Finally a new phone…

Well, I’ve finally got myself a new phone, after the old Ameo started being a bit creaky and a bit bulky to carry around, and I've replaced it with a new Smartphone, the HTC Touch Diamond 2.

You may remember me blogging about this phone WAY back in February and now I’ve finally got my hands on this great bit of kit. And what’s even better is that is that the ‘unofficial’ development channels have had a chance to do some magic and work the phone into a real beaut…  The reason I now go for HTC devices is that there is lots of 3rd party development work, not only on applications, but on the underlying operating system.  

A few of the phone’s specs:

3.2” WVGA screen (800x480).
5mp Camera.
TouchFlo 3d interface.
A-GPS.
Upto 32GB storage (8GB MiniSD fitted).
Wifi/Bluetooth/HSDPA.
FM Radio
Delivered with Windows Mobile 6.1, but upgraded to a beta release of Mobile 6.5. 

I have to say, I’m amazing impressed with the phone and HTC have really stepped upto the bat to compete with the iPhone.  The biggest way they’ve done this is to ‘hide’ as much of Windows Mobile as they can within the TF3D interface.  This allows you to make calls, see texts and emails, launch programmes and change settings from within this ‘front end’ with finger gestures, rather than having to use a stylus.  A stylus is still provided for when a program doesn’t support touch gestures, but this is becoming less common these days.

Another massive improvement to the earlier TouchFlo implementations is the contact integration.  This is now designed to be like a mini CMS solution, meaning that each contact has a ‘profile’ area, where all communication with that person is logged, be it phone calls, text messages, email or even facebook feeds. That's right, it links with your facebook profile and pulls down status updates, photo’s and other information from your facebook friends – Genius!  Hopefully the next revision will also support Twitter feeds which is the one thing missing!

The only trouble I’m having from the phone is that its too shiny!  The glass, and satin case pickup fingerprints merely through the power of thought, but hopefully I’ll get a case that will protect against this! :)