Windows Mobile Louisville

Engadget got a hold of an internal training schedule that hints at the release date for the HTC Touch Diamond. According to the document, training for the Diamond must be done by December 3rd. Knowing that training must be completed prior to launch date, it can be safely assumed the VZW Diamond won’t be seen before December, but it just MIGHT be out in time for Christmas…

After much conjecture and speculation on a release date, Sprint has finally made an official announcement (timed perfectly to take place at the Fall CTIA in San Francisco) for the release of the Sprint Diamond and the Sprint Touch Pro.

The press release states “early September” for the Diamond (likely the 14th) and Oct 19th for the Touch Pro.  People are already placing pre-orders for the Diamond, including some members of Windows Mobile Louisville, so if you’re eager to see one before they are available in stores, mark your calendar for our Sept 23rd meeting!

Touch Diamond owners will know that the navi-wheel on the front of the device is capacitive, and can measure movement without actually rotating.  Like many HTC devices, it seems the Touch Diamond and Pro have hidden features, and pretty tasty ones indeed.  Using an application called Nav Debug Tool by HTC, this video (link below) shows not only is the navi-wheel capacitive, but that the whole front of the device can track finger movements, and even two fingers independently.

So far there is no known feature on the Touch Diamond/Pro that exploits this, but once the folks at xda-developers get their hands on the API, it won’t be long!

This also promises that even current generation devices with resistive screens will be able to take advantage of multi-touch features in WM7.

Video (via wmpoweruser.com)

Images of a red Sprint “Diamond” (or whatever they’ll call it) are floating around.  No confirmation if these are genuine or not…

I guess we’ll find out in  few weeks, won’t we?!  Sept 2 is the rumored release date.