It has been a little over a month since I flashed Windows Mobile 6.5 on my HTC Diamond. I tought it would be a nice idea to review how it has been since then.

Why do it?

Anyone who had another Windows Mobile device before will know how much bloated and unstable the Diamond’s original ROM is. Of course, TouchFlo is great and the applications HTC included are incredibly nice, but it’s no excuse for the horribly slow interface (even the Programs menu!) and the terrible stability. Let’s face it: the Diamond’s original ROM sucks, big time.

Then came along a pretty interesting replacement: Windows Mobile 6.5. Of course, it’s not the official version, but the cooks prepared us pretty awesome ROMs to put in our Diamonds. For those whose carriers never publish the ROM upgrades everyone else already released (ahem, Rogers), these homebrew upgrades are more than welcome.

Initial impressions

Past the initial glee I had with the slightly revamped interface, I was originally deceived by 6.5. To me, it was only Windows Mobile 6.1 with TouchFlo and a totally impractical honeycomb menu. There is honestly nothing new besides the looks and the scrolling and I was honestly disappointed. The honeycomb Start menu is a great idea that has been botched by the developers. They still didn’t add any form of icon management. This means you still have to resort to using the stupid File Explorer to categorize your applications. On top of that, icons aren’t even sorted by name anymore and there is absolutely no “Sort” option except for the cheesy “Bring to top” option when you press-and-hold an icon. C’mon Microsoft!

And finally

After a month, however, I would never go back to a stock ROM. Stability is impressive compared to what I had and the finger scrolling of Windows Mobile 6.5 is much better than HTC’s TouchFlo. The device is much more responsive and doesn’t hang for no reason (at least not often, but hey! it’s WinMo!) which is a really good thing since rebooting it is slower than with Windows Vista.

I would recommend BsB 6.5 to anyone wishing to get rid of the stock ROM. This is the one I flashed and I absolutely love it! Thumbs up to its developers!

I finally got tired enough of the shitty Diamond ROM to flash it as someone suggested in the comments of my strong-worded article about why I hate Windows Mobile. Keeping in mind Rogers will never ever bother releasing a ROM upgrade, I decided to head back to XDA-Developers and find a 6.5 ROM that suits me.

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