The Touch Diamond/Pro Tips and Tricks Guide

Enjoy =D.

Goodbye (for now) =D.

With the slew of new HTC Touch devices, it looks like HTC is going back to where it started from with a revised version of the original HTC Touch. Codenamed the HTC Opal, this new Touch device will sport the exact same look as the original and even have the exact same specs as the original HTC Touch. What’s the difference? The only difference between this and the original is the TouchFLO 3D running on Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional and the brown band going around the phone’s exterior. It’ll be interesting to see how exactly TouchFLO 3D performs on the aging TI OMAP 850 200MHz processor when even the Diamond and Pro struggle at times with a Qualcomm 528MHz processor. The HTC Opal is rumored to come out in multiple colors, much like the original.

Via Engadget

A very surprising bit news came up today when HTC released yet another Touch family device. Meet the HTC Touch HD, which sports the biggeset screen for a Windows-Mobile based touch screen phone, which is speculated to be between 3.7″ to 4″. The phone comes with TouchFLO 3D and shares the Touch Diamond and Pro’s 528MHz Qualcomm processor, 256MB RAM, 512MB ROM, HSDPA, GPS, and a whopping 5 MP camera while managing to pack all of that into 12mm of sweetness (same as first-gen iPhone thickness, by the way). The screen on the phone is actually a WVGA (480×800) screen which looks nice even compared to the Touch Diamond/Pro’s VGA (480×640) screen and the iPhone’s (480×320).

The phone looks really nice and sleek, which is a big understatement in itself. It is said to be “in stores for Santa”.

MoDaCo via Engadget

Once again, the good folks over at XDA-Devs have made a great modding app. Thanks to susilange and DMAN-666 @ XDA, we can now edit TouchFLO 3D very easily. With version 0.2 of ManillaEditor, you can export each individual image and edit or replace images. It looks somewhat tedious to me, but all you graphics gurus out there are already turning ideas in your head. The program provides a very nice clean interface, but it looks like it is geared towards more of intermediate to advanced users.

For everyone else who are like me and could not ever do this kind of editing, XDA is a great source for some themes. You can find themes ranging from the O2 and T-Mobile official themes to custom themes ranging from os themes such as the iPhone or Vista theme to movie themes like Hellboy.

Let the creativity out! I hope to see some great themes appearing on our own AllTouchSite forums from all of you graphic gurus!

In my own test, which you can see above, Opera and TouchFlo 3D are not the biggest memory hogs. For me, it’s a temporary file. Kind of surprising, isn’t it? Turns out, it happens to be very different per user. The creator of the program posted a screenshot showing that Opera Mobile was taking up a lot of memory on his Diamond.

You can download MobileMonger from the developer’s site. Link

What’s hogging up all your memory? Post your results with Mobile Monger here.

The Touch Diamond newest variant for Sprint just got its first review. Surprisingly, this wan’t done by all the big tech sites like Engadget, CNET, BoyGeniusReport, or us! The new Touch Diamond got its first review by Wall Street Journal, who like the rest of the world, made the comparison to the iPhone. Not much new information from before, but here are it is: Wireless options are WiFi, Bluetooth, and EVDO Revision A. GPS is optimized for use with Sprint Navigation, but there is no word about how it will be with other GPS Software. Sprint TV and Music has been added to TouchFLO 3D with a spruced up theme. Also, the Microsoft Office Mobile Suite seems to be dusted off with DataViz’s DocumentsToGo suite for Office Applications. That’s not a bad thing, considering DataViz seemed to take a lot more time than Microsoft did with these mobile productivity apps. Also, the Touch Diaomond is confirmed to come in with the burgundy/red back for the phone.

With a 1340 mAh battery, things seem to be looking nice for this CDMA sibling of the Touch Diamond…In fact, very nice.

Via CNET

There’s a new competitor in the smartphone field, looking to take some of those high-end smartphone users away from the regular devices. Meet the S740, which looks strikingly like the Touch Pro, except a lot thinner and has a keypad on the front. But here’s the big difference: the HTC S740 is the a Windows Mobile Smartphone, meaning it does not have a touch screen for input. Oh no! No TouchFLO 3D! Don’t worry, the HTC S740 borrows a lot of elements from the Touch Diamond and Pro, if you couldn’t already tell by the exterior. One of these is the nice stylized sliding panels. (T-Mobile Shadow/HTC Juno users: look for my S740 based ROM soon!). Looks like this is the new way all HTC devices will look, though I can see this to become kind of boring and repetitive soon.

No features known of as of now, but keep looking on AllTouchSite for updates.

Via Engadget

Looks very sleek in the HTC Victor variant. Check out the video below:

Via MobileSyrup

Feature of the Day is back! As promised from two or three weeks ago, I’ll continue with the HTC Album software found on the Touch Diamond, though it is the same as the Touch Pro. HTC Album is a very nice improvement to the mundane and boring Pictures and Videos app supplied with Windows Mobile 6/6.1. If you access it from TouchFLO 3D, you get the elegant 3D photo and video viewer that for some reason reminds me of the Microsoft Surface table computer. With simple up or down gestures, you can move quickly from one photo or video to another.

In the actual HTC Album software, you have the TouchFlo 3D influenced interfaces and menus that are just more aethetically pleasing to the eye than the Windows Mobile app. With HTC Album, photos and videos are viewed in the same app, unlike its WM counterpart that needs Windows Media Player to play videos. This is much more convenient.

When viewing a photo in HTC Album, the picture adjusts itself to the orientation of the phone much faster than other apps that use the accelerometer. For zooming in, you spin your finger clockwise. Likewise, to zoom out, you spin you finger counter-clockwise. It’s pretty neat seeing that actually work. Another option for zooming in and out is by using the touch scroll wheel built into the hardware panel. You can pan between different photos or videos by swiping you finger from side to side on the screen. While you are viewing a picture, a single tap on the screen gets you the most convenient options with a simple TouchFLO 3D style menu for more options.

You get the same nice experience with the slideshow part of HTC Album. The default has a nice and subtle fading transition between each picture, making it very elegant. You can also change the animations and delays for the slideshow

On the whole, the HTC Album stands out as one of the most heavily worked on apps by HTC. It’s a good thing they did, as it turned out to be such a great addition to both the Touch Diamond and Pro.