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.

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I’ve been looking forward to the arrival of the Touch Diamond for quite some time. Windows Mobile used to be my mobile platform of choice, but since using the Nokia N95 and N95 8GB, I have been swayed over to the Series 60 OS. The N95 8GB has been my main phone for about 6mths now, and it’s been great. It was faster, more stable, had much better signal and camera than any Windows Mobile device I had used. My hope with the Diamond was that Windows Mobile had caught up to provide the easy and speedy experience that other phones provide these days.

Straight out of the box the Touch Diamond feels special. It’s not only small for a Windows Mobile device, it is small full stop! It is absolutely tiny, yet still packs in HSDPA, WiFi, BT, GPS and FM radios, underneath a VGA display! It is a fanastic achievement, and shows that a Windows Mobile device can be good looking, thin and capable at the same time.

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I’ve been using the final release version of Firefox 3.0 since it was released a few days ago, and I’ve been very impressed. It is considerably faster than Firefox 2.0, both when first started and after several days of having hundreds of tabs opened and closed (without restart, and often 20 or more simultaneously).

This morning when I fired up my Eee, I got online using my USB HSDPA modem and downloaded the new version. Since my Eee has the tiny 7″ 800×480 display, web browsing isn’t the most comfortable experience, since 1024px wide seems to be the norm in website formatting these days. In Firefox 2.0 zooming was next to useless, and didn’t provide any benefit. I’d resorted to using AsTray to force the display res up to 1000×600, which to be honest doesn’t look good at all. Continue Reading

Over 6 months ago I reviewed Nokia’s flagship phone, the N95 8GB, which I thought was fantastic. It was essentially a refresh of the N95 (which I wasn’t enamoured with), fixing the built quality, battery life, and a few other niggly little things that turned me off. Since then the N95 8GB has been my main phone. I was surprised to find myself switching back to it after less than a month of owning the BlackJack II, that’s how much I liked it.

Over the last week I’ve been using the N82, which is basically an N95 inside a candy-bars body. It has a few other hardware tweaks, but is otherwise the same feature-set, which to be honest is a very good thing. The N95 has almost every radio available (HSDPA, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS and FM) and an excellent camera, all features shared with the N82.

But it was never the feature-set that bothered me about the N95, it was the case that they were packed into, and I find myself having some concerns with this new model…

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I wasn’t planning to write about my experience with the Eee this soon but I’m so excited about this thing I just couldn’t wait.

Yesterday morning I headed out the door with just the Eee in my bag, leaving the MacBook Pro on my desk at home. While it probably isn’t as good for my self-imposed weight loss program, it did feel nice to have a lighter bag. I chucked the AC adaptor in my bag so I could charge the unit up at university should I need to.

On the train I hooked up my USB HSDPA modem so I could check my regular news sites and respond to some emails. I chatted with Judie for a bit on MSN, and worked on an essay in Microsoft Word, both which gave me a good opportunity to test out the keyboard. Despite its size I found it great to type on, rarely hitting the wrong key or having to even look down. The keys do tap a bit when pressed, but I’m not about the knock marks off it for that.

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In March I bought a BlackJack II off eBay US, since I wanted a cheap smartphone with a keyboard. It was very cheap, had HSDPA (important) and ran Windows Mobile 6, so I was pretty happy. But not long after I got it I realised it just wasn’t quite right, especially after having used the Nokia N95 8GB for several months.

I found the BlackJack II too have a rather poor radio, it’s signal strength was always pathetic. Worse than that, often when it would lose signal it would not reconnect to the network properly, therefore calls, messages and emails didn’t come through. Rebooting the phone at least once a day because the signal wouldn’t be detected or the data connection wouldn’t connect even with signal bars showing was a major PITA. Perhaps a ROM update would fix this, but I haven’t seen one.

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Last night I put my BlackJack II up for sale on eBay in anticipation of the 3G iPhone release. It sold just a few hours later, so I am all set for when it arrives in June (hopefully :P).

But this morning while perusing my usual tech news websites I saw a link to The Boy Genius to a review of Nokia’s revision of the E61, the E71. In 2006 I actually considered an E61 because of it’s large, gorgeous screen and spacious thumboard, but ultimately decided against it because it was so wide. This new model though looks absolutely fantastic!

I’ve been switching between the BlackJack II and the N95 8GB for the past two months, simply because the Nokia was faster, had better signal strength everywhere, and has an excellent 5 megapixel camera, a feature I have noticed myself using a lot more often these days. Oddly, my Exchange email seemed to work better and emails come through on the Nokia too.

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About a week ago I sent the Shift review unit back, so I figured it’s time to tie up my thoughts on this controversial device.

Prior to receiving the Shift, I read several reviews of the device, and they all seemed to sing the same tune: it was too slow and too expensive. In my experience only one of these was the case.

In the current market, with competition from low-cost ultra-portables like the ASUS Eee and the HP Mini Note 2133, the Shift is too expensive. Sure it has features that the other two don’t have, like a convertible Tablet PC form-factor, built-in 3G (in UMTS and CMDA varieties) and the clever SnapVue PDA mode, but when you take into account a top-spec HP 2133 is almost half the price, the value does come into question.

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When I asked Nokia if I could review their 8800 Arte handset, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Some dumb phone that just looked a bit pretty, form and no function, a celebrity only famous for being rich?

I’m certainly not the target of a phone like this. I like my mobile devices to be able to do everything. Surf the web, get emails, keep my calendar, mind my address book, and keep everything in sync with everything else. These are things that typically flumix a Series 40 phone.

I was all set to be disappointed with the 8800 Sapphire Arte, and at first I was, until I realised what this phone is all about…

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[Sorry about the delay on this, I’ve been a bit swamped recently]

As you all know I really liked the MacBook Air, because it had a gorgeous screen, top-notch keyboard and fantastic build quality all in an incredibly thin case.

Unfortunately those are the four things that bugged me during my testing on the Fujitsu P8010. The screen had pathetic viewing angles, look at it from any angle but dead on and it looked terrible. The keyboard wasn’t full sized, and took a bit of getting used to. The machine was thick, but it was so small that it wasn’t that great of an issue.

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