04:29
htc
Fugettabout the iPhone 3G for a moment and lets look at a touchscreen cell phone that will be arriving stateside in a couple of months: The HTC Diamond. From all accounts, this phone just might be the “iPhone killer” gadget geeks and phone affectionatos have been waiting for.
To me, iPhone is just fine and dandy. I love my 8G first gen. But now that 3G is coming Friday, I just don’t think I am ready to jump to the next gen right now, especially since I just got my iPhone 7 months ago.
It has me thinking, when the time comes for me to start looking for a new cell phone I can use like an iPhone (as a phone, pda, and mobile web-surfing device)…what other options will there be for me? Will there be something better?
Enter the HTC Diamond. Granted, I have not had a chance to try the HTC Diamond, but when I read Ben Patterson’s review on Yahoo, I immediately fell in love. I mean, what is there not to love? For one, it has a full color VGA screen. Kick a$$. It truely is pretty to look at. Moreso than the iPhone I think. But pretty is for superficial hasbeens. I want a phone that is like a swiss army knife. It should allow me to receive and make calls in a couple touches. I am a working professional, and I need a phone that will allow me to access my work email from home or when on vacation. I should be able to pull up my email in a touch and send email using a QWERTY (in portrait or landscape if I want). And, the most important thing for me is personally, access the internet how I would if I were at home (meaning, a html web browser).
Games…who cares. I have a PS3, and that’s all I need. If I have an urge to play Tetris or a hand of poker, I’ll whip my iPod video out.
Music…naw, again, I have my iPod Video for such things…I don’t need a phone to play music for me. To me, mp3 capabilities aren’t important.
So, those two things are not important to me in my criteria for a “great” touchscreen cell phone.
Let’s see how the HTC Diamond stacks up to these three criteria then:
Text messaging
Making/Receiving phone calls
Email messaging and receiving
Web-browsing
1. Text messaging
To me, the iPhone has the best text messaging interface, but it could be better. I love the QWERTY touchscreen keyboard, but wish I could flip my phone to landscape as other touchscreen competitors such as the LG Vu have. The HTC Diamond has a QWERTY interface, similar to the iPhone’s. But what about landscape view? Not sure if it does. I checked the HTC Diamond website, and the photos and demos didn’t have anything. Checked HTC’s YouTube videos, and found a good demo below, but he didn’t bother demonstrating the last feature, the keyboard option for texting…maybe that’s where the landscape view comes into play?:
2. Making/Receiving calls
What I love most about my iPhone is the ease in which I can make a phone call. Two fast clicks of the home button brings up my favorites and I can easily select a person to call from that list. Not sure the HTC Diamond can beat that, but I sure do like the way I can flip through contacts using my finger, and its all picture based so I can easily select a photo of the person I want to call and that’s it. To me, visual is the key.
But it all boils down for me to this one thing: I don’t want to do a lot of thinking when making a call. So, i am not certain the HTC can offer the same ease of use as the iPhone until I can try it out in person.
3. Email messaging/receiving
With the iPhone, you can set up multiple POP email accounts and access them via the Mail icon. I like how I can access both my Yahoo and Gmail accounts without having to login all of the time. And, the iPhone gives me a friendly “dong” to let me know when new email arrives. With the HTC Diamond operating on Windows Mobile, of course it has Outlook. I believe I heard the guy say in the video below that it can handle up to three separate email accounts, so that means it can do what my iPhone does. Plus, I really like how I can scroll through my messages in the Diamond!
4. Web-Browsing
Demo’s abound for the web-browsing feature for the HTC Diamond. I must say that what impresses me most is that HTC incorporated the best of iPhone’s features, but abadanoned the one feature I kind of hated, which was how you zoom in and out with the pinched fingers/open fingers motion. Instead, HTC replaces this motion with tapping (I know, you can do that with iPhone too…) as well as the option to zoom in and out using the touch navigation wheel. I like it. To me, the pinching didn’t always respond the way I wanted, and when I tapped, more times than not I ended up hitting a link I didn’t want. Too cumbersome and annoying if you ask me.
The browser is Opera, which is just as good as Safari. As long as I can see a web page the way I would at home (but in a smaller frame of course), that’s all I care about, and I get that in the HTC Diamond. See the demo video below:
P.S.: The HTC Diamond sports a 3.5 G “true broadband” web browsing experience!
Summary:
Speaking purely for myself, I think the HTC Diamond meets all of my needs for a touchscreen cell phone. It does everything my iPhone 8GB first gen can do, plus it has 3G (3.5 G actually), and will work with major US carriers, including AT&T, which is what I have. I feel that HTC Diamond is a grown up version of the toyish iPhone. It has the professional capacity that a smartphone should have, but it also has the “cool” factor stylings such as a small, light body, 3.2 MP camera, and high resolution VGA color screen.
