Is it Rubbish??

[Guest wonderstoat]

Hi

I've been a WM phone user for the last 5 years or so. I have no interest in the iPhone as I like all the little useful apps I've collected over the years (after all, who could live without poker timer?? :D )

I've used the original Tytn (pretty good) and like my Tytn 2 (direct from HTC), especially running Opera Mini for browsing, Informant as my PIM etc. I use it for business, a lot of email while travelling, and am pretty happy with it. I also have 3 batteries in total which I replace as needed if I'm travelling. So - all in all pretty happy with the Tytn2. The phone element can be tempermental as we all know.

ANYWAY - I was seriously considering the Diamond Pro, BUT then I saw a vid on youtube showing the screen text entry on the ordinary Diamond was pretty good, and I sort of started dreaming about getting a nice thin new phone for a change. So, I registered my interest with Orange, and then headed over the modaco for the low-down.

Is it me ... or is this phone crap? I know there's always issues with ROMS etc, but it seems there's a lot more negative comments on the message boards about this phone than normal. Touch flo doesn't seem to be responsive enough, GPS is patchy, Radio is bad, battery life is rubbish. I don't remember as much negativity for the TyTn's?

I'd like some honest feedback here from Tytn 2 users who've switched. Not really interested in fan-boy/hater opinions.

Ta

Stoatie

[Guest ljames28]

I had a Tytn previously and i was thinking the same as you, i was worried about all the negativity and the fact that i use the keyboard so much even without realising.

Firstly text entry is surprisingly good, almost as fast as a dedicated keyboard. You have lots of big buttons on the screen each with two letters on it. If you use T9 because theres only 2 letters per key it gets the words right almost all the time, i probably only have to tell it a different word once per text which only requires you to tap the word you want on the screen anyway. If you write lots of long emails then it could get frustrating as you know you can type faster on a real keyboard so thats a decision thats down to the person really.

With touchflo, its reponsive enough for me, switching between tabs could be half a second quicker but this has apparently been fixed in the latest rom which ive yet to try

GPS has been perfect for me, very accurate, i tried it in my upstairs bedroom and google maps had the marker over the bloody bedroom!

Not had problems with the phone signal, same as my Tytn

Battery life isn't great, i haven't had a chance to try it out in the field yet but what people say about it getting better the longer you use it appears to be true. I think normally when you buy phones they "condition" the Li-On batteries before it gets to you, maybe they didnt do that with the Diamond.

Coming from a Tytn that looks like it could eat any other phone I'm really liking how slim the phone is, i have the Compact IV and it just looks so pretty, like a normal person phone, so no more of that "I dont care its ugly and big as a house, it has more functions than your phone", the Diamond/Compact is pretty and functional.

[Guest wonderstoat]

Hi James

Thanks for the reassurances. That sounds a lot better than some of the other stuff I'd heard. Can I ask a couple of other questions? What's the Bluetooth implementation like? How do you like the Opera browser?

Do you think you'll get bored with the touch-flo and maybe revert back to WM start menu interface?

I had a Tytn previously and i was thinking the same as you, i was worried about all the negativity and the fact that i use the keyboard so much even without realising.

Firstly text entry is surprisingly good, almost as fast as a dedicated keyboard. You have lots of big buttons on the screen each with two letters on it. If you use T9 because theres only 2 letters per key it gets the words right almost all the time, i probably only have to tell it a different word once per text which only requires you to tap the word you want on the screen anyway. If you write lots of long emails then it could get frustrating as you know you can type faster on a real keyboard so thats a decision thats down to the person really.

With touchflo, its reponsive enough for me, switching between tabs could be half a second quicker but this has apparently been fixed in the latest rom which ive yet to try

GPS has been perfect for me, very accurate, i tried it in my upstairs bedroom and google maps had the marker over the bloody bedroom!

Not had problems with the phone signal, same as my Tytn

Battery life isn't great, i haven't had a chance to try it out in the field yet but what people say about it getting better the longer you use it appears to be true. I think normally when you buy phones they "condition" the Li-On batteries before it gets to you, maybe they didnt do that with the Diamond.

Coming from a Tytn that looks like it could eat any other phone I'm really liking how slim the phone is, i have the Compact IV and it just looks so pretty, like a normal person phone, so no more of that "I dont care its ugly and big as a house, it has more functions than your phone", the Diamond/Compact is pretty and functional.

