The Ninja recently decided to upgrade his mobile phone. As a fan of the Windows Mobile platform and HTC handhelds in particular, the obvious choice was one of the numerous new phones recently released by the innovative Taiwanese manufacturer. My existing phone was an E650, a solid phone with a slide out keyboard – it’s served me well for the last two years with pretty much no issues and was my third HTC Windows-based phone. I've never really liked the iPhone and the clunky iTunes interface has put me off using anything similar from Apple.
I did consider the Google Android phone and an obvious like-for-like upgrade would be the Touch Pro 2 from HTC which looks amazing. However I’ve settled on a Touch Diamond 2 , it is a more traditional looking phone with touch screen and a pda-esque stylus approach. However, the on-screen keyboards more than make up for the lack of a physical option like my venerable e650 or Pro 2 and the TouchFLO interface is very effective and a worthy skin on the WM6 base layer.
Having used the device for the last few days and already dabbled within the registry ;) I am simply blown away by the capabilities of this device. I thought the 650 was awesome because it had the keyboard, wi-fi, could link with my Live Mesh and at a push use Skype etc. How wrong I was!
The Diamond 2 has all this and so much more! I went with an unlimited data plan as part of the package to really capitalise on its features – the message handling, media playback, wi-fi/gprs integration, weather data and the opera browser are very slick but it really comes in to its own when you utilise the GPS. GPS?! In a phone? How mad is that!
Google Maps is jaw-droppingly good – even indoors. It’s pretty scary when it tells you that 7 satellites have a lock on you – very Enemy of the State! The gps integrates beautifully with this app and gives you accurate positioning and even Street View. I think the obvious next step will be turn-by-turn software to give me sat-nav for the car but Google Maps is good enough to get the ball rolling for now.
However, the absolute killer app for me was gps phototagging. It took a bit of tweaking in the registry to enable it but now gps data is embedded in the photos I take with the phone’s slick 5mp camera so that when I upload them to Flickr I can plot them on a map with the click of a button. It even records the height above sea-level! Sub-zero uber-cool!
The pace of technological development never ceases to amaze me and HTC seem to be right at the forefront of this. Good on them for stepping out from behind their OEM shadow to become a stand alone brand.
I did consider the Google Android phone and an obvious like-for-like upgrade would be the Touch Pro 2 from HTC which looks amazing. However I’ve settled on a Touch Diamond 2 , it is a more traditional looking phone with touch screen and a pda-esque stylus approach. However, the on-screen keyboards more than make up for the lack of a physical option like my venerable e650 or Pro 2 and the TouchFLO interface is very effective and a worthy skin on the WM6 base layer.
Having used the device for the last few days and already dabbled within the registry ;) I am simply blown away by the capabilities of this device. I thought the 650 was awesome because it had the keyboard, wi-fi, could link with my Live Mesh and at a push use Skype etc. How wrong I was!
The Diamond 2 has all this and so much more! I went with an unlimited data plan as part of the package to really capitalise on its features – the message handling, media playback, wi-fi/gprs integration, weather data and the opera browser are very slick but it really comes in to its own when you utilise the GPS. GPS?! In a phone? How mad is that!
Google Maps is jaw-droppingly good – even indoors. It’s pretty scary when it tells you that 7 satellites have a lock on you – very Enemy of the State! The gps integrates beautifully with this app and gives you accurate positioning and even Street View. I think the obvious next step will be turn-by-turn software to give me sat-nav for the car but Google Maps is good enough to get the ball rolling for now.
However, the absolute killer app for me was gps phototagging. It took a bit of tweaking in the registry to enable it but now gps data is embedded in the photos I take with the phone’s slick 5mp camera so that when I upload them to Flickr I can plot them on a map with the click of a button. It even records the height above sea-level! Sub-zero uber-cool!
The pace of technological development never ceases to amaze me and HTC seem to be right at the forefront of this. Good on them for stepping out from behind their OEM shadow to become a stand alone brand.
I can’t wait to see what else mobile phones will do in a couple of years time and will be watching the direction HTC takes in the future. Now, I'm off to take some gps tagged photos and upload them to Photosynth!
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