I’ve managed to get hold of the stylish HTC Touch Diamond phone. My Sunday was spent mainly playing with this gadget. Some of the features are really cool, amongst them the weather forecast. The weather forecast could be cooler than any iPhone trick, despite getting a wrong weather forecast fo Petaling Jaya.
There general feeling is that it’s a sophisticated phone, much more than an iPhone(not just the price). However, there is also a feeling that too much is being served on the plate. When I pick up an iPhone, it is fairly easy to manouvere the interface, it is more complicated with HTC Touch Diamond.
Reviewers said that it’s the best a phone that is running on Windows Mobile can do. More often that not, Mircrosoft has become the bashing victim. A fault in Windows is always magnified while one in Apple is always downplayed. Windows Mobile is the same. There are desired room for improvement, hence the anticipation for WM7. But overall, WM is fine, but not cute.
Diamond should be made easier to use. And it has managed to so far hide the clunkiness of WM6 with it’s stylish layout. Of course occasionally I still see a windowish messagebox popping up that reminds me that this is a windows machine. Also, diamond’s alarm clock certainly woke me up from my dreams, I spent half a minute trying to figure out how to knock the alarm off.
Smart phone reviews have the preconceived notion of iPhone-is-the-standard. Whenever there is a departure from iPhone standard, it is deemed not cute. A friend who is also using the same phone wonder why the manouvering zoom of Diamond is different, why can’t they just follow Apple by using the strengthing two finers, rather than circiling. I think it’s good to set standard one of them is to have a standard for intuitize usage, despite the word ‘intuitive’. However, I suspect the sliding finger trick might have been patented by Apple. AFAILike Apple, Apple is essentially as closed as Microsoft. Check out the F#!@ing NDA fiasco to understand it.
Smart phone should be an imbodiment of it’s user. It should be cool and fast for a user to manouver. I hope in the coming days or weeks I can get the user experience of Diamond to that level.
Or else, Diamond might have failed me, or I might have failed the Diamond.
