THE MOBILE HORNET … for those who get turned on by mobile devices

The HTC Touch Diamond has many beautiful secrets that enhance the usability of the device: 

• Inside a normal smartphone:
  Dial a number, hold the phone up to your ear and listen to it ring and ring and then wait until they pick up.
  • INSIDE THE TOUCH DIAMOND:
    Dial a number, and just hold the phone. When the person answers, you feel a little vibration. Then hold the phone to your ear and start talking.

• Inside a normal smartphone:
  Difficult to find the mute button when using the phone especially to silence an incoming call.
  • INSIDE THE TOUCH DIAMOND:
    To mute, just flip the phone over and place it face down in order to ignore and silence an incoming call.

• Inside a normal smartphone:
  Stylus just slot in without any additional feature.
  • INSIDE THE TOUCH DIAMOND:
    Stylus is held in by a magnet and snaps into place.  When the stylus is remove, the Touch Diamond wakes up from standby mode and ready to use.

•  Inside a normal smartphone:
  Screen brightness is in constant brightness
  • INSIDE THE TOUCH DIAMOND:
    Screen has the ambient light sensor which adjust the screen brightness according to how bright the environment was.

• Inside a normal smartphone:
  No active light on the Action button
  • INSIDE THE TOUCH DIAMOND:
    There are little LED lights inside the circular part of the action button. They’ll glow and flicker in different patterns to indicate different status states. A slow glow from top to bottom indicates a charging status, while a rapid flicker indicates an alert or announcement.
  • More functions of the Action button:
    Touching the action button with your finger while using the camera will activate auto-focus. Continue to press the button all the way to take a picture. 
    Rubbing the circular area around the action button in a clockwise or counterclockwise motion will zoom in or zoom out in the Photo Album and Opera browser. It will also change the text font sizes in email messages and text messages.

Malaysia is supposed to receive official stocks of the HTC TOUCH DIAMOND by next week.  But some stocks are already available in Malaysia.  (You can get it at Low Yat, Kuala Lumpur or at Gadza, Queensbay, Penang.)  Since UK will only receive their stocks later in the month (as announced by DeviceWire), does it apply to other countries too. If HTC is facing a production issue, I guess some of you have to wait too.

Or are they delaying the shipment after receiving all the orders and see what Apple is offering in the new iPhone before they ship out. A possible last minute tweaking to enhance it?

If you are living in Asia or happened to be in Hong Kong, you will be able to get the HTC Touch Diamond sooner than those living in the U.S.

The Touch Diamond is being produced and is shipping NOW to Hong Kong.  If you really can’t wait for it to arrive Malaysia or your country, get it from some of those Hong Kong online stores.  For U.S. buyers, it will be wise to wait for the American version to arrive their shores.

More photos of the T-Mobile MDA Compact IV and Vario IV which are variants of the HTC Touch Diamond and Raphael respectively:

The HTC Raphael will be my choice over the Touch Diamond.

The HTC Raphael is smaller in size than the TyTN II:

• TyTN II - 112 x 59 x 19 mm
• Raphael - 103 x 52 x 18.1 mm
• Touch Diamond - 102 x 51 x 11.35 mm

This is the Ferrari of all PDA phones 

I can never imagine that the day will come so soon for us to have high-speed wireless connectivity in such a small package.  The Touch Diamond utilizes broadband-like speeds with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps wireless connectivity.

The Touch Diamond comes with a new customized mobile web browser that enables easy viewing and effortless navigation of websites in the way they were designed. As part of this browsing experience, users can  easily zoom and pan websites with one-hand and automatically view optimized content that has been specially created to fit the display.

Turning the device sideways automatically rotates the web page view from a portrait to landscape view. 

More photos at the Malaysian launch on 27 May 2008:

BEHIND CLOSED DOORS

With all the hype on the London launch, the effect on the Malaysian launch today in Kuala Lumpur, has lost much of its lustre.  But anyway, the Touch Diamond is still a diamond in terms of features and you may need a product like the coming 3G iPhone to challenge it.

Delaying the availability of the stocks to June is not a move you will learn from the Sun Tzu Art of War.  Apple is supposed to have stocks IMMEDIATELY after their June 9 launch.  HTC will be wise if they make the  Touch Diamond  available before the iPhone launch date.

“Today we mark a new era in mobile phone evolution, an era where beauty and size integrate with uncompromising innovation at broadband speeds,” said Peter Chou, president and CEO, HTC Corp. “The HTC Touch Diamond will make browsing the Web and using web-enabled applications just as practical and easy to use as making calls.”

The HTC Touch Diamond™ will be available from June 2008 at all authorized resellers at a suggested retail price is RM 2,799.00 (US$848).  I guessed right.  But then SIS, the Malaysian local distributor might have other price structure like what they used to do with all previous HTC products.

DIAMONDS ARE A GIRL’S BEST FRIEND …

SO WHERE ARE THE GIRLS THIS TIME?

In case you are wondering who are these well-dressed gentlemen in the photo.  Here are their positions:

• SK Wong
  • Country Manager, HTC Malaysia
• Melvin Chua
  • Product Marketing Manager, South East Asia HTC
• Frank Teh
  • Managing Director of SiS Distribution (M) Sdn Bhd

HTC  usually launch their new products using female models but these were absent in the launch at London and Malaysia.  Were they a distraction to the features of the new products launch?  Or they were actually unnecessary to be there.  Where unboxing a new device is so fascinating, I guess the ladies (no offence meant) don’t play an important part in new mobile device launches, especially in the world of gadget-crazy guys.

