Briefly: HTC Touch Diamond vs. iPhone

Your reviewer obviously knows little about cellphones, especially windows mobile ones.

Firstly, there have been plenty of VGA windows mobile phones, and there are plenty around at present. Secondly the GSM Touch Diamond is much thinner than the iPhone. Thirdly maybe your reviewer should have used a PC, not Mac to sync the phone, thats what most iPhone users use. Fourthly, he said little about the areas of advantage of the Touch, such as being able to set any music as ring tones, to use A2DP, to beam music to other people, to cut and paste in the browser, to use voice dialing, to record video or many other areas where this phone blows the iPhone away.

Another sham review clearly.

How about removable storage media, a full bluetooth stack (not a

castrated version like on the iPhone), a myriad of applications,

both commercial and freeware that reside on the device itself

together with it's data (although web apps and data are available

too).

For apple addicts, this means if you do not have a wireless

connection you can still access all data and installed apps, and of

course exchange it via WiFi, Bluetooth, IR(wich I can use as a TV

remote in a jiffy), standard USB cable (did I mention the cable is

regular micro USB...), and of course if needed I can just swap

MicroSD cards and access photos, exel spreadsheets, standard

word docs...

Windows Mobile 2006, can be lousy as a handheld's device OS

but the devices it runs on are completely open to the user, just like

your desktop, I see a program I like and I can install it without the

need for any sort of connection other than the standard USB cable

to my PC.

Furthermore, putting down stylus use in favor of multi-touch or
finger input, is simply naive; what about drawing, do you think you

can do that better with your finger? Or 2 finger typing; can you do

that faster than you can scribble on a notepad with a pen? I can

input text faster with Graffiti than with any 2 finger keyboard,
hardware or software, is Graffiti available for the iPhone? or any

other data input method?

Apple has certainly been and IS an innovator, but if an Apple
product does not have a certain option or feature does not

automatically mean it is unimportant or seldom used; by the way,

did I mention ANY Palm, or Windows Mobile has had one

marvelous Apple pioneered feature somehow absent on the

iPhone? of course I mean Cut and Paste...

Touch Diamond doesn't look like a competitor to iPhone - it's just a logical development of HTC series of WM devices. Frankly, with Windows Mobile workflow you won't be able to compete with phone-centric OS at all, be it OS X, Android or even Symbian. Windows Mobile is all about copying desktop experience on your pocket device, and it comes with the price of awkwardness, but it gets the job done, almost any job. On the other hand iPhone is the device of a few functions, each perfectly polished.

P.S. Boy, I love dumb-a$$ comments on MacNN! The first two posters promptly shut their eyes on Diamond's shortcomings listing only the ones of iPhone, like Diamond is all about perfection. How about plugging standard headphones with 3.5 stereo jack into Diamond, you doofuses? Or you prefer using lame sounding bluetooth headsets all the time, and the ability to install fart.mp3 as the ringtone for your boss calls is vital and far more important than simple usability? Looks like it is.

I had used Windows Mobile devices since 2002. My opinion is you can give any hardware boost to any Windows Mobile, but the Operating System will be always a problem by itself. Only IT people who like to install, reinstall and tuning the device could enjoy that Operating System. You almost have to live for Windows and their problems. I am done with Windows Mobile. Never more! Thank good for the iPhone. Best OS I ever seen!!! (Let's see Adroid, I believe that could be as good as iPhone)

Just a point of view!

I used a Windows mobile device for a couple of years, but ended up going back to Palm. the biggest problem is that ActiveSync does not maintain a complete backup of the device, and it doesn't even maintain a secure repository of the applications you've installed. If you have to recover or migrate to a new device, you're basically hosed... even if you use the third-party backup software that every WinCE device reseller bundles, it's only good for restoring to the same make and model of handheld.

As long as Windows Mobile is the under lying OS, these phones don't have a chance. Windows Mobile is just awkward to use and requires lots of tweaking to get it to do what you want it to do. After dealing with Windows Mobile for over 2 years it's a pleasure to use the iPhone's UI.