As my regular reader will know I have a bit of a thing for gadgets. I am tempted to buy a new one, the Toshiba TG01. There are a few things that tickle my fancy about this phone: a 4.1inch 800x480 screen, a 1GHz CPU, a whizzy GPU and an accelerometer plus all of the other features of my current Xperia X1. However, it does not have a keyboard, it has an onscreen one.

The partner has constantly been going on and on to me about how I should be buying an iPhone as he likes his so much. One of the reasons I’ve given is that I don’t like onscreen keyboards. I also think the screen on the iPhone has a pretty ropey resolution. When I had my Nokia N800 internet tablet the first accessory I got for it was a Bluetooth keyboard. I briefly had an HTC Touch Diamond and didn’t really like it as it had an onscreen keyboard and even the larger one it came with that was designed for its high resolution display was poor.

Before all of these I had an i-mate Jasjar (a rebranding of the HTC Universal). OK, it was a brick, but I loved its high resolution display and its keyboard. Why did I stop using it? Because I knackered it installing custom ROMs. Ah well…

So has technology moved on far enough for onscreen keyboards to be useful? Some people think so, maybe I should give them another try. One of the good things about the TG01 is that it has USB host capabilities and Bluetooth so if I really want to type a lot I can attach a keyboard.

One of the things that strikes me about phones like the TG01, and I would include the iPhone in that list, is that they are mature, convergent devices. They are phones, media players, gaming devices, internet tablets, navigation tools, cameras, PIMs and work tools. Little, connected computers in your pocket, basically. Speaking as a superannuated toddler I remember when such things were science fiction.

I had reached the end of my old mobile-phone contract, so I chose a new phone: a Sony Ericsson Xperia X1. It may lack the G-sensor of the HTC Touch Diamond, but has a higher-resolution display, higher storage thanks to it taking microSD cards and a perfectly usable keyboard. I have had it about a week and am extremely pleased with it. There is a good review of it on Modaco. If you get one I strongly suggest you download the Spd Panel from their site, it is the main interface I use for navigating the phone's functions.

After a couple of weeks of perfect and generally enjoyable service my HTC Touch Diamond developed a problem with the Alarm functionality. The alarm would sound but there would be no pop-up allowing you to cancel the alarm. A pain, this. So, I fiddled about and found a solution. If you navigate to Start -> Settings -> Sounds and notifications and choose the notification tab. In the Event drop-down choose Reminders. There will then be an option to "Display message on screen". Choose this and the problem will be solved.

My computer has been tits up for the past 4-5 days. There was much typing of arcane commands until I remembered I could just do a repair install of Vista. I did, and all is now well.

The only real bit of news that has occurred whilst I've been offline is the delivery of my HTC Touch Diamond smartphone. It is a really cool little device. The screen is ultra-sharp and because it runs Windows Mobile there is a multitude of software one can get for it. My favourite piece of software is an IM program called Palringo. It supports all of the IM protocols I use so I can forever be online, if I so choose. The entry I wrote yesterday from the phone was using a simple blogging client called Diarist. It is a simple program, but perfectly capable of making blog posts.

I am hoping that I will not have to be locked up in the bin at any stage, but having such connected devices as the Touch Diamond makes being incarcerated a lot more tolerable.

I am posting this from my hyper-groovy HTC Touch Diamond. I have installed a blog client and I want to check my 'blogging from anywhere'-ability.

I'm not very good at the whole deferred pleasure-thing; when I want something I want it now. It was reasonably difficult waiting for my new phone to be released, but this was not so tough as it was at a nebulous, distant point in the future. This has been nowhere near as hard as I have found waiting for Zoo the teddy giraffe to be delivered. A new security object, especially a really cute one, is more interesting than a phone and what makes it particularly difficult is that he is only days away. He should be here tomorrow or Wednesday and the closeness of it all makes it even harder to wait. Every time the entry-phone goes over the next couple of days my pulse will race and I will hope that it is Zoo being delivered.

My long time reader will know I have a bit of a thing for gadgets. I have decided to get a super-gadget phone when they are released next month: an HTC Touch Diamond. It is pitched as an iPhone competitor, so you may wonder why I just don't get a 3G iPhone when they are released next month. Well, the Diamond has a higher resolution display, a faster processor and GPS-functionality, but more importantly, it will sync with my PC. At the moment, iPhones won't sync with 64-bit Windows, and that is what I run. I am not going to install a 32-bit OS just to sync a phone and lose a gigabyte of memory in the process. Moreover, I hate and despise iTunes, and that is the interface one has to use for syncing iPhones. The Diamond will sync with Outlook via the Mobile Device Centre in Vista (what used to be ActiveSync) which I will find terribly useful with my bulging contacts file and I can copy music and album art easily from Windows Media Player. Now all I have to do is wait a month. Waiting, aaargh!