A group of tinkers have been hard at work getting the Panels interface from the Sony Xperia working on the HTC Touch HD. Progress is being made at a decent rate, as evidenced by a few YouTube videos that have been released. Why do such a thing? Well, as one of the guys says, “I like the look of this front end alot better than the TF3D.” So, rather than complain about the user interface, they adapt their own. Good on them. → Read More
After right around 2 weeks of offering pre-orders for the unlocked WinMo 6.1 powered HTC Touch Diamond, Best Buy has started taking immediate orders from all the folks out there dying to get in on the TouchFlo 3D action who just can’t bring themselves to hop on Sprint. At a whopping $700 bucks before the extra $50 or so you’ll eat in taxes and shipping, the novelty of living the sans-contract life doesn’t come cheap. I think it’s pretty safe to say we won’t be seeing this one in their airport vending machines. → Read More
We’ve gotten official word from HTC concerning the Touch Diamond and the Touch Pro release dates and prices for the Sprint network. We already kind of figured the launch date for the Diamond to be September 14th, although HTC just says it’ll be “available in September” while we now know that the Touch Pro (seen above) will be available on October 19th. The Touch Diamond, as you’ll recall, will cost $249 after a $100 mail-in rebate. The Touch Pro will cost $299, also after a $100 mail-in rebate. Both will require a two-year contract with Sprint. → Read More
While early rumors seemed to indicate that the HTC Touch Diamond would be coming to Sprint on September 2nd, it seems that the actual date will be September 14th instead, according to PC Magazine. The device will cost $249 with a two-year contract and after a $100 mail-in rebate. I’ve been using the European version of the Touch Diamond as my main phone for a while now and it works pretty well, although I’d be really hard-pressed to shell out $250 for it – seems like $150 would be more doable. → Read More
Cool. Looks like the HTC Touch Diamond (and presumably the HTC Touch Diamond Pro) can actually do multi-touch. Apparently it’s just around the navigation buttons that the multi-touch works – not the entire screen, which seems odd. The feature is revealed when using HTC’s Nav Debug Tool but so far doesn’t have any practical use beyond simple testing. However, HTC updates its ROMs on a fairly regular basis so maybe we’ll someday see this feature come to light for normal people like you and me. From MobileTopSoft: Here is how it works: * The area around the navi-wheel is actually a capacitive touch-area with multi-touch * it may allow using finger pinching gesture and finger spreading gesture (zooming for example) and also implement 2 finger moving for panning gesture for example too. * Not all capacitive touch-areas are multi-touch at the same time! * You can try it for yourself at XDA-Developers NavDbgTool.exe, you must have registered account there in order to download [via Gizmodo] → Read More
Cool. Looks like the HTC Touch Diamond (and presumably the HTC Touch Diamond Pro) can actually do multi-touch. Not only multi-touch on the screen itself, but all the way down around the navi-wheel and buttons. [Update – Apparently it’s just around the navigation buttons that the multi-touch works.] The feature is revealed when using HTC’s Nav Debug Tool but so far doesn’t have any practical use beyond simple testing. However, HTC updates its ROMs on a fairly regular basis so maybe we’ll someday see this feature come to light for normal people like you and me. From MobileTopSoft: Here is how it works: * The area around the navi-wheel is actually a capacitive touch-area with multi-touch * it may allow using finger pinching gesture and finger spreading gesture (zooming for example) and also implement 2 finger moving for panning gesture for example too. * Not all capacitive touch-areas are multi-touch at the same time! * You can try it for yourself at XDA-Developers NavDbgTool.exe, you must have registered account there in order to download [via Gizmodo] → Read More
Straight from a blog in a far away land, it appears that HTC has released the “Victor” (looks like in Taiwan only) which appears to be the HTC Touch Diamond, except with a flat back instead of diamond-bumpy, jagged-edge back found on the company’s current model. To that, I say “Hoo-ray!” I’m using the Touch Diamond right now and the back doesn’t cause me any undue concern except that, as BGR’s Josh Karp points out, it “causes some problems when you attempt to lay the device firmly on a flat surface.” Speaking of problems – funny story. I was sitting next to Josh Karp at dinner one night during the conference where HTC announced the Touch Diamond and failed to notice that I had held my menu directly over a lit candle while conversing with someone at the table. It caught on fire and the waitress had to throw it on the floor and stomp it out with her shoes. And that, my friends, is why you can’t take CrunchGear anywhere. → Read More
According to a photo on the SprintUsers.com forum — a photo which apparently came from HowardForums (I couldn’t find it there) — several new handsets will be available on the Sprint network over the coming months. The HTC MP6950, also known as the HTC Touch Diamond, being one that’s apparently hitting September 2nd. If the reportedly leaked photo is legit, we’ll also see the Treo 800W soon, a red BlackBerry Curve, the Katana Eclipse by Sanyo, and a few others. The photo looks a little “cheap” to me, but if it’s an internal Sprint document, maybe they’re not all about dressing these things up. via BGR → Read More
Just got the HTC Touch Diamond smartphone today and I can tell you that it’s a pretty nice little gizmo. I’ll be taking it for a spin over the next few weeks, so if you have any questions about it or if you’d like me to try out any particular features, leave a message in the comments section and I’ll do my best to address your requests. [UPDATE: Full review after the jump] → Read More
HTC CEO Peter Chou spoke at a symposium in Tokyo yesterday where he raised the projected shipment of Touch Diamond devices from two million to three million citing that it would only take seven months to sell three million units. The original Touch took roughly 11 months to sell three million handsets and Chou believes the Touch Diamond will be more popular thus the increase. → Read More
Just got word from Matt of Tracy and Matt’s Blog that he’s been able to grab a shot of one of the upcoming accessories for the HTC Touch Diamond. From Matt’s post… “I must say that this looks super sexy with its glossy black finish. You’ll also notice the decent looking set of headphones in that photo above which, in my mind, implies that the dock/cradle will allow you to sync, charge and use headphones while the device Diamond is plugged in! Now that would be cool!” That would be pretty cool. The Touch Diamond will be hitting Europe in a couple of weeks, so we’ll undoubtedly see more and more accessories soon. This one will supposedly cost about $50 US — not too bad. The UK product page says… “Sync, charge up and listen to the music! Charge or synchronise your HTC Touch Diamond simply by placing the handset in the cradle. Plug the desktop cradle into a home stereo system via the cradle’s 3.5mm line out connection to enjoy high quality music playback. Sleek and simple, like the HTC Touch Diamond, this cradle is the perfect accessory.” So there you have it. Charging, synching, and audio out. Pretty standard. → Read More
Here’s some more video of the Touch Diamond’s interface. The various devices I’ve seen have at times been a little laggy with the photos and the tilt sensor — stuff like that. It may have to do with the fact that they’re connected to the Wi-Fi network here along with 150 other people. Hopefully the production versions will be a bit snappier. The device demo’d in the main presentation hummed along pretty well except for hanging up on a particular article of a graphics-intensive car web site. Higher resolution video available here. → Read More
Here are some photos of the Touch Diamond. It’s a lot smaller than I thought. Enjoy. → Read More
The sound got all jacked up — my battery was dying. Forgiveness, please. Try to just listen with your eyes. I have a briefing in a couple hours so I’ll get better footage. → Read More
Doug Aamoth here in London at the HTC announcement. Hit the jump for more. VIDEOS TOO! → Read More
