Diamond Reviews

bharris25 · #1 (**permalink**) 11-30-2008, 07:20 AM

I love my diamond. I went from the Treo 700p to the diamond and initially the battery life was horrible. But after about 2 weeks of use I decided to put a custom rom on it and problem solved. The stock diamond isn't really all that impressive but when you upgrade to a custom rom its like night and day. I don't know why sprint would leave such basic functionality out like the fm radio and the extra camera modes, just to say it does more would seem like it would make it easier to sell. A friend of mine has an iphone and while some of the apps are really cool like the music games and such it's just so locked down with what you can do with it compared to the diamond or any ppc. Another friend has the G1 and while it's really cool it just isn't there yet in terms of customization and no syncing with the desktop or use as a modem. My diamond as a modem is actually faster than his dsl. The barcode reader app for the G1 is a stroke of genius though and I haven't found one for the diamond that works as seemless yet. I had a 4gb sd card in my treo and when I was thinking about going with the Diamond or Pro I realized that I never really had my sd card filled up so that's not a problem for me. One weird thing on my diamond though is it takes about 13 mins for me to put a 700mb movie on it using it as a disk drive with windows, I have my computer dual booted with Ubuntu and I can put that same movie on in about 3 mins, don't know what that's all about. Setting it up to use as a modem with Ubuntu was also really easy, never got it to work with my treo because you had to know some kung fu code to get that to work. This is my first exp. using windows mobile, I really like the functionality of it. There were some stupid quirks with the palm os like I couldn't download a file that was more than 7 or 8 mb, I downloaded a file to my diamond that was 25mb no problem, don't know if that's a network thing or what though. The customization and removing bloatware though is where the diamond and I imagine all the windows mobile phones shine though. There's always some registry edit you can do, personally I like the 4 icons in a row in the programs and settings menu, little edit and problem solved, don't know why more cooks don't bake it in like that I haven't found myself accidently clicking on something while trying to scroll. I think if they ever get Android to easily install on the diamond we shall all be set. Best phone I've ever had. Makes me laugh thinking back to my old brick of a motorola flip phone back in 98.

k000 · #2 (**permalink**) 12-16-2008, 10:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bharris25

I love my diamond. I went from the Treo 700p to the diamond and initially the battery life was horrible. But after about 2 weeks of use I decided to put a custom rom on it and problem solved. The stock diamond isn't really all that impressive but when you upgrade to a custom rom its like night and day. I don't know why sprint would leave such basic functionality out like the fm radio and the extra camera modes, just to say it does more would seem like it would make it easier to sell. A friend of mine has an iphone and while some of the apps are really cool like the music games and such it's just so locked down with what you can do with it compared to the diamond or any ppc. Another friend has the G1 and while it's really cool it just isn't there yet in terms of customization and no syncing with the desktop or use as a modem. My diamond as a modem is actually faster than his dsl. The barcode reader app for the G1 is a stroke of genius though and I haven't found one for the diamond that works as seemless yet. I had a 4gb sd card in my treo and when I was thinking about going with the Diamond or Pro I realized that I never really had my sd card filled up so that's not a problem for me. One weird thing on my diamond though is it takes about 13 mins for me to put a 700mb movie on it using it as a disk drive with windows, I have my computer dual booted with Ubuntu and I can put that same movie on in about 3 mins, don't know what that's all about. Setting it up to use as a modem with Ubuntu was also really easy, never got it to work with my treo because you had to know some kung fu code to get that to work. This is my first exp. using windows mobile, I really like the functionality of it. There were some stupid quirks with the palm os like I couldn't download a file that was more than 7 or 8 mb, I downloaded a file to my diamond that was 25mb no problem, don't know if that's a network thing or what though. The customization and removing bloatware though is where the diamond and I imagine all the windows mobile phones shine though. There's always some registry edit you can do, personally I like the 4 icons in a row in the programs and settings menu, little edit and problem solved, don't know why more cooks don't bake it in like that I haven't found myself accidently clicking on something while trying to scroll. I think if they ever get Android to easily install on the diamond we shall all be set. Best phone I've ever had. Makes me laugh thinking back to my old brick of a motorola flip phone back in 98.

Please consider formating your thoughts / inputs into paragraphs / bullets etc.

It would make it easier to read, and perhaps more folsk could read it. I gave up on second line..

highwayman1224 · #3 (**permalink**) 12-17-2008, 08:06 AM

I didn't have a problem reading it. by the way, it's "folks", not "folsk".

Fixup · #4 (**permalink**) 12-26-2008, 08:44 PM

It is hard for me to resist a phone like this for only $285 shipped from ebay. Before I pull the trigger, I went to a local Sprint store to play with one. It is simply not responsive at all, pretty much not usable. Very difficult to type in "p";. The d-pad is a joke, so are the hard buttons. Photos taken on this phone are decent, good enough to leave my digital camera home, but the experience of taking photos is horrible - slow, sluggish, non-responsive like the overall interface. After only few minutes, it becomes quite warm.

Can a custom ROM really make this phone usable?

Fixup · #5 (**permalink**) 12-27-2008, 07:57 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fixup

It is hard for me to resist a phone like this for only $285 shipped from ebay. Before I pull the trigger, I went to a local Sprint store to play with one. It is simply not responsive at all, pretty much not usable. Very difficult to type in "p";. The d-pad is a joke, so are the hard buttons. Photos taken on this phone are decent, good enough to leave my digital camera home, but the experience of taking photos is horrible - slow, sluggish, non-responsive like the overall interface. After only few minutes, it becomes quite warm.

Can a custom ROM really make this phone usable?

After down the followings, it now works acceptable:

Hard reset. After screen alignment was done and as soon as I saw "customize..., OK, in 3 seconds" I push the reset button to prevent the Sprint garbage from installing.

In Today settings, uncheck TouchFlo 3D.

Installed GSen to enable screen auto rotate.

Still nothing like the iPhone, but it does all the work for me, camera, Google Maps (yes GPS), Opera Mini, gmail, Remote Desktop... The only problem left is all the hard buttons, this is simply a failed design and, to put the salt on the cut, the Right button on my unit is defective.