Things I don't like about the Diamond

A few observations, gripes and questions after a week with the device:

1. For the sms wakeup problem, i noticed that in my unit, i do get the audio alert even after the phone went to sleep. however, there are a couple of times when it just flash the ring of light with no alert. I know this as I got the phone in front of me on my desk most of the time. Oh, and most importantly, i did not do the sms wake up fix.


2. For Voice Command, it is mapped to button 1. But for the life in me, i can't find button 1! Oh, and I did search the manual but the diagrams does not show any button 1! [edit: Ok, apparently, this is the call button. Thanks to a fellow diamond user for telling me.]
   
3. For the issue on screen going blank on connecting a call, I believe this is only true when the light sensor near the ear piece gets cover up. I suppose the assumption is that it happens when you put the phone to your ear hence you will not be requiring the screen. (plus it saves on battery and prevents accidental screen press!) So its really thoughtful of HTC to put in this feature. HOWEVER, the implementation comes up short. Why? cuz
1. when you wanna end the call, you need to do two actions - (1) turn on the screen via the power button and (2) end the call via the on screen button. Or on my unit, I found out that the first press on the end call button while the screen is off does not end the call but power up the screen so you have to press twice to end the call.
2. say you picked up a call by putting the phone to your ear, then u decided to use the notes app to enter some data. Yeah, pulling out the stylus will turn on the screen and open up the notes app. That's a nice touch (sic) but the damn screen turns off a split second later. just brilliant. Oh, and if you manually turn the screen back on, it goes off after a split second again (as long as the call is still active). sigh... nice idea but half baked implementation.
3. [edit: Apparently, I was wrong on the light sensor part. It is really the accelerometer that is behind this. Granted that under _certain_ circumstances, you will lay it flat to enter data but there are _many_ other scenarios where you won't have it flat (e.g. when you are out and about!) and yet you need to enter data or just to check your appointments!]
   
4. According to the manual, hitting the left softkey (labeled "send text") during an incoming call automatically sends a canned SMS reply (which you set in one of the options field) to the caller. However, when I finally got a chance to use it today (a call came in during a meeting and I simply pressed on the softkey followed by hitting the "off" hard button), I found out that the softkey launches a new sms input screen with the "to" field set to the caller and your canned text in the message body BUT it does NOT send out the message. Woah... is it just me or does this not tally with what is described in the manual?


5. I'm also suffering from the "thou shall not accept any settings for the backlight other than 10secs" syndrome and have found no workarounds. How annoying is that!


6. The messaging app is just so damn slow! Sending an sms involves a 3-5secs wait just to get to the editor screen. How annoying is that x2!!


7. I sync my calendar items with two Vista machine, a pc and a notebook. Every time I connect to one of them for the first time in a day, I get the error "Activesync encountered an error on the desktop" (support code 86000107). So far, the only remedy is to remove the sync setting and then add it back again. How annoying is that x3!!!