Guest chrisms_cotland Posted July 28, 2008 Report Share Posted July 28, 2008 Don't forget that people who complain about the battery life do so within two days of getting their device... 1) They are spending all day playing with it 2) Their friends keep asking to see it 3) Battery life gets better after a couple of overnight charges. If I don't like Touch Flo I can always go back to just plain WM as I didn't find it that bad to be honest, its no iPhone but it works, just. I'm in two minds whether to order a Compact IV, or wait for the Vario IV. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Neil5459 Posted July 28, 2008 Report Share Posted July 28, 2008 How bad is the battery - is it easy to swap them out with spares? Are there many spares on the market? (Not expandable ones, as I don't see the point buying a slim phone and then bulking it up again.) I presume you can buy a spare battery, but will need to swap them in the device as I don't think there's a cradle yet with aspare battery slot. The option I use is to carry this Maplin Portable Power Pack which has adapters for all popular phone/PDA devices. It is really small- marginally smaller than the Diamond and half the depth, carries a 2000mAH charge and can be recharged via mains or USB. It charges my Diamond from 30% to 100% in about 1 hour, so feasible to just charge it over the lunch break :D Probably cheaper than a new battery as well! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ljames28 Posted July 28, 2008 Report Share Posted July 28, 2008 (edited) You can already by 3rd party docks on ebay that come with a slot for a second battery AND a second battery for about 15 - 20 quid. Aka you get the dock, the battery charger, and the spare battery. You can swap the batteries with the phone still on if you plug it into a miniusb cable to keep it alive - like open heart surgery... Neil that portable power packs a good idea, i was thinking i could get something like that, put it in my back with my phone, and have the earphones and remote coming out of the backpack into my ears then it'll last for ages. EDIT: Bit of a problem with my idea, theres only one port on the diamond, so i can either have headphones OR charging, maybe a second battery would be better Edited July 28, 2008 by ljames28 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Skunkchild Posted July 28, 2008 Report Share Posted July 28, 2008 I'm really happy with mine. Upgraded with O from a Vox so as my first ppc I'm really impressed. Really nice and small, easily tweaked, excellent gps, good contract, superb VGA screen, bonus FM radio. No complaints, only suggestions to make it even better - as with every WinMo device I've had, I don't expect it to work best for me straight out of the box but this was the closest yet ! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest captainsensible Posted July 28, 2008 Report Share Posted July 28, 2008 You can already by 3rd party docks on ebay that come with a slot for a second battery AND a second battery for about 15 - 20 quid. Aka you get the dock, the battery charger, and the spare battery. Be careful with these as I got one and although it does charge the spare battery, when I tried the spare in the phone, it worked, but would not show its charge level (in the power settings screen it was showing as 'unknown'). Seller (gpsforless) sent a replacement but that did exactly the same thing, so they refunded me the battery portion of the sale (kudos to them for doing so!). Desktop charger itself works fine, so will use it for an official spare battery or the official extended one when that comes out. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Kushmir Posted July 28, 2008 Report Share Posted July 28, 2008 (edited) Don't forget that people who complain about the battery life do so within two days of getting their device... 1) They are spending all day playing with it 2) Their friends keep asking to see it 3) Battery life gets better after a couple of overnight charges. That may be true in some cases, but in my case I started using it less and less to try to find out what was draining it and to make it last. My last battery had had about ten overnight charges, there was no noticeable change in battery life. Too many professional reviewers have reported poor battery life for it to be accounted for by the above alone. The first phone that I had the Carphone Warehouse would not accept that there really was a problem, until they saw how much the battery meter went down in half an hour, with no use. At which point they replaced the battery. Yesterday I bought one of the Maplin Portable Power Packs, which whilst it does not sort out the problem does provide a work around. It is small and light enough to carry around. Maplin also sell a charger that works from a single AA battery. Edited July 28, 2008 by Kushmir Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest steve_smith Posted July 28, 2008 Report Share Posted July 28, 2008 Had mine over a week now, and generally quite pleased with it. Battery life is OK (made sure I turned off 3G and Bluetooth when I'm not using them). Camera is surprisingly good - certainly better than any HTC device I've used before - although when I download pictures from the phone to my laptop, I think my wife's Sony phone has the edge - even though it's 2MP, not 3. I do often wonder whether we get used to the quirks of Windows Mobile and put up with some severe usability issues just because we expect them to be there, and learn how to ignore them. One example of a flaw that should been spotted and eliminated during testing is the way the onscreen keyboard blocks out what you are typing in Opera. This is especially noticable when you use search box on the home page (the one that appears when you start Opera). When it first appears, it sits above the keyboard. But as soon as you press a key, the display refreshes and you can't see what you are typing! Or is it only my phone thats doing this? Pocket IE works fine, repositioning the content so that the box you are typing in is always visible. But then Opera renders "proper" pages better. I think its early days, and I hope these problems will be fixed with future ROM updates. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ljames28 Posted July 28, 2008 Report Share Posted July 28, 2008 That may be true in some cases, but in my case I started using it less and less to try to find out what was draining it and to make it last. My last battery had had about ten overnight charges, there was no noticeable change in battery life. Too many professional reviewers have reported poor battery life for it to be accounted for by the above alone. The first phone that I had the Carphone Warehouse would not accept that there really was a problem, until they saw how much the battery meter went down in half an hour, with no use. At which point they replaced the battery. Yesterday I bought one of the Maplin Portable Power Packs, which whilst it does not sort out the problem does provide a work around. It is small and light enough to carry around. Maplin also sell a charger that works from a single AA battery. Didnt you sell it after you had it two days? How can you have had 10 overnight charges? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ljames28 Posted July 28, 2008 Report Share Posted July 28, 2008 I do often wonder whether we get used to the quirks of Windows Mobile and put up with some severe usability issues just because we expect them to be there, and learn how to ignore them. One example of a flaw that should been spotted and eliminated during testing is the way the onscreen keyboard blocks out what you are typing in Opera. This is especially noticable when you use search box on the home page (the one that appears when you start Opera). When it first appears, it sits above the keyboard. But as soon as you press a key, the display refreshes and you can't see what you are typing! Or is it only my phone thats doing this? Pocket IE works fine, repositioning the content so that the box you are typing in is always visible. But then Opera renders "proper" pages better. I think its early days, and I hope these problems will be fixed with future ROM updates. Opera isn't made by HTC or WinMo thats made by Opera, the version on the diamond is a Beta, theres still lots of known issues with it, a fair amount centering around the keyboard. These will be fixed by Opera eventually and shouldnt necessarily require a rom update Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest SSR Posted July 28, 2008 Report Share Posted July 28, 2008 Seeing as Pocket IE is unusable, for me at least, it's light years ahead, even with the issues! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest twizzle Posted July 28, 2008 Report Share Posted July 28, 2008 Opera isn't made by HTC or WinMo thats made by Opera, the version on the diamond is a Beta, theres still lots of known issues with it, a fair amount centering around the keyboard. These will be fixed by Opera eventually and shouldnt necessarily require a rom update Its not just Opera that does this. I've used IE and seen teh keyboard obscure a search text box, so i couldnt see what i was typing in. There needs to be a way to make sure that when you select a text box as an entry, the keyboard wont obscure the box, maybe just moves it up screen a little. I've also had a bit of lag from when i click a text box, to when it actually allows me to enter text in it. Again this happens on both Opera and IE and i think its just the Sensitivity of teh Diamond. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest _dg Posted July 28, 2008 Report Share Posted July 28, 2008 Here's an interesting twist to the battery issue For the past week since having it, I've probably done 1 charge from empty to full and the rest have been incremental top ups. Yesterday, I let it run down to 5% charge, and then charged it until the light stopped flashing. So from about 1AM, with two morning alarms, about 8 minutes of calls, a few switches on to check the time, until now ( 18 hours) the battery is still showing 100%. Wifi, and bluetooth have been off, but 3g has been on - not sure if it made and data connections though - I don't think so. Last week with a similar use, it dropped by 40% during the day Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Kaaeed Posted July 28, 2008 Report Share Posted July 28, 2008 Hi Guys Thanks for the posting against this topic they have been very informative as I am considering purchasing one myself. I was just wondering has anyone "upgraded" from the HTC Touch enhanced to a Diamond? I would be very interested in hearing their views as well. Thanks Kaaeed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Kushmir Posted July 28, 2008 Report Share Posted July 28, 2008 (edited) Didnt you sell it after you had it two days? How can you have had 10 overnight charges? No, I did not sell it, I'm not sure where you got that from. I took it back to the shop after one week and was given a fresh battery, when that made no difference I returned to the shop and was given a new phone with my old battery, which was then used for another week. That is how I had 10 overnight charges. Edited July 28, 2008 by Kushmir Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ljames28 Posted July 28, 2008 Report Share Posted July 28, 2008 Oops must have been someone else earlier in the thread Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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