Everyone has seen the Touch Diamond Weather application. It’s fun and different with all of its exaggerated animations. Like most others, I’d say the rain animation is the best. But all of this is useless if you can’t even get the weather for the city that you live in or are planning to travel to. Since HTC uses Accuweather as their source for all weather information, you would think that you could change it, but HTC taken the liberty of hiding it somewhere in the OS files. Of course, with XDA-dev being PPC hack central, there’s bound to be a way to get around this big oversight by HTC. At first there was a long and tedious method of doing this that involved a lot of hex editing, modifying TouchFLO 3D’s core and other nasty stuff that can really mess up your phone. Luckily for all of us, andreas.falke from XDA-Developers has made a nice and clean app that doesn’t even mess with all the stuff from the old method. It’s called WeatherDatabaseEditor, WDE for short. Could they be any more creative with names at XDA?

Here’s what you need to do:
Download WDE v1.1 from here. Make sure your Diamond has Microsoft’s .NET Compact Framework 3.5 installed. Odds are that it came with it.
Go to accuweather.com and search for your city. In the url in the address bar, after it says .com, there will be a section that goes something like /us/”state name”/”city name”, where state and city names are the names of your state and city. If you live in the US, you location code will begin with the prefix NAM and will be like this: NAM|US|”state name”|”city name”. Europe’s prefix is EUR and will be like this EUR|”country name”|”country area”|”city name”. It is similar for other continents and countries
Open WDE v1.1 and add you city. Then close the program.
Go back to TouchFLO 3D’s weather tab. You can now add your city from the list.

 

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A keen user over at XDA-Developers has gotten his hands on a HTC Touch Pro sporting a ROM with AT&T branding. Further proof of it being a real US-variant of the Touch Pro: it has no front-facing camera, and the keys are changed so that there is no longer a dedicated row of numbers at the top. More as it comes!

 

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The saying “the grass is greener on the other side” is probably the most true with this new information leak about the releases on the Touch Diamond and Pro. As these two phones make their way state side, they lose a lot of the luster they had, at least in the case of Verizon. Furthermore, the releases for Sprint have been pushed back to early September, while Verizon will make their releases in early October.

For Sprint:
The Touch Diamond will stay the same as the original HTC specs and will be branded as the HTC Victor.

The Touch Pro will lose the 4GB internal storage, but will have an increase to 512MB of ROM storage space. It will be branded as the HTC Herman. Weird names, aren’t they?

For Verizon:
The Touch Diamond loses its 4GB internal storage will come with a microSD slot instead, sporting 512MB of ROM. The processor for it has been underclocked to 400MHz instead of the 528MHz of the regular Touch Diamond. Not only that, it also loses the accelerometer! The one thing it does gain is a stainless steel frame instead of the aluminum, but this will drive the price up. It will be branded as the HTC Victor.

The Touch Pro also loses the 4GB internal storage for the 512MB ROM space and similar features to the Touch Diamond are lost (g-sensor, processor, etc.). It will be branded as the HTC Raphael.

On a last note, both phones on both carriers come equipped with a decent 1340mAh battery. However, that’s a small comfort for the features lost.

You can look at the side-by-side comparison of the Sprint and Verizon Touch Diamond features here and the Touch Pro here.

Via IntoMobile

 

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If you really want a Touch Pro and are willing to forgo eating for 2 months, you can pick one up on eBay for $1045.95. The price includes shipping, and the auction mentions that the phone may not ship for another 10-15 days. So essentially, it’s just another preorder, like the one found at Mobile Planet.

 

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With the newly added HTC Raphael AKA Touch Pro forum addition to XDA-Developers, tons of important software have come up for the yet-to-be released phone. With this, an AT&T ROM image has somehow found its way here. If you need verification, the ROM Image is officially shipped as RUU_Raphael_Cingular_US.exe. Proof enough? While T-Mo users are fuming (like me), AT&T users get to rejoice for a Tilt replacement that actually has video drivers!

If you want to mess around with the ROM image, you can download it here

 

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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

 

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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.

 

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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

 

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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

 

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So what’s an API? For those that don’t know, an API is an application program interface. It is what allows software developers to control certain core functions of a mobile device, such as phone or contacts list.

The Touch Diamond and Touch Pro are among the first WinMo devices to sport an accelerometer. Unfortunately, HTC didn’t release the API of this feature so that software developers could make programs that use that particular function.

The geniuses over at XDA-Developers have figured out how to allow software for the Diamond and Touch Pro to differentiate not only between X, Y, and Z coordinates, but whether the phone is turned landscape, portrait, or face up. Once developers get their hands on this, we should see more programs that will automatically rotate when you rotate the device, plus games that are controlled by moving the device around.

The below video from msmobiles shows a simple application making use of the accelerometer API.

 

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