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The HTC Diamond Touch has been getting a lot of hype; with a sleek external design combined with a VGA screen, and 4GB internal storage, it’s currently one of the best Windows Mobile phone available.

The hardware specification is not the only thing appealing about the HTC Diamond, but the newly introduced TouchFlo 3D software gives you a cool way to navigate over the phone with touch control and finger gestures.

The phone is definitely very appealing, but I’m pretty sure the price won’t be. Luckily there is a much cheaper way to get a HTC Diamond like phone. The developers from XDA-Developers.com managed to get their hands on the Windows Moble 6.1 ROM from the HTC Diamond Touch, and then ported it to work for the HTC Prophet a.k.a Dopod 818 Pro. I downloaded the ROM known as the Throttle IV Diamond 5.2.19213 and flashed my phone with it. The results was a bit disappointing as the ROM was a bit buggy and worked very sluggish on my Dopod phone.

Since I only cared about the TouchFlo 3D features, and not the other HTC Diamond applications, there were two alternative solutions available that worked a lot better.

The Throttle Launcher application which is also bundled with the Throttle IV Diamond 5.2.19213 can be installed individually and provide TouchFlo 3D like features without making my phone sluggish.

A more stable alternative is to install the HTC Diamond SPB MS2.1 Theme v1.1, which works on top of the Spb Mobile Shell 2.1. However, with this theme you only get a similar look to the HTC Diamond, the finger control gestures are based on the Spb Mobile Shell. Another issue is the Spb Mobile Shell is not free.

Until there is a better ROM available, I’ll be sticking with these alternatives and pretend that I’m using the HTC Diamond for now.

After installing the PDAViet 4.0.0.6 Touch ROM for a couple of months, several times I had to hard reset my Dopod. The reason was that once in a while when I did a soft reset Windows Mobile wouldn’t boot up anymore and will just freeze in the start the screen. I do not know the root cause of this problem however, I suspect is because of the HTC Home component.

I decided to seek a newer WM6 ROM hoping that I’ll have better luck. My choice was the PDAViet Transformer 1.1. I didn’t have any reason why I decided to choose this ROM other than feeling the graphics were pretty nice. I figure if this gave me problems as well I still have a couple of more options. <grin>

Check out the screenshots for the Transformer ROM:

Transformer ROM Touch Style

Transformer ROM Cross Style

The link on Transformer 1.1 site was broken, thus I got my copy from http://www.4shared.com/file/25016426/85b0b3a8/Transformer_11.html. To do the actually upgrade you can refer to my blog Upgrading Dopod 818 Pro to Windows Mobile 6.

In my first attempts to flash my Dopod 818 Pro with the Windows Mobile 6 ROM, the process hung during the middle of the upgrade, (or it was me not waiting long enough =P). I ended up having to unplug my phone from my PC before the flashing completed. As expected, my phone couldn’t boot up anymore and all I got was a white screen. Lucky for me there was a way to recover from this:

1. Get a copy of your phone’s factory ROM. For the Dopod 818 Pro, the factory ROM can be found at the HTC Website when you sign in as a member.
2. With the phone unplug, start the phone into the Bootloader mode, by holding the camera button, and soft reseting the phone with the stylus. When you see multi-color screen, then you have successfully entered Bootloader mode.
3. Inside ActiveSync DISABLE the connect through USB by navigating to File -> Connection Settings and uncheck Allow USB connection.
4. Connect the phone back to the PC using a USB connection.
5. Install the factory ROM for your phone, and everything should be back to normal.

A while back I managed to upgrade my Dopod 818 Pro to Windows Mobile 6. This is a followup to exactly what I did to get it done.

1. Download the PDAViet Temp ROM for the Prophet. When extracting the ROM use the password PDAVIET.
2. After extracting the archive, connect your phone to the PC and make sure ActiveSync is activated.
3. In the extracted PDAViet Temp ROM folder there are two executable files. Determining which file to run depends on what type of model your phone is:
   G3/G4 refers to the type of DOC used (Disk On Chip) on the Prophet.
   To determine the model, refer to the red text while your phone is booting after a soft reset.For example:
   
IPL: 2.09.000
SPL: 2.20.000
GSM: 02.47.21
OS: 2.20.7.34


   If the IPL and SPL numbers end in .000 then the phone is a G3 model, if it ends in .0001 then the phone is a G4 model.

4. After running the executable file, the flashing will take about 10 minutes, and the process tends to get stuck at 80%, but eventually will complete.
5. When completed the phone will reboot, wait until the “Welcome to Windows Mobile - Tap Here To Begin” screen appears. At this point DON’T TOUCH the phone and JUST LEAVE IT.
6. To start the actually Windows Mobile 6 ROM upgrade go to the folder which contains the new ROM. The one I downloaded was the PDAVIET 4.0.0.0.6 Touch but more can be found here. Run the batch file “Upgrade.bat”.
7. The upgrade will take around 15 minutes to complete.
8. Once the process has been finish, the final step is to HARD RESET the phone. This step MUST be done to complete the upgrade!

More for information refer to the How to upgrade from WM5 TO WM6 forum.

In Hong Kong I got my hands on the PDA phone: HTC Touch. The major difference with this phone compared to my Dopod 818 Pro is that it runs on a Windows Mobile 6 platform and comes with the TouchFlo technology. Neither which provides very useful functionalities but from an interface perspective I was quite impressed by it. Thus, I went to seek out if there was any WM6 ROM available for my Dopod.

I found a website XDADevelopersWiki which provides lot of features for various PDA phones. There I found various WM6 for the HTC Pro Prophet. The ROM that chose was the PDAVIET 4.0.0.0.6 Touch because it came with the TouchFlo technology as well.

Note: Even thought the instructions recommended to flash PDA first with the Prophet_PV_Temp ROM, I was able to get it working by hard resting my device and then flash the PDAVIET Touch ROM on top of it.