HTC Touch HD aka Blackstone

It has been almost a month now since I first own this phone. I promised another review and here it is.

So far I had flashed 4 different ROMs from different developers. They’re all competitively good but I decided to stick with Dutty’s Xtreme ROM. There is great potential in the phone, but sadly there’re limited support to it, therefore community developers are really appreciated on the xda-developers.com.

Battery Life
The phone now drains significantly more battery than its stock rom. It’s not a good thing, but it’s nobody to blame, but the phone. I don’t blame the phone though, I blame technology. Well you got to work out the math to understand why,
Stock ROM = Stock performance
Cooked ROM = Better performance
Better performance = Greater clock cycles = Greater heat generated = Greater power consumption (BAD)

So to conclude all the mathematical equation to you, faster = bad. Hahaha. Just kidding. What I trying to say, everything comes with a price. With better perfomance on the Blackstone, you need to sacrifice the battery life of you phone.

I’m quite happy with it because it definitely last me for the day with heavy usage. Last me for 2 and half days with adequate usage and could last longer if I disconnect myself from the world, literally.

Call quality
Calls are clear and crispy. I can hear very clearly throughout a phone call and even video call is amazingly clear. For once I was listening to music and speak through my headphones without a mic! See how amazing the phone is. It’s not the wonders of my Sennheiser, it’s just how speakers works, it can be use as microphones too.

Music Player
Music quality is superb! I can’t say more about it. It can be really loud on my Sennheiser and the quality is above what I expected from a mobile phone. It also automatically stop the music when there’s an incoming call.

Sluggishness
I guess this is unavoidable on Ms Windows based system. No matter it’s on a mobile device or a desktop platform, it’s still to blame on the OS architecture.

Finger friendly
Very indeed! You can’t beat the iPhone on this, but it’s nearly there! Job well done for introducing Touchflo3D on the device.

Internet
Wifi, Data connection through HSPDA, 3G are all smooth and responsive. I surf the Internet like I normally do at home without any shortcoming! Actually there’s a tiny little flaw, that the phone doesn’t have a cursor so I can’t browse over Facebook images to see who was tagged. This is actually to blame the website and Opera mobile browser!

SMS & e-Mails
We must admit that we can’t live without SMS and e-Mails nowadays. I can check both type of messages without much effort. With the schedule settings, Blackstone will download my mails using IMAP. I can delete it on my phone and it propagates to the mail servers and vice versa, automatically!

Memory Storage
Too much, don’t know what to do with the free space. Maybe I should put more music in it, but I can’t even finish listening to all of them! Moreover now 32GB SDHC is available in the market, try eat that iPhone!

Touch
As the phone’s name implies, we have to operate this phone using touch 98% all the time! 2% will be clicking the power switch, soft reset button and the volume keys. 98% of the time!! So you better expect the touch responsiveness is good! It does live up to its name fortunately. Still it can’t beat the iPhone in this, but you can do a lot of other things with the Blackstone.

wow…. haha

My white Dopod D810

Any computer literated person can make full use of this PDA phone. You can install any of your favourite music player, video player, Internet browser, picture editing tools, PDF viewer etc.. You can install thousands of games too that you’ll never get bored while commuting. The 240×320 resolution is great for viewing photos and watching videos.

The phone comes with built in 802.11b/g Wireless LAN (Wifi). You can surf YouTube and chat online anywhere. If there is no wireless connection nearby, in times of need you can still connect to the Internet using the HSDPA 3G connection. Connection speed is adequately good in this small device.

Memory always comes scarce, fitting a 4gb miniSD into the memory expansion slot is not a problem. Installing tons of application and hundreds of MP3 and this marvelous piece still works. Buy yourself a earphone with a mini USB converter and you can enjoy movies, series, and MTVs in long journeys.

Besides bluetooth, wireless and HSDPA 3G connection, this fancy unit also comes with a mini USB and an infrared connection. You can program your own universal remote control with this PDA! Good to play a prank on your friends while secretly hopping the TV channel!

Every mobile phone now must have feature is a camera lens. Handy camera phone let us snap amazing moments no matter when and where we are. Although the camera of the D810 is not as promising as its rival, it still can take photos up to 2.0 mega pixels without a build in flash.

The speaker of this loud enough to listen to your favourite music but do take notice that it is not very clear if you blocked the speaker hole. I always have missed calls while having my phone in my pocket, especially when I’m walking. The ring tone sometimes doesn’t reach my ears, and the vibration is not bad, but weak for a chunky phone like this.

I find the GPS most useful in Australia, having so many roads and streets has never been a problem since I install the D810 with Tomtom Navigator 7.5. It’s the same piece of program that most of the cabbies use here. Once I hop into a cab with it holding on my hand, and the cab driver was shocked and said “Wow you have that too on your phone!”

The GPS captures signals from satelites around the space above you. As long as you’re in the open, catching a signal is not too hard at all.

Overall I love this phone, I never regret buying this phone. One of the best gadgets around, yea I’m a geek.

Back to the topic, yea… couple days ago I got myself the very first PDA phone in my life!! I’ve been patience for more than 4 years to have this phone!! I wanted a PDA phone so much but it’s too pricey and I can’t afford it, and it always doesn’t not have ALL the function I expected.

My previous dream phone was actually O2 XDAII, but the time when I can afford one of those, 3G is hitting the network and I feel pointless to get it.

I don’t know why I always wanted a PDA phone, it always been the ultimate gadget to me, nothing else, not computers, not graphic cards, nope.. it’s this.

