[General Topics] gkai:
TD2 not perfect, but nice enough...

I will probably buy the TD2 as soon as it is available in europe (begining of April, it seems), except if something better at roughly the same price comes out since then, but given the new devices presented in Barcelona, it is unlikely something better suited to my usage comes out first half of 2009.

I would be my first smartphone, I used classic phone + separate PDA before, but this one looks like I will finally merge (mostly because there is no new pure PDA coming out anyway ;-) )

First of, I am not into physical keyboards: in my case, giving the amount of text enter I typically do, the physical size increase is too much a drawback compared of the typing advantage. People typing a lot may feel differently, but physical keyboard is definitely a disandvantage for me....so touch pro 1/2 are ruled out

What I like over the previous diamond:

-4GB internal gone, replaced by memory slot. I would have preferred an SD slot, but micro SD is not so bad, 8Gb is available cheap and 16 GB should become more common and cheap soon.

-WVGA screen: screen resolution is first thing I look, I read quite a lot on my PDA (ebooks, maps, ...) and great resolution is very important, very happy that WVGA sees to be the new standard for high end WM devices...It is long due, after being stuck with so many QVGA screens for soo long :)

-metal front bezel: I like the look, and hope it will make the TD2 durable and more pocket-resistant...

What I like over the touch HD (the one I considered buying till TD2 presentation):

-better for factor for me: the touch HD has a form factor similar to my current pda, which is nice for reading...but slightly too big for cellphone use: I need my cellphone on me all the time, and for some sport activities touch HD is a little bit big.

-promise of WM6.5 official upgrade. I guess the HD will get it unofficial (exactly the same hardware, so I do not see why not), but an official upgrade is nice and maybe, given it is a newer device, the support for TD2 will

extend longer in the community?

-And it seems to be cheaper: from what I saw on the website where u can pre-order, the price will be the same as the TD1, so significantly cheaper than the touch HD. If the HD go down in price around the TD2 release date, I may have to think again, but currently the price difference is enough to make me wait for the TD2...

What I do not like about the TD2:

-Mostly, the thickness/battery combination: it seems to me, looking at the TD1, they could have gone thinner with the same capacity...or - my personal preference- gone to a higher capacity with the current TD2 thickness. Given this thickness, I hoped for a battery in the 1500-1600 mAh range, which would have been very nice. Well, maybe higher capacity batteries will be available, without the need for changing the backplate? nothing as extreem as the 3000 mAh batteries for the TD1, but I hope 1500 may be possible...

-no led flash. not a big minus for pictures (I use camera phone only for "surprise" picture, for when I had to shot a totally unexpected event or situation. If I am sightseeing, or know pictures or movies are likely, I have a dedicated camera with proper optics ;-) ). But it makes a very handy flashlight...sounds studid at first, but I have used the led flash of my current phone as a flash light surprisingly often, it is really handy :-) I would keep a 3MP sensor with led flash over the 5MP sensor anyday, 5MP is just wasted for the kind of pics I made with a cellphone...Maybe reducing 5MP to 2-3MP could even decrease noise in low light...

Except for those 2, TD2 is perfect for my typical uses. A beefier proc would have been nice, but realisticly, after a few weeks when the novelty wears out, I do not expect watching much movies or playing hardware-stressing games on my phone/pda, reading and puzzle games is much more common than movies or FPS games for me...So as long as the interface animations are smooth and no unpleasant lag makes the device anoying to use, autonomy is much more important than speed, I had a400 MHz Xscale in my PDA and it was not unpleasant...

BTW, after this long rant on why I will very probably buy this TD2, I have a question:

On the pics, it seems that there is a slot on the upper right side of the phone (symmetric compared to the louder/quiter button on the left). Is it a loudspeaker, or the memory slot?

I hope for the second, having to remove back plate to change memory card is slightly annoying the the current touch pro/ touch HD designs.

On the other hand, a good loudpeaker is nice for GPS guidance or handfree calls, and I do not see any other loudspeaker output ...