[General Topics] ZenithUK:
Doesn't matter whether it's an HTC device or not,

IT ****ING ROCKS!!!! :)

I went to my local Orange shop this afternoon to see one and have a play with it.

The handset is about the size of the old XDA Exec (HTC Universal) but thinner than an iPhone. In fact the 4.1" screen is almost as big as my Polaris.

It's lightweight, but feels solid and well built. The screen was clear and bright, even under the shop's bright lighting. The phone comes with WinMo6.1, but I'll bet that Toshiba will have an upgrade to WinMo6.5 at some future date.

The touchscreen is sensitive and responsive, but the most obvious indicator of speed is the screen flip when you turn the phone on it's side. Most HTC devices take a second or two to flip the screen from portrait to landscape. This takes no more than 0.5s. The delay is barely noticeable.

There's no D-pad and only 4 small buttons on the bottom strip of the phone, so if you find it hard to use a phone without a D-pad, this may be a deal-breaker. That said, the screen is so large that you should be able to hit on-screen controls easily. The SIP keyboard is nicely sized and I was able to type quickly with no spelling errors (I didn't notice any obvious autocorrecting going on). The numbers layout is in a line though, and I would have preferred a "telephone" layout for the numbers.

The Orange version of the phone comes with an Orange Home screen which mimics the appearance and functions of the OmniaHD interface. Think of TouchFlo3D with the slider up and down the left side of the screen instead of across the bottom of the screen. I consider it to be nicer to use than WinMo6.5' Titanium UI which tends to fill the screen with text.

OFC, people are more interested in the new "Stripes" UI that Toshiba are presenting with this phone. Orange have kindly provided a simple way to switch between the Orange Home screen and Stripes from the Program list.

The Stripes UI is nice to look at and the rotation of the stripes is smooth, but it's insanely sensitive to swipes. If you want to swipe along one or two stripes, you have to use a small or slow gesture because a normal swipe sends the stripes *flying* along.

The stripes themselves are simply categories of functions. There's phone calls, SMS messages, audio/video, GPS and a few others as well. You can also change the colour scheme between about 3 presets. I'm just wondering how long it will be before some enterprising coder dumps the ROM and extracts the cab for the Stripes UI. I personally prefer the Orange Home screen, but that's just me.

The phone comes with CorePlayer out of the box and is the primary video player from Stripes. It also comes with a G.I.Joe trailer and it's fantastically clear and colourful for video playback. I don't think video playback will be a problem with double the usual processing power.

The one thing I didn't get to try was the internet or phone calls because I was hoping to try the "shake twice to answer" feature. The microSD slot is under the back plate where the battery and SIM go. It will also reliably take up to 32GB chips (if you can afford them).

All it would take is for someone to develop an LCARS theme Today screen and it would be just like the PADs from Star Trek:TNG. It's thin and light, but big enough to hold onto and read easily.

If you like the Touch Diamond 2 but wanted a bigger screen, seriously consider the TG01.