[Guest ljames28]

I haven't used bluetooth much, I've used it to pair my phone to the computer and then run SideShow gadgets on the phone and other than a prettier Com manager for turning bluetooth on it's the same as any other WM6 phone. I've heard people saying it works better with their cars like getting the car to display caller id and stuff so you may want to read about that on XDA-Devs.

The opera browser im not sure about yet, it's deffinitely better than IE but it's still in beta and has some issues, for some reason scrolling favourites is mega slow and i often press the wrong one. Also I sometimes like to view pages in their mobile mode (formatted for a small screen) and sometimes i want the full zooming experience but you have to go fairly deep in menus to change the option. Liek i say it's in beta and is constantly being worked on though.

I'll never get bored of touchflo :D I do use the standard WM thing for opening programs though as it shows more on the screen at once

[Guest Neil5459]

I can add my approval of the Diamond; if you are looking for a seriously compact package with all the usual winmo features and more.

The only small drawback is the lack of memory expansion so you need to be sure 4gb is enough. The newer ROMs are fast and responsive; GPS response is excellent and the phone radio reception the best I have yet seen on an HTC device.

Battery ife is an issue owing to the smaller battery ; power users may need a spare or a small charger .

Far from being cr@p this may well be HTCs best yet!

[Guest olly_k]

I posted a reply to another thread before but I will post it here to see what feedback there is - I am really worried about all the people complaining of a hot battery - Li-ion batteries don't like getting warm they start to degrade rapidly when hot so my question is if the batteries only last a day or so now what can we expect in six months? Hmm.

I also watched the videos from the coolsmartphone guy and had some real issues as a result - he would demonstrate a feature, and you could see things weren't happening then all of a suddon the phone would flick over to something quite unrelated, although I understand he was maybe getting used to interface, but this mistake would then become the subject matter!!! Those vids left me feeling rather neutral overall.

I do like the look of this thing but I am not due for an upgrade until November, so I think this might be a blessing for me.

[Guest ~Rob]

I am really worried about all the people complaining of a hot battery - Li-ion batteries don't like getting warm they start to degrade rapidly when hot so my question is if the batteries only last a day or so now what can we expect in six months? Hmm.

It's not the battery getting hot, it's the GPS/wifi/whatever chips below and is very localised. I doubt the battery gets much warmer. It might be worth experamenting with batti to check the temp increase during GPS usage

[Guest olly_k]

It's not the battery getting hot, it's the GPS/wifi/whatever chips below and is very localised. I doubt the battery gets much warmer. It might be worth experamenting with batti to check the temp increase during GPS usage

If the battery remains cool then fine but if the battery is being heated externally or internally then either situation is not good.

[Guest ljames28]

It does get rather hot at the bottom, not burning hot but like bottom of laptop a bit too hot for comfort. It is right below the battery though, not on it. Maybe that would be something to check

With regards to the coolsmartphone reviews remember that was with a test device using an old rom and the whole way through he says he keeps messing up because hes using his wrong hand and holding the camera with his proper hand.

[Guest maclondon]

well - if you like win mobile you will probbaly like it

you can lose the annoying slow, terrible touch flow 3d - and it will behave much like your tytn

of course going from full qwerty to t9 is a bummer

i found the full qwerty not too bad for keyboard entry.

ive had 3 windows mobiles before (2 smartphone (c500,s710)- 1 proper win mobile (XDA exec))

i liked them all- but generally found the interface on the smartphone edition superior - go figure!!

the diamond is doing alot in a small package. and for me it fails.

i flogged mine on ebay at a £100 loss - but better lose 100quid than 200 or more if i hung onto it for

a few months.

but you mileage may vary.

[Guest SSR]

I moved from a TyTN, as I wanted something smaller and with more features, particularly integrated GPS. I've had my Diamond 3 days so far and I'm loving it. If a small phone with a relatively small battery isn't your thing, then the Diamond isn't going to be your thing either. TouchFLO is also a bit frustrating and slow at times, but usable, and not much different to the speed of the TyTN - I've not taken the risk of upgrading the ROM yet to see if that has any effect.

I would have gone for the iPhone, but I needed something with support for a few apps I use.

[Guest Kushmir]

It does depend what you want from a phone whether or not the Diamond is ok for you.

The Diamond is my fourth HTC phone, the most recent being the TyTN II. I have had the Diamond for 16 days, and I am now on my fourth replacement phone due to problems (battery life and inaudable speaker) with the others.

