I have had my Sprint CDMA Diamond for 5 days now, and I must say this is one of the most impressive pieces of CDMA hardware I've ever seen running the windows mobile OS. It's form factor is excellent, processor adequate and RAM are far better than any of the other HTC devices I've owned (6700 that I still have nightmares over, and a 6800 that was much more stable, but didn't have enough program RAM to run a wrist watch) both of which required heavy ROM modification to make tolerable. The Diamond by far is my favorite so far. I had to abandon my old 6800 because the keyboard began triple typing letters which caused me to text like a stuttering drunk.
The hardware only lacks one or two features, as has been mentioned many times a micro or mini SD slot would be very nice, but the 4gb of storage is adequate for me at the moment, as I never expected to use this device for a round the clock music and video player. Also missing is the front VGA camera from the GSM model. While I appreciate that the US cellular carriers do not support video calling, the advent of high speed EVDO opens the windows mobile OS to programs developed for data video calling such as Skype that will become more prevalent over the next several years. It would also be nice to be able to take a photo with someone without having to take 3 practice shots to get the aim correct.
The battery capacity is definitely a concern, but I blame that mostly on the stock radio ROM (1.0s are never efficient) and I am waiting for the next official sprint ROM to be released before I go as far as flashing a custom stack onto it. I also just re-did a few registry tweaks on the device in the last hour that I haven't tested yet but should help life. I'd order a spare 1500mAh battery that fits in the stock back and keep it in your pocket all day just to be sure, especially if you use a lot of multimedia features on the phone.
Otherwise I'm impressed. The G sensor and screen are much more accurate to finger touch and have stayed calibrated much better than my previous devices. There are no annoying super bright LEDs on the unit and the charge/alert LED indication by means of the touch ring are great. The screen is absolutely beautiful in it's full 65 million color VGA glory, video looks more amazing on this unit than any portable I've used including my ipod. I can't wait for my military grade screen protector to arrive so I can replace the somewhat cheap one that came with the unit... I want to keep this device looking good over the next few years since it feels like a more than sturdy enough unit to keep for the next several years.
I have two points of view on the Diamond's software. I only used the stock Sprint ROM for this review but in two ways, one in an out of the box sense and another now that I have spent several days tweaking the sprint ROM as I am knowledgeable on registry modification and supplemental software installation on windows mobile. With the stock sprint rom, the phone runs fine, but was lacking in many capacities. The phone's rotation sensor isn't utilized very much in most of the phone's programs. The phone's directional pad is also touch sensitive, something I didn't know about until I tried the camera and had a "half way push" effect on the center button. Beyond that, the GPS was much better than on my old 6800, but still took a while to work. I was also annoyed by the sprint logo and software to sell me more software everywhere.
After doing some heavy touchflo 3d modification to make the clock transparent and flipping, removing sprint logos which I've heard described as "someone peeing on the fresh snowdrift that is the Diamond UI"... just say no to yellow snow... some programs and registry tweaks to enhance the rotation behavior, memory usage, cache, data bandwidth limits, enabling the touchpad, speeding up the camera, enhancing the AGPS, modifying my PST to increase my slot cycle time and the ever-awesome A2DP switcher application so that the phone correctly connects to the bluetooth on my car stereo in the push of a button I am VERY happy with the stock sprint ROM. Time to fix all this garbage: 2 days.
The only thing I wish I could get working still is the FM radio which I know I can do if I flash the ROM, but I am going to wait till the next official ROM release comes out to see if it helps the battery capacity. If not, flash time as soon as plenty of people willing to put their Diamond on the alter to test the new ROMs stabilize everything
(you're all awesome by the way!)
Bottom line: this is the sexiest windows moblie phone I've seen or had the pleasure of owning to date. It by far blows the iphone out of the water, once you get it customized exactly the way you want it, which of course the possibilities are infinite for because we are all so awesome at tweaking WM in a way apple will never allow on the iphone. Mine runs Garmin Mobile XT with Topo maps added on, sat locks in 5 seconds indoors, has 300 channels of digital and hi-def cable with DVR (through slingbox), views and controls the video surveillance system and smart lighting systems at my home, remote controls all of my computer systems and servers with VNC and gets 1200k down/900k up data speeds when acting as a wireless router for my laptop.
What tricks have you taught your Diamonds?
EDIT: Loaded MightyROM 4.4.2 last night. So far I love it far more than the Sprint stock (of course, right?) only complaint is that the new build of Opera doesn't store facebook login information correctly and I've had to clear cache and cookies several times as it causes the entire phone to lock up when the page is halfway through loading.