I think I will wait until next spring and get one new and unlocked on eBay once the price goes down a couple hundred bucks. The HTC Diamond, for me, killed all of the hype around the iPhone 3G.
To me, iPhone is just fine and dandy. I love my 8G first gen. But now that 3G is coming Friday, I just don’t think I am ready to jump to the next gen right now, especially since I just got my iPhone 7 months ago.
It has me thinking, when the time comes for me to start looking for a new cell phone I can use like an iPhone (as a phone, pda, and mobile web-surfing device)…what other options will there be for me? Will there be something better?
Enter the HTC Diamond. Granted, I have not had a chance to try the HTC Diamond, but when I read Ben Patterson’s review on Yahoo, I immediately fell in love. I mean, what is there not to love? For one, it has a full color VGA screen. Kick a$$. It truely is pretty to look at. Moreso than the iPhone I think. But pretty is for superficial hasbeens. I want a phone that is like a swiss army knife. It should allow me to receive and make calls in a couple touches. I am a working professional, and I need a phone that will allow me to access my work email from home or when on vacation. I should be able to pull up my email in a touch and send email using a QWERTY (in portrait or landscape if I want). And, the most important thing for me is personally, access the internet how I would if I were at home (meaning, a html web browser).
Games…who cares. I have a PS3, and that’s all I need. If I have an urge to play Tetris or a hand of poker, I’ll whip my iPod video out.
Music…naw, again, I have my iPod Video for such things…I don’t need a phone to play music for me. To me, mp3 capabilities aren’t important.
So, those two things are not important to me in my criteria for a “great” touchscreen cell phone.
Let’s see how the HTC Diamond stacks up to these three criteria then:
Text messaging
Making/Receiving phone calls
Email messaging and receiving
Web-browsing
1. Text messaging
To me, the iPhone has the best text messaging interface, but it could be better. I love the QWERTY touchscreen keyboard, but wish I could flip my phone to landscape as other touchscreen competitors such as the LG Vu have. The HTC Diamond has a QWERTY interface, similar to the iPhone’s. But what about landscape view? Not sure if it does. I checked the HTC Diamond website, and the photos and demos didn’t have anything. Checked HTC’s YouTube videos, and found a good demo below, but he didn’t bother demonstrating the last feature, the keyboard option for texting…maybe that’s where the landscape view comes into play?:
2. Making/Receiving calls
What I love most about my iPhone is the ease in which I can make a phone call. Two fast clicks of the home button brings up my favorites and I can easily select a person to call from that list. Not sure the HTC Diamond can beat that, but I sure do like the way I can flip through contacts using my finger, and its all picture based so I can easily select a photo of the person I want to call and that’s it. To me, visual is the key.
But it all boils down for me to this one thing: I don’t want to do a lot of thinking when making a call. So, i am not certain the HTC can offer the same ease of use as the iPhone until I can try it out in person.
3. Email messaging/receiving
With the iPhone, you can set up multiple POP email accounts and access them via the Mail icon. I like how I can access both my Yahoo and Gmail accounts without having to login all of the time. And, the iPhone gives me a friendly “dong” to let me know when new email arrives. With the HTC Diamond operating on Windows Mobile, of course it has Outlook. I believe I heard the guy say in the video below that it can handle up to three separate email accounts, so that means it can do what my iPhone does. Plus, I really like how I can scroll through my messages in the Diamond!
4. Web-Browsing
Demo’s abound for the web-browsing feature for the HTC Diamond. I must say that what impresses me most is that HTC incorporated the best of iPhone’s features, but abadanoned the one feature I kind of hated, which was how you zoom in and out with the pinched fingers/open fingers motion. Instead, HTC replaces this motion with tapping (I know, you can do that with iPhone too…) as well as the option to zoom in and out using the touch navigation wheel. I like it. To me, the pinching didn’t always respond the way I wanted, and when I tapped, more times than not I ended up hitting a link I didn’t want. Too cumbersome and annoying if you ask me.
The browser is Opera, which is just as good as Safari. As long as I can see a web page the way I would at home (but in a smaller frame of course), that’s all I care about, and I get that in the HTC Diamond. See the demo video below:
P.S.: The HTC Diamond sports a 3.5 G “true broadband” web browsing experience!
Summary:
Speaking purely for myself, I think the HTC Diamond meets all of my needs for a touchscreen cell phone. It does everything my iPhone 8GB first gen can do, plus it has 3G (3.5 G actually), and will work with major US carriers, including AT&T, which is what I have. I feel that HTC Diamond is a grown up version of the toyish iPhone. It has the professional capacity that a smartphone should have, but it also has the “cool” factor stylings such as a small, light body, 3.2 MP camera, and high resolution VGA color screen.
I think I will wait until next spring and get one new and unlocked on eBay once the price goes down a couple hundred bucks. The HTC Diamond, for me, killed all of the hype around the iPhone 3G.
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