Diamond Reviews

[Fixup]

After flashed mine to GrooveRom, the performance is good but battery life is still poor, even after I removed all the unnecessary running programs. In TaskManager3.1, I see some programs (shell, cprog etc.) are using quite lot of CPU time. I'm going to give this MightRom3.9 a try.

Update: I think what affects battery life the most is radio signal. Now with this MightyRom3.9 I see for the first time full antenna bars on my Diamond! Before with other ROMs I saw 1 bar only. We all know when signal is low, phone drains battery quick and runs hot. All my phones get full bars; I thought Diamond's reception was very poor, did not think a ROM could make such a huge difference. This ROM is thoughtfully cooked, my cup of tea.

Some programs use too much CPU time while idle and thus drain battery constantly, such as IBM J9, JBlend, Tao Intent. JBed and Jeodek use almost no CPU time while idle, therefore my choice of JVM. TaskManager3.1 and acbTaskMan can be used to discover those poorly programmed programs, but some programs such as J9 will crash them.

Oh, just encountered the first freez. This MightyRom needs some more cooking.

[taliesmom]

can you put im on the sprint htc diamond

[CupofDice]

Just wrote this on engadget :P in their how would you change the Diamond post.

I am a new owner of the Sprint ver of the Diamond.

1. Better battery life. I mean this thing will go down doing absolutely nothing over night, though it does last me a day.

2. Touch Flo 3D throughout WinMo. Similar to what Meizu did with the M8. Using WinMo's interface is annoying for all the obvious reasons.

3. 3.5mm Head Phone jack. Seriously, I didn't think having to carry around the USB whateveryoucallit would be that annoying, but it is. Plus I am constantly checking for it to make sure I haven't lost it. They provided two styluses, they should have provided two of those.

4. The screen size when it comes to typing. It is simply too small to type comfortability on compared to my ipod touch. I often have to use the stylus.


Things I don't have a problem with.

1. The screen size when it comes to watching shows. I would say that the Diamond's screen size is the minimum for acceptability, but it IS acceptable. Watching shows is easily done. Of course it would be sweeter at 3.2 inches.

2. Resistive touch screen. The only time I have to use the stylus is when I am typing. Of course my bad habit with the ipod touch (touching my fingernails to the screen) comes in handy here. Don't get me wrong, a capacitive would definitely be better, but the resistive wasn't as big a problem as I thought it would be.

All in all, I love my Diamond. It could be better, but so could every other touch screen phone out there. My main problem is the lack of apps. *cough* I mean lack of good apps. It seems to me that WinMo is dying. Just look at the development of smart, sexy apps for the iPhone, Android, and soon to be Palm pre. Of course we do have a great development community around xda, and ppcgeeks, people who are developing great apps like Barcorama (bar code scanner). But this is WinMo, there should be even MORE developing going on with original ideas, and sexy touch screen friendly interfaces. Hopefully with WinMo 7, it will be meant for touch screens (as in I will never need a stylus again to check a tiny option), and will be sexy, and work great just like the iPhone OS. In other words don't **** it up Microsoft. You did it with the Zune, you can damn well make a sexy interface for WinMo 7.

[mike9191]

I like the Diamond. A better camera than the touch had for those rare times you might use it. 4gb ram is enough for me, but I would have liked it removable for easier transfer to my computer. Everything else is an improvement over previous models.

[Journeyjeans]

Ditto mike9191. I'm coming from the HORRIBLE Mogul/6800, and this thing is lightyears beyond that. It's so good, I'm WILLING to overlook some of the flaws (Minor) that the Diamond may have because NONE of them compares to the crappyness of the Mogul on ANY level. Seriously.

Diamond = Thumbsup!

[machold]

The phone is truly excellent; I flashed a new ROM (Blue for Telus), couldn't be happier: huge improvement in battery life and everything else. Somewhere in these threads somebody posted news of a new HTC unit, said to be the real iPhone killer. TD does better than very well even if it's not a killer. TDFlo needs improving but orks well with many of the good ROMs you can find here.

[bro4ever]

Maybe my next question is OOT, but i am newbie in term of diamond...

I have sprint diamond cdma, what is the specific difference between cdma & gsm? because I'd seen there are 2 sub forums for ROMs for upgrading my diamond.

[mikerobertsonart]

Originally Posted by bro4ever

Maybe my next question is OOT, but i am newbie in term of diamond...

I have sprint diamond cdma, what is the specific difference between cdma & gsm? because I'd seen there are 2 sub forums for ROMs for upgrading my diamond.

Don't use anything that says GSM on your CDMA Diamond. Custom ROMs and most software are not compatible because the GSM Diamond uses a different processor and chipset than the CDMA.

Also remember with ROMs to CAREFULLY read all directions associated with them because it is VERY easy to brick your phone or get stuck at the boot loader because you skip one step on flashing. READ EVERYTHING, not just the first post, but by other users who have already tried it on the exact same model phone and had either positive or negative results.

Just some helpful advice

[mikerobertsonart]

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.

[jsvt3]

Simply put I love this phone.