I’ve been chatting to Angus today by IM- he’s been helping me with an Excel problem that someone contacted me about and the subject got around to phones. Well he started to rave on about his latest phone that he’s bought – the HTC Diamond Touch and I must say I’m impressed. But I’ll let him tell you in his own words…
I have had an ongoing rant for the last year or so about crummy hardware that just doesn’t work and seems to fight against the software. This has been particularly true in some of the mobile devices I have been using. To protect the innocent (erm) I shall say no more. However, I do have something I really want to RAVE about. I have recently bought the new HTC Diamond Touch – this is the first time in about 3 years that I have a smart phone as opposed to a PDA. I thought that losing the keyboard would be painful, but the Diamond’s design and 3D Flow interface MORE than makes up for it. It is a fantastic device; fast and sleek. It has a metal case and a very high resolution screen which not only makes it tough but also easy to see. It is also very small, something that might cause a problem at home since my partner has her eye on it!
I have a couple of gripes, the first being it uses Opera as a web browser and I had yet to get that to work. It just will not connect to the internet. Also the screen fades way to quickly when on the telephone, so you continually have to wake it using the on / off button to get at the keyboard to enter PIN numbers or extensions. Quite frustrating. On a positive note the onscreen keyboard resizes on touch which makes it easy to use and I like the fact that if you hold a key down you get the shift function without having to hit two keys. Very good for one-handed texting or emailing. The killer feature is of course the touch flow which allows you to scroll easily, and quickly and gives seamless transitions between photos – which have great detail and resolution from the good quality camera built in. Also the there is a “virtual” scroll wheel – run your finger in a circle around the centre button – which resizes text or zooms a photo. GREAT!. That means if I don’t have my glasses on I can easily read the text, oh and speaking of reading. I use my phone as my alarm clock but in the morning I have a hard time to focus on the screen – showing my age! – but that is no longer a problem with the HTC Diamond Touch since there is a very large analogue clock on the home page.. like the old 70’s style flip clock which is easy to read
Well done HTC a delightful device.. if I get round to it, or feel brave I might try a registry hack to do something about the screen fade on call, and once I get the internet browsing sorted I shall be happy… next project is to get Co-Pilot installed..
I’m surprised that Jason hasn’t got one yet – he’s usually the first to talk about cool stuff like the Diamond cradle and other cool things like that.
So what do you think? Too much of a Gadget – or a must have device? And should Microsoft be buying them for all of us in the UK then? Well I can ask…
