Smartphones Show 63 just went live, with a hands-on video review of the Nokia 6220 Classic. There's also a review of the HTC Touch Diamond, comparing it to the Apple iPhone 3G. See also the Hi-res YouTube version and the RSS feeds for the QVGA and VGA versions.
Read on in the full article.
Hi Steve - I think your review of the Touch Diamond was a little unfair. I would love an Iphone 3g but at the same time I the Touch Diamond has a lot to offer.
The only time I've found delving into the depths of windows mobile necessary is through file explorer, and I'm not surprised you found the need to use a stylus if you insist on using that godawful Windows Mobile keyboard input system!
The Diamond offers its own compact qwerty, full qwerty and Touchpad SIPs (the touchpad alone is a boon to me coming from Nokia devices). Predictive input is especially good and I find it almost as easy to type one-handed as i did on my N95 - something the Iphone cannot offer (without perhaps risking losing your handset down a drain).
Opera Mobile is Flash ready (although we await the announced Flash Lite 3.0 for Windows Mobile) and offers the ability to download ANY files - even those that cannot be recognised by the Diamond. It also offers one-handed accurate zooming via the invisible scrollwheel - another thing that safari's pinch-pull system doesn't allow.
The camera is really quite good and DOES offer the option of half-pressing to focus. Simply TOUCH the centre button and the camera will focus, fully depress to snap. Picture quality side-by-side when I compared with the Kaiser was noticeably better though obviously no match for the N95.
HSDPA on the Diamond is up to 7.2mbps, whereas it is purported to only be 3.6 on the Iphone (although this isn't a great issue for me). The iphone also doesn't offer HSUPA or the option of using the phone as a modem via bluetooth, wifi or usb.
Speaking of bluetooth, the Diamond offers excellent A2DP stereo support...
GPS on the Diamond opens up a whole library of applications already available
The diamond offers multimedia messaging and more advanced email support (although it doesn't look as pretty)
It is smaller and offers the option of carrying a spare battery.
The Diamond will never compete with the Iphone for GUI as it is dogged somewhat by the underlying Windows Mobile interface, however the important thing for me is that it is the first Windows Mobile device that I can actually enjoy one-handed, comfortably and stylus-free - and be proud to show off.
It never crashes on me, never slows down and video playback is really quite good. Sure it only packs 4gb but transfer speed is very fast and I don't have to muck about with horrible Itunes.
I'd like an Iphone too though 😉
apologies for my overuse of the word 'offers'; I'm not feeling very creative today!
As usual a great episode,a bid farewell to the Smartphones Show & welcome to the Phones Show...don't lose focus of focusing on "smartphones" though...