringing, you can turn it over to mute the call
- There is a marble game with an accelerometer included, also tied to vibration motor
- It was designed for haptic feedback, but the user experience wasn't satisfactory
- The screen is NOT capacitive due to acceptable user experience for handwriting recognition essential in asian markets
- There is tempered glass on the front of the Touch Diamond, a first for a HTC device. Touch surface -> tempered glass -> LCD
- It doesn't auto rotate all apps, just Album, Browser etc.
- The GPU (graphics accelerator) IS in use
- There is NO microSD slot, adding it would have added 2mm to the chassis
- There is a built in mass storage mode. When you use it to add content from your PC, the music and photo apps automagically update
- The Browser uses the Opera rendering engine, but completely HTC engineered UI

[tamanaco]

Boinng, on May 6 2008, 08:24, said:

I think it's safe to say it's not meant to - that would be the Raphael, will obviously will appear at some point, just not today.

The "Diamond" is just the poster boy for this new Touch line, the most cuddly and consumer-facing arm of their WinMo line.  The Raphael (or Tytn III if they call it that) will be all hard-nosed business, taking the best from the Diamond and putting it in a more feature-heavy suit.

I agree with your assessment, but given the hype that preceded this HTC event... I'm a bit disappointed. The Diamond has nothing that I'd call radical in design or functionality. The user interface (Touch Flo 3D) looks much improved and the hardware has been somewhat enhanced. It is a good thing that this interface "replaces" the WM6.x homescreen.  The Achilles heel of these new breed of HTC devices based on the current incarnation of WM6.x is the Web Browser. Being able to experience web pages as they were intended is PIE biggest drawback. They retrofitted Opera into this "Diamond" in order to go to market as soon as possible. HTC realized that they needed to provide a better browsing experience for users, but  it still falls way short  as compared to the iPhone. What I gather from the announcement... is that MS was not ready with their new mobile browser for this release... so Diamond owners will have to wait for a PIE upgrade in the future. MS does not have a reputation of playing nice with competing browsers on their platforms. It won't be long before they try to break Opera if it gets too popular. The browser for MS is an  strategic tool as it is the "primary" window to online content. As for the other hardware enhancements...  I still think the Xperia X1 has the edge as I compare it to the Diamond.

As I read in recent post, it looks like this thing has no microSD... Does it have some other way of expanding the storage?... For a device that is supposed to provide an improved Multimedia experience... lack of local storage is not what I will call an improvement.

I guess I'll have to wait and see what the Raphael has to offer... if it indeed exists

Edited by tamanaco, 06 May 2008 - 03:39 PM.

[MAK11]

Paul (MVP), on May 6 2008, 16:17, said:

Some great little tidbits of info from my recently finished session...

- When the stylus is removed in a call, it starts a note for that person. Removing the stylus turns on the device. There is a magnetic latch for stylus, no more losing the stylus by it falling out!
- When the phone is ringing, you can turn it over to mute the call
- There is a marble game with an accelerometer included, also tied to vibration motor
- It was designed for haptic feedback, but the user experience wasn't satisfactory
- The screen is NOT capacitive due to acceptable user experience for handwriting recognition essential in asian markets
- There is tempered glass on the front of the Touch Diamond, a first for a HTC device. Touch surface -> tempered glass -> LCD
- It doesn't auto rotate all apps, just Album, Browser etc.
- The GPU (graphics accelerator) IS in use
- There is NO microSD slot, adding it would have added 2mm to the chassis
- There is a built in mass storage mode. When you use it to add content from your PC, the music and photo apps automagically update
- The Browser uses the Opera rendering engine, but completely HTC engineered UI

What about video capture? I'm guessing that it's like the Xepria ? 640x480?

[shootydogthing]

I think the Raphael exists, perhaps just as a prototype, but it exists.

I'm just waiting for it. I've still got approx 14 months in my contract, so I'll be going with the NEXT generation after this.

They're not going to ditch the form factor of the Raphael though.

Oh, did anyone notice? 192MB RAM!!!


I'm guessing autorotate is in HTC apps only?

Hmm.

Still waiting for the Rapahel

Edited by shootydogthing, 06 May 2008 - 03:35 PM.

[PaulOBrien]

Depends what 'L' is in the camera UI!

(will make sense when u see the video)

P