HTC Touch Diamond
Thanks to a friend (Céline, you are amazing), I have now a Windows Mobile 6.1 phone: the HTC Touch Diamond.
I know it is a bit old-fashioned with WM7 getting out soon, but I am not a .Net/Silverlight guy…
Hands on the device
The HTC device is quite classy on the outside as you can see.
Reset and Start-up wizard
First things first, I had reset all the data and reformat the drive, which was simple to find.
Then, the wizard for new installation pops-up, it is quite OK to use, and straight-forward. My memories tells me it was much worse at the time of WM5.
The first start is quite long, but not impossible to bear.
TouchFlo 3D
But at the second start, there is a horrible TouchFLO 3D SFR/Vodafone screens that opens. It is slow, badly designed, and doesn’t even remove the start button…
Oh poor me… After finally removing this mess (Settings->Today screen, then go under the items tab and uncheck the TouchFLO 3D box), all is back to normal.
Update ROM
The ROM on the machine was quite old, early 2008, I believe, so, I thought it would be a good idea to update it.
Going to the HTC support website was a great experience. I found the new ROM in a minute or two (1.97.163.4 instead of 1.37.xxx).
Downloading the ROM
Downloading the ROM was a bit more difficult, because it required my phone S/N to allow me to take only the “Vodafone FR” version. Which I don’t want…
It proved impossible to download the normal version, without the Vodafone crap on it.
The download took 102MB. I believe this is a big too much for just a ROM, but not that much either, compared to the iPhones updates.
And, of course, the update didn’t want to run, because it couldn’t find my phone. The connection was not OK.
Connection to PC
I need to correctly link my phone to my computer, running Windows 7. Some red cross tells me it couldn’t install the driver…
Downloading WMDC is a mess
My phone tells me to use ActiveSync, but it doesn’t exist for Windows 7. After a bit of searching, I find that this has been renamed to Windows Mobile Device Center. And of course, the MicroSoft ActiveSync website doesn’t link correctly to this new WMDC… How are normal people suppose to find that out?
Searching a bit more gave me the download link to WMDC for Vista, no mention of 7. Ok, let’s try anyway…
And this requires the WGA Validation tool. WTF!! Not in 2010, please… Come on, people just want to install their phones, not install a new cool feature or program.
I had to try 3 browsers to finally be able to get it, and only in French, not in English… And while the download started, it redirected to an error page…
Microsoft download website is probably the worse experience I have seen, with some AOL websites in 1995…
Installing WMDC
Installing WMDC is as simple as downloading it was difficult. Except the name (drvupdate-am64.exe, WTF?), everything was very straight-forward and the interface is actually simple, beautiful and nice!
Is it really Microsoft?
Updating the ROM
Synchronizing, updating the ROM and re-enabling the device was then uneventful, working and great. It took me a bit over 15minutes including the reboots and the removal of TouchFlo 3D.
Conclusion
I give HTC a B+ (I want the normal ROM) I give Microsoft a C (for the downloading experience, you deserved an E, but WMDC is nice…)