Not long after Samsung gets their Omnia overshadowed by the iPhone release do they send out a new competitor, the Samsung Tocco (Italian for Touch). This newest competitor has a form factor very similar to the Omnia though it doesn’t run Windows Mobile. How does it compare to the Touch Diamond? Here’s the rundown with some of the known specs:

Screen:
TD: 2.8″ resistive touch screen VGA (480×640) display
Tocco: 2.8″ ?? touch screen QVGA (240×320) display (not known if capacitive or resistive)

Battery:
TD: 396/285 hours standby time (WCDMA/GSM)
Tocco: 250 hours standby time

Camera:
TD: 3.15MP w/ auto focus
Tocco: 5MP w/ auto focus + image stablization + LED flash

Data:
TD: 850/900/2100 HSDPA/WCDMA depending on location + Class 12 EDGE
Tocco: 2100 HSDPA + Class 12 EDGE

Memory:
TD: 4GB internal storage w/ no expansion slot
Tocco: 232MB internal storage w/ upto 8GB via expansion slot

These are just some of the specs, but it’s pretty amazing what they’ve packaged into this smartphone with a proprietary OS. They’ve managed to provide video playback, music playback, java support, organizer software, document viewers, and tons of other features you would expect in a smartphone running Windows Mobile, Symbian, Palm, etc. Watch out Diamond!

The Touch Diamond and Pro are getting a major overhaul with some pretty cool 3rd party software. Where TouchFLO 3D left off with hiding Windows Mobile, Touch Xperience starts. It gives the Start Menu a much cleaner touch friendly menu. If you’re tired of the TouchFLO 3D or just want a change, you can use the included Touch Home interface which allows widgets and custom layouts via XML documents.

Specifically for the touch diamond and pro, the rotation with the g-sensor is extended to all apps and you can use gestures on the d pad to execute different actions or programs. The most interesting feature off this application is the custom profiles. You can make your phone perform a certain function or task based on different events and conditions. You can even have actions based on GPS locations!

From their website, here are the examples:
Enable flight mode during nights
Connect to Wi-Fi while battery is charging
Deactivate alarm when I turn my device face down
Put phone in silent mode at workplace
Remind me to buy bread when I’m near to the bakery

Unfortunately, this program is still in beta testing. If you want, you’ll need to apply to the waiting list over at XDA-Developers.

Via PocketNow - Notice this article’s by Brandon

Looks like the United States version will be getting the GSM 850 and 1900 bands after all. Early adopters of the US version are going to face some problems as their Touch Diamonds do not have the radio to support the 850 and 1900 bands out of the box, but all imports will have a free upgrade of ROM to support the 850 band (allowing for EDGE data). What’s that mean to you? The new United States version will support the needed radio frequencies for 7.2 Mbps for HSDPA. Those seem like some comfortable download speeds, right? Currently, there is no time frame or price or carrier information available. :crosses fingers for tmobile!:

Via >Engadget

In this video, Arne Hess from the::unwired gives us a hardware tour of the German Touch Pro, and the only real surprise is that the microSD card slot seems to be under the batter cover, meaning that you’ll have to take off the back to swap cards. Other differences compared to the Touch Diamond is that the backing has a soft coating to it, and the front of the device has slightly rounded edges.

Holding off on a Touch Diamond purchase because of bad battery life? Clove Technology has made a 1800mAh battery to replace the underpowered stock 900mAh battery for the Touch Diamond. At the same time, the extended battery makes the Touch Diamond roughly the size of the Touch Pro. With the new dimensions, a complete new faceted back is provided with the battery to look like the original. Since Clove is a UK-based company, users in the United States will be looking at a price of $43.88 (original is £22 in UK).

Since there are no official dimensions of the extended battery and cover, right below this you can see see a touch diamond and a touch pro comparison to illustrate the thickness.

You can buy the battery here.

Via Tacy and Matt’s Blog

Nishanth recently posted about an official HTC-issued ROM update for the Touch Diamond that unlocks the 850GSM band and makes TouchFLO 3D faster, among a few other things.

In this video, we can see the improvements that have been made to TouchFLO 3D. It’s not that it was slow before - it was that the animations made it feel slow, so HTC cut a lot of them out, and now it seems much more snappy.

Through all the hush-hush from HTC for the FCC to keep quiet, documents reveal that a GSM variant of the Touch Pro has been approved for the US market. It will have include Quad-Band GSM (850/950/1800/1900 MHz). It will support EDGE, but not 3G connections like HSDPA and HSUPA. Looks like this might go to T-Mobile: why would AT&T ship a non-3G variant though the phone could have the capability? Also, the WiFi makes it a good candidate for T-Mobile’s HotSpot@Home service.

Which carrier do you think will pick it up?

EDIT July 26, 2008: Sorry, a small misunderstanding. Thanks for the clarification Shawn!

Via TMoNews

HTC must have been feeling a lot of pressure from the consumers and the community. They’ve released an official update for the Touch Diamond that takes the phone quad-band (meaning you can use it on AT&T now, but only with EDGE data), like the unofficial update from not to long ago. Not only that, TouchFLO 3D is said to be faster, audio quality is higher with the booster enabled, and most of the small annoying bugs have been worked out. Not bad, especially when it comes to HTC and releasing timely updates. It’ll be interesting to see what other updates they do as the more features are unofficially unlocked. The ROM is available at the HTC’s Hong Kong website.

Via PDABreak

Looks like people with Orange in UK will be the envy of the world: the HTC Touch Diamond is completely free on a Dolphin 40 (18 month contract) plan. Pretty good deal, right? Now if only we could get T-Mobile USA to do the same thing…:D

For those who have been waiting on end to find out when they can get their hands on the Touch Pro, looks like mobilewhack’s got us a rumored release date and price. The phone is expected to be released on September 1st, 2008 with a very steep price of £468.07 or $930 in the UK. The hike of price is probably related to the fact that the Touch Pro adds QWERTY keyboard and more onboard memory to the Touch Diamond great feature-set. If you’re living elsewhere, you’ll probably want to wait on the Touch Pro release in your respective countries. In the US, Verizon will be carrying the Touch Pro and will give a slightly more reasonable price.

Of course, you can always wait for the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1. It comes with a similar set of features and is said to release mid-September.

Via Mobilewhack