perfect hardware, immature software

Getting Interested

I've used smart phones for many years, starting from Handspring Treo 180.  Last few years, I've used the Palm Treo 650.  The 650 is a great device, with gorgeous screen and amazing battery life.  However, it's bulky and I've wasted a lot of time because of issues with the web browser.  I've thought about getting something else for quite a while. Last year, when iPhone and the Diamond came out, I felt my wait was over.

I've never a big fan of Apple.  In fact, I have many negative opinions.  I played with the iPhone in store for a few times.  It's a nice device and it seems to fit my needs but I never made the decision.  One reason is probably the size - it's still quite big.  Another is probably the way it handles web pages - it displays the whole page in tiny characters and you use your hand to zoom in.  I doubt I'd ever read web pages on a phone which is not mobile oriented so this interface is too cute to be practical.  And did I mention I don't like Apple at all?

I've set my eye on the Diamond for a while, but I had been deterred by negative feedbacks regarding its sluggishness and poor battery.  I've played with other HTC phones over the years in stores and have always been impressed by the physical aspects.  Recently, I thought about the Diamond some more and decided to get one.  I figure my demand on performance and battery is probably not too heavy so I can accept some weakness in these areas.


Buying

There's no way I'd pay $600 CAD for a phone, not even a cute Diamond.  I watched craiglist.org in my area for a while.  Most people asked for around $500.  I put out a bid for $350 but nobody hit me.  One day just for fun, I put a bid for $280.  I got quite a few angry replies accusing me of being utterly stupid.

My cell phone company, Rogers, offers it for $199, if you sign up for a 3-year contract on a plan over $40 a month.  I don't mind a contract as I have been with them for years, but my plan is only $10 a month and I don't need anything more.  After frustrations on craigslist, I thought maybe I should give Rogers a try.  The girl answered the phone flatly refused me.  The $199 price is valid only for new customers, she said.  Even if I sign up for $40 for 3 years, I still have to pay $599.  Out of desperation, I threatened to cancel my service.  Instantly, she transferred me to "Customer Retention Department".  The guy there was extremely friendly and I got what I wanted in no time: $199 for a 3 year contract on my cheap monthly rate plus $35 "processing fee".  I thought to bargain off the fee but changed my mind - I felt the deal is already "generous".


Experience Summary

I've had the phone for more than a week now.  On the whole, I'm very impressed by the hardware.  The software leaves a lot to be desired but I can live with them.  Performance is adequate: there're delays at obvious times, like when you start a new program, but all other times, the response is nearly instant.  Battery life is poor but seems to be improving after a few charges.  Right now, I get about 3 days after typical daily usage: a short phone call or two, about 10 minutes of web surfing on the wifi and an hour or two reading my own html documents from the internal storage.


Hardware

The hardware is perfect.  It's smaller than iPhone.  It's even smaller than my wife's regular cell phone: about same size but almost half the thickness.  I always hated carrying the Treo in my pocket, especially in the summer.  But I should have much less of a problem carrying a Diamond.

The screen is like impossible.  Before I got it, I was afraid that it might not be good since it's smaller than either the iPhone or the Treo.  I knew its resolution is much higher at 640x480, but still the size is so small.  I was pleasantly surpriced.  It shows more information than the Treo yet it's still quite readable.  The greatness of the screen is perfectly illustrated by the web browser called Opera Mini.  The Mini doesn't adjust for mobile device so it uses the true 640x480 resolution.  Even at largest font size, I need effort to read the text.  Yet the text is still recognizable at smallest font size.  If you have a good pair of eyes, the tiny screen can present huge amount of information.  Simply amazing.  Here're two screen images:

Unlike the iPhone which is completely screen based, the Diamond has a keypad below the screen.  There're 5 buttons on the pad.  And there's a circle in the middle through which you can simulate scroll.  The 5th button is inside the circle. What's more, the keypad is touch sensitive so you can control the device through swipes or taps or double taps.  All these features provides a rich set of means for input.  Unfortunately, the keypad isn't well utilized by the software, possibly due to Windows Mobile's slowness to change.  The 4 buttons are mapped to default applications and the center button serves as a confirmation tool.  Other than these, there's almost no use of the keypad by any of the software.  There're some 3rd party software making use of the features but most seem to be either immature or buggy or both.

The keypad on the Diamond is one example why I'm negative on Apple.  I feel Apple favors artistry over practicalness.  Their first mouse had only one button.  I doubt any normal person would pick a one button mouse over a 2 button mouse.  The iPone is completely screen based.  You have to do everything on the screen.  Sure it looks cool and makes the screen a lot bigger.  However, it's so much more convenient to have some extra buttons.  For example, I like to read my html documents in full screen mode - with no controls on the screen.  Without extra buttons, I have to exit the full screen mode to do any of the routine operations, like going back a page, going to home screen or checking time.  It'd be a big hassle.

The hardware is very slick.  There's some back light under the keypad.  When charging, the light under the center button goes on and off slowly, feels like breathing.  Very cute and touching.  The stylus is magnetic so it slips into the housing easily.  The device knows when you take out the stylus.  It automatically turns on the screen afterwards.  And some software use the taking out and putting back in of the stylus to initiate certain actions.

The speaker sounds OK when I played youtube, just like a speaker on any other phone.  However, when I use it for speaker phone, it sounds high pitched and a bit squeaky.   Phone call quality is excellent without using the speaker phone.  It can actually do video calls.  Sound quality on the included headphone is good. The headphone uses the USB connection which serves for charging as well as syncing with your PC.  There's no separate standard connection for headphone.


