day by day review of diamond.

[someone1234]

Coolsmartphone are doing a day by day review with a guy using it for a week. At least we'll find out about things like battery life!

days 1 and 2 are up, and u can ask quesions in the forum post for each day.

http://www.coolsmartphone.com/

[euromed]

Great review:cool:

[sunnycheng]

Thx! Really Really nice review! Take a look ppl!

I for one have confirmed to buying this phone after watching this video. The video
showed that the keys are very responsive when dialing numbers, which is really important I think.

[someone1234]

yeah, and you can ask him questions to answer in the next days review. If you can't be bothered to register to add a question, just ask here and i'll post it there.

[maxehret]

I don't think he has been asked, what Version Tomtom Navigator he tried on it, and if this was delivered with the device or did he install it on his own?

[someone1234]

lots of people have already asked that in day3..

Check here first:
http://www.coolsmartphone.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=12471

[arifhanid]

Day 4 has just been uploaded...

[imranbashir_uk]

@ someone1234,

Could you ask the following questions on my behalf, many thanks...

1. During your day 4 video you COPIED a picture into a subdirectory called new folder and though it showed up in the TouchFlo 3D app. However you should have MOVED the picture rather than COPYING it as the app will have picked up the original, or you should have seen the image twice. Could you re-do the test as a MOVE rather than COPY.

2. Could you try some games on the screen to see how they behave under VGA, try worms world party from jamdat if you can download the demo, and see if its easy to aim, you should have 6/7 steps between horizontal and vertical aim.

3. Using TomTom could you compare the calculating route time between two devices calculating the same route. Also brows the map on the diamond, and zoom fully out from street level to the whole of the map (UK or Europe) to let us see how quickly it re-renders the map.

[juiceppc]

Did anyone else notice the HORRIBLE video playback? I did. It looks just as bad as the Kaiser. WTF!?

[imranbashir_uk]

Did anyone else notice the HORRIBLE video playback? I did. It looks just as bad as the Kaiser. WTF!?

You need a media player that can utilise the hardware acceleration of the Qualcomm chipset, such as Core Player 1.2

[someone1234]

posted!

btw did everyone notice in day 4, it seems all 5 UMTS bands are supported :eek:

Did they manage to put the correct antenna's in or maybe its just because its a test handset.

@ someone1234,

Could you ask the following questions on my behalf, many thanks...

1. During your day 4 video you COPIED a picture into a subdirectory called ......

[Dark Fire]

Did anyone else notice the HORRIBLE video playback? I did. It looks just as bad as the Kaiser. WTF!?

Yeah, but as imranbashir_uk said, Windows Media Player is not the best software to use. Does anyone know if the phone in these reviews has the same software as the version that will be sold? If it does, that video problem might put the most lazy consumers off getting it.

[rorydaredkign]

nope
havent u seen the splash screens, or video 1, it says test rom, not for sale on it
some athenas were shipped with test roms, but that was only by compusa who were closing down i think.
but shipping what is their biggest release so far of 08, with great new enhancements without being complete would be utterly stupid [wait isnt that what happened with kaiser video drivers? :P]
Rory

[imranbashir_uk]

No that was test firmware only. It says so when he powers up the device. Also I don’t think the full firmware is going to be any better unless they can somehow hack windows media player to utilise the hardware acceleration of the chipset.

To visualise what I’m talking about think about windows just after a fresh install, the resolution is VGA, and the colour depth is only 16-Bit, its only after you install the drivers for your graphics card (Radeon) that you get to actually utilise the hardware.

In terms of the Diamond, Core Player 1.2 recognises the enabled graphics acceleration within the Qualcomm chipset and the software is able to fully utilise it.

[rorydaredkign]

yep and its worth paying whatever it costs because it utilised my athenas imageon too.. [i dont think that has drivers either]

[Dark Fire]

nope
havent u seen the splash screens, or video 1, it says test rom
Yeah, obviously those would be changed (and yes, I did see them, so please stop treating me like a retard - why would I have asked that question if I had not seen them?), but I'm not familiar with how much these ROMs change between test and final versions. For some companies that change is very small, whereas for others (Planetside) there can be a lot of change.

Also, I've finished watching day 4 now, and I think the Touch Diamond did fairly well in the battery test. Obviously it lost, but it only used roughly 33% more battery power than the other phone and he was using them pretty heavily.

[imranbashir_uk]

Won’t change that much unfortunately, most of HTC’s software is modular hence the reason it can be easily ported. The main difference I guess would be that the latest AKU of WM 6.1 will be incorporated.