I was drawn to this phone because it was lightweight, small and looked good and had all the features I wanted. I keep the phone in my pocket and it is nice to have a ligther, smaller phone. The case that comes with the phone seems neat, but taking out the phone when you get an incoming call results in the call either being accepted or rejected before you have got it out.

It may be that I have had a series of bad phones or batteries, but the battery life has been unacceptable - around 7 hours with just a few minutes of phone calls and very short use of internet or GPS. The battery is 50% smaller than the TyTN, but the battery life is much less than 50% less, the Diamond is also meant to have low power chipset.

Despite having a faster processor it is slower in a number of ways than the TyTN; it is slower in processing, and also slower to navigate around; functions that were automatic (e.g. writing contact names in SMS) now require a tap, functions that required one tap now require two or more. This would be fine if it was not slow, at times frustratingly so. Opening a new Word Mobile document takes about 9 secs! The slow response causes problems; I do not know if it is being slow to respond or is not responding at all, and sometimes tap again, only to find seconds later that it is responding slowly and then moved on to something else in response to a second tap.

I do not miss the keyboard, as I've always found the stylus quicker and easier, and prefer it to the touch entry on the Diamond. Though for some reason word completion does not work on the keyboard, or in abc mode, but does in T9.

The device does get hot, at times when you might expect it, e.g. GPS on, but also at other times when in standby and in good signal areas. It seems quite random. No other HTC phone that I have owned has got hot like this. Overheating of Lithium batteries is a concern as they are liable to explode, but the hot area is behind the navigation control, below the battery, so the battery is not getting that hot. However all the energy used to create heat has to come from the battery and rapidly depletes it.

The speakerphone is poor quality, when turned up loud enough to be audible it is too distored to use. With the TyTN II I used it a lot for listening to voicemail, but don't with the Diamond. Sound quality is good with the supplied earphones.

I do not like the TouchFlo, I find it difficult to control the speed, and too easy to select an option rather than scrolling when trying to scroll gradually. I found this particularly frustrating when trying to add locations on the weather app. When scrolling there is nothing to let you know whether you have more to scroll or you have reached the bottom of a page.

The Touch keyboards occupy too much of the screen, sometimes blocking out the text that you are inputing. Because of this and the fact that I am quicker and more accurate with the stylus I do not use the touch keyboards.

Unless you remove the TouchFlo today screen and revert to the old style WM Today screen there is no ability to customise the Today screen.

I am surprised to read that the radio is good. I have only tried it in two places and it was so poor (hiss and crackle) that I have not tried again, but will now give it another go.

I have only used bluetooth to connect to my handsfree headset, and it has been good.

The GPS works well, and with Quick GPS it is very quick to acquire satellites.

I like the Opera browser, the more that I use it the more I like it. It is a lot better to use than IE. I like the way it zooms with the navigation control. It is more like a browser on a PC than IE.

[Guest ljames28]

Kushmir, hiss and crackle on phone calls? Are you serious! This isn't an analogue phone, it's digital, you can't get hiss and crackle! You either get audio or you dont, if you actually get hissing and crackling then you're speaker must be broken or you're exaggerating

[Guest SSR]

I believe that's referring to the FM radio, not phone calls. I've not tried it, but these types of portable radios are very partiuclar and never brilliant.

[Guest _dg]

On the heat issue, I've measured the lower part of phone at the back when GPS and GPRS/3g was on and it was 44 degree C. The top rear was 32 degrees and the front around the buttons was 40 degrees. At rest, the phone was between 26 and 30 degrees

The frequency of charge would indicate a short battery life to go with the short charge life. :D

The other issues are well documented, but taking everything into account, its a very nice small phone that has few if any current peers.

IMO, I would only go for another phone if one or more of the bad aspects were important to you. If you can live with or get over the negatives, then there is no beating this phone.

I just hope this heating up is not some inherent design flaw which will eventually affect the phones life

[Guest Kushmir]

Kushmir, hiss and crackle on phone calls? Are you serious! This isn't an analogue phone, it's digital, you can't get hiss and crackle! You either get audio or you dont, if you actually get hissing and crackling then you're speaker must be broken or you're exaggerating

As SSR says I am referring to the FM radio, sorry if this was not clear. I misread an earlier post which was referring to 'phone radio' and was responding to that about the FM radio, which caused confusion.

My speaker is not broken and I am not exaggerating.