…a Dopod D810

Yeap, I was using the Sony Erricson K610i for only 2 months, which I got it for FREE. Until last Monday when I was chatting with Dede (he’s a PDA freak!), he told me that how good this phone is, and the thing that he shouldn’t have told me is Hutchison 3 mobile operator is providing a plan for this phone!

I was curious about the phone so I went to check it online. I was drooling over the features and function that this phone has!! I couldn’t believe my eyes that finally something I wanted so much has finally in the market!

It has Wifi, 3G, infrared, bluetooth, style and the list just go on and on! It has everything a PDA phone should have in this one small package!

SE K610i vs Dopod D810

Look at the size of that PDA phone, it’s not much bigger than my previous K610i!

The phone come in two colors, glossy black & white. The downside of this phone is that it’s a fingerprint magnet, due to it’s glossy surface. That’s why I chose white because you can’t notice your print even it’s there, and it’s pretty cool too!

I find it lovely, nothing wrong with the phone so far, it’s finely built. That’s 1 thing I like about solid phones, like my previous Motorola V60i & V3x, they are both very solid and firm. One thing that you can tell is it is fully packed with what it should have, no space for little cockroach.

I don’t know what to say about it, it’s just too perfect. Not yet, because I’m waiting for my 2GB miniSD card to arrive soon, then it’ll be perfecto!

Oh ya.. another downside is I have to pay extra AUD$36 on top of my monthly AUD$29 cap >.< eat grass la from now on…..

Here is the specification taken from Dopod Asia if you want to know.

Basic
- OS: Microsoft Windows Mobile 5.0
- Frequency: GSM Quadband (850/900/1800/1900); UMTS Triband (2100/850/1900)
- Processor: Samsung 400MHz
- Memory: 128MB ROM, 64MB RAM (persistent storage)
- Size: 108 x 58.2 x 18.4 mm
- Weight: 150 grams w/battery
- Standby time: up to 250 hours
- Talk time: up to 5 hours
- Colour: Polished Black or Immaculate White (subject to country availability)

Ergonomics
- 5-way navigation button
- 360° scroll wheel
- 2 soft keys
- Hot-swappable MiniSD card slot

Interface/messaging
- Messages: SMS; MMS (English/Chinese)
- Email support: Outlook, multiple POP3, Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo mail (total up to 6 email accounts including Outlook)
- Push mail: Microsoft DirectPush (in conjunction with Exchange Server 2003 SP2)
- Recording: Unlimited (up to memory/storage card capacity)
- Voice tags: Yes
- Hands free: Yes

Data Communications
- Wide area connectivity: HSDPA/UMTS/GPRS/EDGE
- WiFi: Yes, 802.11b/g
- Bluetooth: Yes, v2.0 with A2DP and AVRCP
- USB: Yes (Sync and charge)

Screen
- Display: 2.8″ 240 x 320 resolution (QVGA)
- Color depth : 65536 colors TFT screen (effective)

Multimedia
- Supported ring tones: Polyphonic, MP3, WMA, WAV, AAC, AMR
- JAVA: Yes
- Multimedia player: Windows Media Player 10 Mobile (music / video)
- Picture and Video viewer

Camera
- Primary: 2.0 megapixel CMOS
- Video Recording: Yes
- Expansion slot: MiniSD

Others
- Supported languages: English (Chinese support through new version of CE-Star)
- Microsoft Office Mobile (Word, Excel, Powerpoint)
- Adobe PDF Viewer
- Sprite Backup
- RSS News Reader (available in future via web download)

Again about customization, Sony Ericsson doesn’t let you to set different ringtones for different profile, it only let you choose one ringtone for all the profiles regardless of where you are. Comon’ it’s ridiculous!! If you are a teenager who want’s to brag your friends that you have the newest ringtone by Akon – I wanna Fuck you, you can’t possibly use that same ringtone while you’re at dinner with your parents, right??

The camera feature lack of different environment settings. You can only choose between day or night mode. In fact Motorola V3x has different lightning conditions to choose from e.g. Automatic, Indoor, Sunny, Cloudy etc..

The battery last a little longer compared to the Motorola V3x, but it’s still not good enough for a phone. You won’t want to charge it every single day if you’re a heavy user.

The internal memory is not good enough for storing large amount of ringtones and pictures. Of course you can always opt to buy a secondary memory stick, which will cost you a bomb, to save all your sexy pictures.

That’s not all, of course it has it’s good points. The well-knowned file manager for example, lives up to its fame. It has an impressive file manager lets you browse your files either together or seperately from your phone memory and your memory stick.

I’m very fond with the T9 dictionary, it is far more better than the Motorola’s iTAP dick dictionary. The Motorola’s dick, i mean dictionary really has no brains, it doesn’t remember much of your previous inputs and lack of alot of vocabularies. This I have to admit and give a thumbs up to Sony Ericsson.

And again, the speakers are great, Motorola speakers are still comparable but it’s too soft, it can’t beat Sony Ericsson’s volume, not even close to it.

This is the last part which I promise Dwayne about, the camera comparison in bright and further object conditions:

Finally the picture quality give me back my impression of Sony Ericsson’s camera phone. The picture is sharper compared to the latter. But yet, it still lacks of different lightning conditions settings.

Both camera phones does not have auto focus and it’s 2.0 mega pixels. This is why I always tell my friends, high mega pixels doesn’t mean the camera is good. The Motorola V3x comes with macro mode and flash which the SEK610i lacked of. I have nothing more to say, I’m already very disappointed and have no mood to test other features anymore, maybe some other time. Can’t complain much though, this is what you get when it’s FREE!