HTC Touch Diamond: Update
Posted on 29 June 2008, at 6:15 am, by Mitchell Oke
Just thought I’d post an update on my experience with the Diamond after using it as my main phone for the last few days. My first impressions report wasn’t particularly positive, and while some things have been slightly better with some tweaks, it still just doesn’t perform as you’d expect it would.
First off I’d like to tip my hat to the guys over at XDA-developers. Somehow, they manage to take devices and software developed by massive corporations with millions and millions of dollars, and make them better in their basements. Every HTC device I have owned and used has been adorned with some kind of wiz-bang modifications that improved it, and the Diamond has been no different. Several registry mods have been suggested to improve performance of TouchFlo 3D (increasing cache sizes and such), and while they certainly did pickup the speed a little bit, it is still not fast. There are still stutters and pauses, which while not as irritating as before, still detract from the experience.
The weather widget is too cool though, especially when there is BAD weather. You’ll be looking forward to a stormy, rainy day just to see the lightning bolts strike and the windscreen wiper clean your screen of simulated rain.
It’s just a shame it doesn’t clean the screen of fingerprints, because you will be constantly wiping it on something. I’d recommend wearing jeans all the time, it makes cleaning the screen easier. I have applied the included screen protector (which is actually quite a good one) to keep the scratches away, and it doesn’t seem to have unduly affected the clarity of the screen.
I will say that the 65k colour palette on the VGA display is disappointing. Photos are often rife of colour banding, and even on the TouchFlo 3D interface there are hints of it. Beyond the colour issues, the display is very good, easy to see inside and out, and almost exactly the same from even extreme angles. If only it was a 262k display…
Signal strength is still pathetic, and it takes far too long to regain a signal when it’s lost. In a better signal area I’m sure it would be fine, but I can’t get past the fact that my Nokia doesn’t have such a problem. Battery life is similarly poor, struggling to last a single day on a charge. In fact I don’t trust it to last a whole day. Last night I was going out and made sure to charge the phone, otherwise it would have undoubtedly have died early on in the evening. The 900mAh battery just isn’t up to the job of powering a bright VGA display and HSDPA radio.
So up to this point I remain disappointed. Sorry HTC 
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June 29th, 2008 at 7:33 am
I’ll be curious whether all the other manufacturers who push out “me too” touch screen phones have similar issues.
It’s easy to get something that photographs “cool” — but the real world experience is often quite different.
I for one am curious whether any of these devices (Samsung Instinct, HTC Touch Diamond) have legs beyond the early adopter purchases.
June 29th, 2008 at 7:58 am
Well I think the only other device that I have tested before that was kinda sorta iPhoneish was the HTC Touch Cruise, and it was also poor in it’s implementation of touch features. It used the old TouchFLO interface which was rubbish, and the touchscreen wasn’t anywhere near as sensitive.
The fixed both of these problems on the Diamond, but introduced new ones like poor performance and battery life, which is annoying because I really wanted to like the Diamond.
February 9th, 2009 at 3:25 pm
Completely agree with all you've said. Have you ever noticed how the menu button when in the send SMS screen just stops working. You either have to turn the screen on and off via the button at the top of the device, or you (interestingly enough) have to bring up the message icons (by clicking on the icons near the battery life symbol etc.) and then closing again.
And don't get me started on the battery life – even when I don't use the thing! I haven't had to carry a charger around with me since the 80s!