Edited July 27, 2008 by Kushmir

[Guest Neil5459]

It would seem that the device was released to the publioc before full performance was realisable :D Typical these days of 'let the consumer bug-fix'

A lot of the issues raised above are addressed in the newer ROMs; the downside of this is that the operators are unlikely to release the newer ROMs to their users for some time. However, those purchasing in the 2nd phase of release will probably get later ROMs. If you don't mind flashing a new 'unofficial' ROM, updating is easy; most of these are full versions ripped from later samples, though some are modified. Orange currently release the 'stock' HTC ROM, so updates will not be that apparent if the device has to be returned for any reason.

The new 1.93 version of the OS addresses a number of issues- the whole T3D performance has been enhanced (at the expense of some of the animations when changing screens); the Weather settings now has the ABC sidebar to quickly select Country and Town, and the heat generated by WiFi seems significantly less (maybe a change in the power characteristics- previously I needed to keep the WLAN Power slider fully Left, in Best Performance postion; I can now keep it fully Right in Best Battery, and it maintains a connection to my router)

[Guest chrisms_cotland]

It would seem that the device was released to the publioc before full performance was realisable :D Typical these days of 'let the consumer bug-fix'

A lot of the issues raised above are addressed in the newer ROMs; the downside of this is that the operators are unlikely to release the newer ROMs to their users for some time. However, those purchasing in the 2nd phase of release will probably get later ROMs. If you don't mind flashing a new 'unofficial' ROM, updating is easy; most of these are full versions ripped from later samples, though some are modified. Orange currently release the 'stock' HTC ROM, so updates will not be that apparent if the device has to be returned for any reason.

The new 1.93 version of the OS addresses a number of issues- the whole T3D performance has been enhanced (at the expense of some of the animations when changing screens); the Weather settings now has the ABC sidebar to quickly select Country and Town, and the heat generated by WiFi seems significantly less (maybe a change in the power characteristics- previously I needed to keep the WLAN Power slider fully Left, in Best Performance postion; I can now keep it fully Right in Best Battery, and it maintains a connection to my router)

I'm a bit concerned that the Touch Pro might have a lot of the same faults as the Diamond.

Fair enough the battery is more powerful but Touch Flo could be just as bad on the Touch Pro as the Diamond.

[Guest spacemonkey]

There has been a lot of complaints about this phone, but I love mine. I think another factor is that this phone is just sooo damn sexy. It means rather than just being used by us mobile phone geeks, it's also being bought by lots of people who are less used to high powered devices and low battery lives.

I've been on windows mobile for too many years now, and the 2+ days I get from my diamond is pretty much exactly what I expect (I don't use push email, I believe it'll reduce your battery life)

The phone is fast in all apps, touch flow could be a bit more responsive, but with the latest ROMS (eg TLR3) it's a lot more responsive than it used to be.

I would say I'm totally happy with it, previously I was on a VOX which was a brilliant little phone, didn't want to go back to full sized "pocket pc" format devices, however the diamond is small enough, and I've adapted pretty fast to not having a hardware keyboard. It is MUCH better than my last attempt at 3g which was the Vario II which was a slow, draggy, annoying phone.

[Guest eggs]

I love my Diamond too! :D

I have been using UIQ for the last couple of years and Diamond (Touch Flo) is way faster than any UIQ phone I have used.

[Guest wonderstoat]

OK ... a variety of opinions here. If I can try to summarise what I think people are saying, the first release (surprise, surprise) is woefully inadequate, but that the newer ROMS are an improvement. Of course that's no good for your average high street consumer, but for geeks like us who come to these boards, flashing the ROM should get us a much more useable phone?

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.)

[Guest jimbouk]

a) Its the smallest, lightest WM6.1 touch screen device with a VGA screen you can get.

:D It does pretty much everything you might need - voice/email/camera/web/gps plus thousands of apps.

c) If you need to write long emails then take your laptop with you

d) The battery life does get better as you use the device but if you want a long battery life, then buy a nokia 6310.

Touchflo might be "difficult" to master for some - but I like it.

[Guest redblackred]

I love mine. I installed TLR 3 and its very quick now. (Installation was easy when I figured it out)

TouchFlo does get slow but rarely now, my battery life is pretty good too, lasts a day and a half with heavy use. I find the phone a million times bettter than my old N95 classic too.

Edited July 28, 2008 by redblackred

[Guest Skilty]

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.

[Guest jimbouk]

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.