Extended Battery for HTC Diamond (Update)

Battery life for HTC Touch Diamond P3700 and Extended Battery

(Originally posted on 12 January 2009, update on 24 July 2009)

Original content:
HTC Touch Diamond ("P3700") is a great phone with multimedia functions, but we've heard that most users are complaining the very short battery life of the handset. Even if you switch off GPS, Wi-fi and Bluetooth, it's hard to sustain the battery for one day.

The original battery is 900mAh, which usually lasts for less than your daily usage. If you decide not to charge your Diamond in office, it seems inevitable to acquire an additional battery for your normal usage. You can find in the market some types of replacement batteries to beef up Diamond's battery life.


1. The original extended battery, model "BP E270", features a larger size 1350mAh battery. This still comes with a thick back, but it's more elegant though. Warning: High price.



2. "Big" batteries. With capacity ranging from 1530mAh to 2000mAh, so physically big that the original back cannot be covered, and the dealer will include a rather bulky back along with the battery. This new back does not look as good as the original one, of course. The extended battery will affect reception of GPS due to its size. Don't believe words like "works like original".


Besides these two, you can always buy the 900mAh batteries. This is not recommended as you will soonly find yourself changing batteries several times a day.

UPDATE: We recently got a BP E270 for extensive testing on the duration of battery. The battery has significantly prolonged by around 40%. It still cannot support prolonged use of MSN Messenger so you either have to turn in off in long train trips or you really should bring along the original 900mAh battery.

With the software "WMWifiRouter" on, we enabled wi-fi sharing, and the machine is not as hot as using the original battery as there are space inside the thick back. We wish the final launch of WM6.5 include wi-fi sharing (like what ASUS P835 offers) though.
Click here for an extended reading on wi-fi sharing / ASUS P835 on our site

One more thing, the thick back makes the machine looks flat as is not as reflective as the original one. Basically the Diamond becomes lower profile, and and fingerprints are no longer attracted.

Broken Push notification in iPhone 3.0 is due to jailbreaking

Some users have been receiving unrelated messages totally unrelated to them, and thought it was the problem on Apple's side. Appleinsider says otherwise.

The explanation is that to Jailbreaking ("JB") the iPhone, the unique private and public key of iPhone will change to that of the jailbreak. This opens a very dangerous loophole for hackers to distribute malicious contents. Receiving unrelated push will not be the most serious case . . .

Appleinsider did no specifically say if third-party unlocking will have this problem, but for safety's sake, it's better not to do than to do.

iPhone IM Apps: eBuddy vs fring vs Palringo

Today we are going to compare the three popular iPhone Instant Messenging (IM) apps - eBuddy, fring and Palringo. As of today (16 July 2009), the three software are free to download and use. Each of these programs support MSN, Yahoo, Google Talk, Facebook and AIM.

To start with, Palringo, due to unknown problems, had never worked on the two iPod Touch in our lab. It quits when we press on the software button. Their official site says they support iPod Touch, and we don't know why.

fring has an advantage of in-software Skype SkypeOut calls (and of course you have to pay to use the SkypeOut function). Its fatal problem is that even if you delete/block someone in your contact list in MSN (or other IM), it still shows up in fring no matter how you set the options. This is extremely annoying if you accidentally added some unwelcomed "friends".
- Voice support and direct SkypeOut calls possible
- Skype support
- no flexibility in contact list
- Fring spam is on by default - your buddys will see annoying ads. Make sure you turn it off first.
- Advertisement pops out in an user unfriendly way
- Does not allow users to add friends with a period in the first half of email address

eBuddy is famous for being one of the earliest provider of browsed-based IM software.
- Unlike fring, you can do pretty much with your contact list, including deleting and renaming.
- With the iPhone OS 3.0 update, It also offers continous PUSH support for a customizable period of time (0, 5, 10 or 30 minutes) after user logs out and quit the program.
- It does not support Skype - and it does not support voice chat at all.
- AutoCorrect is disabled by default (but can turn on)
- No advertisement so far

In short, if we need Skype with MSN/Facebook/GTalk on at the same time, go fring. If we don't need Skype, eBuddy for sure. And we are using eBuddy.

Essential Widgets for Android Market (1) - Battery Status

Knowing the remaining battery is imporant when you use your Android machine for Internet access and GPS positioning, which both drains battery quickly.  Battery Status is an apps displaying the status of your battery accurate to the nearest percent.  If you see battery goes out quickly, might as well consider buying a second battery?

Android Market Keyword: Battery Status
Price: Free

Pictures from Slashphone.com

Toshiba's flagship phone of the year TG01 already launched

Japan had a notorious history of saving all high-quality phones inside their own country, but TG01 might be an exception. Named in Japan as T-01A under DoCoMo, Toshiba had already launched the WM6.1 powered TG01 in June. The response was positive (barring there were reports about problems on dialing 011 prefix numbers).

As our earlier report (here), TG01 is the feature phone for the year 2009, with a 4.1" large WVGA screen (i.e. Wide VGA 800 x 480) fitted in a slim 9.9mm body, this is one of the phone which gives users maximum viewing pleasure. Its Qualcomm 1.0GHz CPU, it runs most programs more smoothly than most Windows Mobile handsets available up-to-date.

We are aware of most tests and reviews online are only concentrated in the fancy functions and completely neglected about the very basic quality of a handset - the telephone function. In history, Toshiba's phone had appalled users with its horrible reception. Before our team has a chance to try and examine the phone (if possible), we hold completely skpetical on recommending any one from buying one.

For information as of today, the contract price from Orange is 99€, but contract price is never a good price indicator.

A 27-minute comprehensive video for the Japanese version T-01A, view it only if you have plenty of time:

More information, pictures and videos can be found in Toshiba's European official site "Mobile Revolution" in five languages: http://www.toshiba-europe.com/mobilerevolation/default.aspx