If you think about it, its not in HTC’s interest to send out poor quality software to reviewers as most peoples judgments will be based on these reviews until they get to play with a mates version who was a early adopter.

[Dark Fire]

Meh. Sendo sent out a phone to reviewers and subsequently went bust.

[someone1234]

well another example is debug builds of all the exe's which spam logs with information about which functions are running, and contain extra structures to hold debug info. So you never really can be sure.
I'm sure that HTC will continue to tweak the rom with updates for a few months after release at the least.

[imranbashir_uk]

Generally agree that they will continue to tweak the ROM, but would they really send debug builds to reviewers? Hmmm not too sure about that one...

[imranbashir_uk]

posted!

btw did everyone notice in day 4, it seems all 5 UMTS bands are supported :eek:

Did they manage to put the correct antenna's in or maybe its just because its a test handset.

Thanks again. One more post please?

Just reading through the coolsmartphone forum and Gears responded to question 1 as it was asked by someone else also stating that he had cut the image rather than copy it. Could you quote his post on page 1 (6 from the bottom) and respond with the following: -


Gears,
Thanks for the reviews. I would like to make a comment. I double checked the video you posted of day 4 and you definitely COPIED the picture rather then CUT it, maybe you can do it again, but just not film it just to prove once and for all that it works or not as the case might be. Many thanks and appreciate this interactive review process you might be pioneering a new method for future reviews on the net.

[someone1234]

ok.. done.

[imranbashir_uk]

@ someone1234,

Just finished watching Day 5, and there you were! Its a pitty he didn’t have the opportunity to answer the questions.

I know I’m being lazy but I know I won’t ever be posting in that forum after the end of the review, so could I as you to re-submit questions 2 and 3 again in Day 5. Copied below...

1. Could you try some games on the screen to see how they behave under VGA, try worms world party from jamdat if you can download the demo, and see if its easy to aim, you should have 6/7 steps between horizontal and vertical aim.

http://download.handango.com/shareware/79537/Worms_PPC_EN_HEX_1.0.4d.exe

2. Using TomTom could you compare the calculating route time between two devices calculating the same route. Also brows the map on the diamond, and zoom fully out from street level to the whole of the map (UK or Europe) to let us see how quickly it re-renders the map.



Thanks ...

[myv6mustang]

Was it me or did that dimond video playback suck :(

[Piti81]

Is it possible to search for the contact? For example you are going to the contact menu but you do not want to scroll the through the whole menu (with for example 332 contacts). You want directly go to "Sarah Blues". Is it possible to type "s" and all contacts will be sorted starting from letter 's" at the beginning?

[someone1234]

imranbashir_uk: sorry i read your message before, then thought i'll post it after seeing the video of day 5, and just forgot! I wasnt sure what context to post in after your comment about me in the video. It was hilarious when i saw it!

Anyway i've posted your questions and Piti81's one too.

[imranbashir_uk]

no probs, thanks ...

[edan]

Was it me or did that dimond video playback suck :(

It sucked big time... at least with the Polaris/Cruise there is a work around for this.

Can someone please post whether they have successfully played movies on the diamond and what they did to make it work? Like converter used, resolution, format, and player?

[jkr284]

It sucked big time... at least with the Polaris/Cruise there is a work around for this.

Can someone please post whether they have successfully played movies on the diamond and what they did to make it work? Like converter used, resolution, format, and player?
A quote of mine from another avi/mpg thread. The diamond is far superior to the cruise at video playback!
im using coreplayer v1.2.5 build 4506 on qtv at high quality with a 700 meg avi file res 512x288 and its running like butter, its a huge huge leap from the touch cruise! Im very pleased with the diamonds performance.
Edit, I just did coreplayers Benchmark on this vid and got:
Average Speed: 130.09%
Video Frames: 1976
Audio Samples: 3844971
Amount Of Data: 5116KB

Bench Time: 01:00.756
Bench Frame Rate: 32.524
Bench Sample Rate: 63285
Bench Data Rate 689 kbit/s

Original Time: 1:19.040
Original Framerate: 25.00
Original Sample Rate: 48000
Original Data Rate: 530 kbit/s

I have no idea wether they are good or not but to me the playback is perfect!

[SecureGSM]

core player 1.24, direct Draw mode:

divx / xvid payback quality is great. no problem at all.

Format: XviD
Video: 688x384 (1.79:1), 24.000 fps, XviD build 47 ~888 kbps avg, 0.14 bit/pixel
Audio: 48 kHz, MPEG Layer 3, 2 ch, ~245.74 kbps avg

not a single dropped frame.