Software

The software I care the most is the web browser.  And it's a good example of immaturity.  I first tried Opera Mobile (not the Mini) as everyone's positive about it.  However, it's finicky about rendering.  Sometimes it shows my pages nicely formatted for the screen.  Sometimes it shows them in highly zoomed-out fashion which is totally unreadable.  All the time I set the rendering mode to "mobile" as opposed to "desktop".  The thing I can't tolerate is that the minimum text size is still bigger than I'd like.  I tried many different settings and searched all over the internet but I still couldn't find a way to make the text smaller.  This one mis-feature rules out Opera as my browser.  Besides, in full-screen mode, the stupid thing puts a big chunk of gray at the lower right corner for you to get out of full screen mode.  It takes so much screen real-estate that it's simply disgusting.  The last straw?  It sometimes renders my pages as totally blank.  Many of my pages are over 1 MB in size which might have bothered Opera.

So the only choice for me is Microsoft's Pocket IE.  The first thing I noticed is that you can't get true full-screen mode.  It insists on showing a vertical scroll bar.  I searched all over the internet and apparently there's no way you can get rid of it.  And there's no way to scroll the pages besides using the scrollbar - despite the rich hardware support for scrolling.  What's more, in whole screen mode, you can't do any of the routine operations like going back a page, going to the home page, or checking time - despite the 5 hardware buttons and several ways to operate the buttons.  After some searching, I found a $15 plug-in called "PIEPlus" which gets rid of the scroll bar and adds some key-pad support for scrolling.  A free software called DredSensor lets me use the hardware buttons for going back a page, but not for home page or time.  After a lot of effort, I still haven't found a way to scroll the pages by line using the keypad.  You can scroll precisely by dragging the text on screen but I'd rather not touch the screen as it's eager to keep finger prints.

Before I bought the device, the things I was most concerned about is performance and battery life.  Naturally I searched all over internet for ways to improve both.  There're many tweaks available out there.  In the end, I tried and kept 5 software, all free: Diamond TF3D Config, Diamond Hack, Diamond Tweak and Advanced Configuration Tool for Diamond.  All of them look professional and the last two are very comprehensive in the settings you can modify.  If you're more adventurous, there's a free software called PHM Registry Editor which lets you edit Windows Mobile registry directly.  Compared to Apple, one nice thing about Windows is that there're so many things you can change.  The possibility is endless.  I'm not too sure if the tweaks make any difference though.  Performance wasn't that bad right from the beginning.  Battery life is improving which may not have to do with tweaks.  I read on the internet that fully discharging the battery a few times when new improves its life.  That's what I've been doing.

Another thing I was concerned before is the virtual keyboard.  I thought it might be inconvenient to use.  Turned out it's not too bad.  Unless you enter text heavily, it's definitely adequate.  It has several inputs modes.  One is called "Compact Qwerty" which has bigger buttons but each button houses two or more letters.  One is called "Full Qwerty" which is too big.  The one I use is simply called "Keyboard" which I think is very nicely designed.   It shows every letter on its own small button.  Pressing the 123 button changes all the buttons to numbers and signs.  Pressing the Shift button changes all the buttons to either signs or upper case letters.  Very nice.  Be careful about one thing: to change input mode, you have to pick from a pop-up list right from the keyboard button which toggles the keyboard on and off.  This button is available in any software which needs text input.  There's a page in settings which allows you to do just that but it doesn't work.  I tried it many times and did soft reset each time.  Finally I thought there's something wrong so I did a hard reset which wasted me a lot of time.  A while later, I accidentally figured out the right way.

Again, one big advantage of Windows over Apple is user's ability to change a lot of things.   With Diamond, you can even load up your own ROM which is like installing a different operating system on your PC.   There're many different versions of ROM on the internet which all claim to improve speed and battery life.  After some thought and some agonizing, I actually loaded my Diamond with one of the "fast" ROMs from the internet.  However, after a couple of hours, I restored the old ROM.  I didn't find the new ROM much faster and I don't like the choices made by the author (styles, colors, software removed or added, etc).  If you really want to change things, you can "cook" your own ROM.  There're software called "kitchen" you can download from the internet.  The guys who publish their own version of ROM are called "chefs".   You can find a lot of information about software and ROM at http://forum.xda-developers.com.  However, stuff there are disorganised so expect to spend a lot of time to figure out things.  Everything is free but donation buttons are everywhere.


Last Words

To summarize, I'm extremely happy with the Diamond despite the software issues.  The hardware is perfect - great size, great screen, beautiful construction.  The software is tolerable for now.  I believe strongly that it'll get better over time, due to efforts by either Microsoft, or HTC, or the army of 3rd party developers.

Update (Feb 27, 2009)

I've been looking for a software which lets me know time without getting out of Pocket IE.  There's such a thing for Palm called Clockpop: you press and hold a button and it pops up a window showing time; the window goes away when you release the button.  I searched all over the internet but couldn't find anything like it.  Another example that software for Windows Mobile is lacking.

Later I found a software which speaks the time on intervals.  Serves my purpose.  But the guy wants $10 for such a small thing. Another guy asks $3 for a similar tool which doesn't even work.  Lots of Windows Mobile software are payware while majority of Palm software are free. Wonder if this means anything.

Still later I found another software which speaks time.  And it's free.  It's actually written in a scripting language.  The scripting language is also free.  The nice thing is that I can modify the scripts to suit my needs. A good example that with Windows Mobile, there're simply a lot more opportunities in terms of software, compared to Apple.