Here are the official specs for the HTC Touch Diamond:

• Processor Qualcomm® MSM7201A™ 528 MHz
• Operating system Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
• Memory ROM: 256MB
• RAM: 192MB
• Internal storage: 4 GB
• Dimensions 102 mm (L) X 51 mm (W) X 11.35 mm (T)
• Weight 110 g (with battery)
• Display 2.8-inch TFT-LCD flat touch-sensitive screen with VGA resolution
• Network HSDPA/WCDMA:
  • 1. Europe/Asia: 900/2100 MHz
  • 2. Up to 384 kbps upload and 7.2 Mbps for download
• Tri-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE:
  • Europe/Asia:900/1800/1900 MHz
    (Band frequency and data speed are operator dependent.)
• Device Control TouchFLO™ 3D
• Touch-sensitive navigation control
• GPS Internal GPS antenna
• Connectivity Bluetooth® 2.0 with EDR, A2DP, and AVRCP
• Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/g
• HTC ExtUSB™ (11-pin mini-USB 2.0 and audio jack in one)
• Camera Main camera: 3.2 megapixel color camera with auto focus
• Second camera: VGA CMOS color camera
• Audio Built-in microphone, speaker and FM radio with RDS
• Ring tone supported formats:
  • 1. MP3, AAC, AAC+, WMA, WAV, and AMR-NB
  • 2. 40 polyphonic and Standard MIDI format 0 and 1 (SMF)/SP MIDI
• Battery Rechargeable Lithium-ion or Lithium-ion polymer battery
  • Capacity: 900 mAh
  • Talk time:
    • 1. Up to 270 minutes for WCDMA
    • 2. Up to 330 minutes for GSM
  • Standby time:
    • 1. Up to 396 hours for WCDMA
    • 2. Up to 285 hours for GSM
• Video call time: Up to 145 minutes for WCDMA
  (The above are subject to network and phone usage.)
• AC Adapter Voltage range/frequency: 100 ~ 240V AC, 50/60 Hz
• DC output: 5V and 1A
• Value Added Applications  TouchFLO™ 3D, Microsoft® Office Outlook® Mobile, Internet Explorer® Mobile, Opera Browser, Microsoft® Office Mobile (Microsoft® Office Word Mobile, Microsoft® Office Excel® Mobile, Microsoft® Office PowerPoint® Mobile, Microsoft® OneNote Mobile), Windows Media® Player 10 Mobile, Windows Live™, Adobe Reader LE, Adobe Flash Lite, ZIP, Comm Manager, Task Manager, Audio Manager, Audio Booster, MP3 Trimmer, FM Radio, YouTube, Connection Setup, Cyberon Voice Commander, 3G Video Telephony, Internet Sharing, Album, Live HTC Home™, RSS Hub, Quick GPS, WorldCard Mobile(CD), Sprite Backup(CD), Chinese support through CE-Star (CD), Talking Dictionary (CD)

If you look at the prices on launch day, Malaysians might be  getting a raw deal if the rumoured price of RM2,799 is to be accepted.  Singapore is at RM2,602 and India at RM2,074.  Lets hope the Malaysian rumoured price be just a rumour and the actual launch day price  will be somewhere below RM2,600.  I must say that the price of RM2,799 is too close to the new price of RM2,888 for the TyTN II, not forgetting that the TyTN II comes with a keyboard and future upgrade to Windows Mobile 6.1.  Someone is accepting pre-orders for the Touch Diamond at RM2,750 in Malaysia prior to launch day.

The price in India is at a low RM2,074.  This is because it is a modified version running on EDGE and not 3G.

HTC Touch Diamond is now available in India exclusively on the Airtel network.  The HTC Touch Diamond will be available through Airtel for Rs27,500 (RM2,074.96 or US$642.90) at all authorized HTC resellers.

In Malaysia, the HTC Touch Diamond will be launched at 10:30am on  Tuesday 27 May 2008 in Kuala Lumpur.  Just to confirm that it is not a rumour but a fact, here is the invitation card I received from HTC :

(Entry is by invitation only)

The launch is in progress right now at Shangri-La Hotel, Singapore.  Malaysians have to wait for the Kuala Lumpur launch on 27 May 2008.

The HTC Touch Diamond will be available from June 2008 at all authorized resellers in Singapore at a suggested retail price of S$1,098 (inclusive of 7% GST) which is equivalent to RM2,602.40 or US$806.32.

View this video clip and see how the HTC Touch Diamond will dazzle your eyes:

Touch wood?  Better to touch diamond!

One beautiful unit of the HTC TOUCH DIAMOND has landed on Malaysian soil and made its way to The Mobile Hornet … only long enough for me to capture some photo shots (with today’s Star newspaper as background) for all of you to see.

The Touch Diamond is a real masterpiece. Enjoy the eye candy:

Don’t worry.  You will soon be able to get your hands on the Touch Diamond.  Singapore is launching it in the next 2 days. Malaysia is launching it on 27 May and the price is rumoured to be RM2,799.00 (US$848.00). Looks like we are ahead of Europe!

I believe this is HTC marketing strategy to rush the Asian launch this month.  You see, Apple 3G iPhone will be launched on 9 June and HTC cannot afford the competition that is coming.  I understand that Singtel is going to launch the 3G iPhone in a big way.  To me the HTC Touch Diamond is a better device than the 3G iPhone but then the hype that follows the iPhone launch is phenomenon!  The iPhone has become a fashion statement.