TyTN II owners, put your cash back in your wallet -- for a minute, anyway. CEO Peter Chou himself along with HTC's European VP have allegedly both gone on record saying that accelerated video drivers are in the works for an unspecified number of devices afflicted by the
now-legendary performance issues. Independently, though, we've received word from HTC that that's not
quite true. While the company is definitely banging through some improvements in the way video is handled on some of its recent touchscreen models, it turns out that there's technically no driver involved for the dormant Imageon circuitry; rather, the company's crack team of engineers has discovered performance enhancements to the existing software stack that they hope to roll out in the not-too-distant future (March is the tentative plan), and if all goes well, it won't even involve anything more painful than a .cab install. It's a marked improvement over the
last official statement, isn't it?
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
ryan @ Feb 18th 2008 8:57PM
freaking HTC
this better not be something stupid like a %5 performance gain
storino03 @ Feb 18th 2008 8:58PM
Okay, that's cool...but will these "improvements" utilize the ATI GPU in the chipsets, or are they "improving" the handsets' performance elsewhere?
--James
Dave @ Feb 18th 2008 10:06PM
no, it wont utilize it, because its not a DRIVER...I think any ROM made by dutty or alex on xda-devs that is already tweaked will probably be better than the "improvements" HTC is claiming. On with the class action FTW!
Dave @ Feb 18th 2008 10:09PM
also, is it just me or does this sound more like a late PR move?
Sam Winter @ Feb 19th 2008 4:16AM
I Agree with dave. They are just tweaking the software graphics emulation. No matter what they do it'll be NOTHING like having the actual hardware in your phone TURNED ON with real drivers.
This is just a VERY CHEAP way to try and gain a small amount of respect by acting like they actually give a shit about their customers when in fact they are really doing NOTHING at all.
Just pathetic. Screw HTC. I'm buying an iPhone to replace my touch and Treo.
Richard @ Feb 18th 2008 9:24PM
YAY!
Genjinaro @ Feb 18th 2008 9:37PM
Get happy after its out & works on your device in the way we expect it to, no less...
I like the news but results are better..
Juice @ Feb 18th 2008 9:48PM
I give them credit for "manning up". Hopefully this will also help the camera rendering...
pimpzilla @ Feb 18th 2008 10:16PM
I think the best outcome we can hope for at this point is that HTC will think twice about under-utilizing hardware in the future. I'm so sick of the monopolistic lowest bid hardware manufacturer (HTC) selling mediocre products to us through anti competitive cell phone companies that grudgingly give us a choice between a whopping two mediocre smartphones every two years.
A lot of the reason Windows Mobile gets a bad rap isn't the software. The software's good, in fact, it's been groundbreaking in many areas. The problem's hardware. In 2005 I bought a smartphone that had a 240x320 screen, 520 mhz processor & 64 megs of ram. According to Moore's law, by now my phone should be running close to a 2 GHZ processor with at least 256 megs of RAM, and you would hope at least a VGA screen. The phone I bought two years later (Sprints top of the line) has... a 240x320 screen, 64 megs of RAM, and a 400 MHZ processor! Why? No freaking competition!
Jerry @ Feb 19th 2008 6:19AM
"According to Moore's law, by now my phone should be running close to a 2 GHZ processor with at least 256 megs of RAM, and you would hope at least a VGA screen."
And how many backup batteries to plan to carry to power that thing? Take a look at some of the other platforms and you will see similar specs. The only real place WM has lagged is in the quality of the cameras being used.
storino03 @ Feb 19th 2008 12:14AM
What else can they improve? Page pool? I want a working GPU so I can run Quake III or some other prettier game, not to mention, better video playback. I can't even play WMV files without the system being all jerky and skipping frames.
--James
bernardino @ Feb 19th 2008 1:34AM
If this is true, then it's disappointing. I was going to switch from Verizon to AT&T to get this phone, but now it doesn't seem like such a hot buy. After watching the poor performance of TomTom on TyTn II versus the Magician, this product doesn't really seem worth the money and the switch to AT&T.
Consumers can only ask why it's so difficult for HTC to produce the drivers The answer so far seems to be that it'd take too much cold hard cash to pry it from Qualcomm's hands. The most disappointing thing though is that consumers did not know this before they purchased their phones and now that they know they can not get their money back.
mark @ Feb 19th 2008 8:33AM
HTC has shown nothing but distain for it's users, what makes anyone think I'm going to believe this? Oh sure, it would be nice if my touch worked at least as well as the pda I owned 5 years ago, but I'm not holding my breath and waiting for it to happen. Knowing HTC, any "fix" will come at the expense of something else. Video is finally watchable but there's no GPS? Show of hands...who would be surprised at this point?
qwho @ Feb 19th 2008 9:07AM
I wouldn't be surprised at all. However, at least we have the kind of community that will take anything they give us and make it 200% better and more accessible to device owners. I don't mind at all if they release dirvers for the tilt first, because I know somehow someone at xda-devs will figure out how to get it working for the mogul. Even if the update doesn't include gps, someone will mix it with what we have and cook a rom that will have everything.
Sam Winter @ Feb 20th 2008 6:05AM
I think you guys are still over-estimating this. They are just getting free good press but really not doing anything other than some basic software tweaks. They are NOT creating hardware drivers for the graphics processor. That part of the chipset will still be sitting there UNUSED.
I'd wager that any "optimization" they bring out won't even be any better than what the XDA guys already have done. The bottom line is there is only so much you can with software emulation of graphics. I mean jesus christ, IT'S 2008!!! I remember back in the early/mid 90's when video chips/cards capable of 3d acceleration were just starting to come out and some games could use them and other could not. The ones which couldn't use the hardware would use software emulation on your processor for the graphics functionality and I remember how sad it was.
I can't believe they really thought that people wouldn't care that their $500 device is less responsive and more sluggish than a device from 3 generations/years earlier? I mean WTF were they thinking????
And for people who think it's "good enough", if you haven't already, please go play with an iPhone or Ipod Touch. Even if you don't want one you can take solace that thats the type of responsiveness we should be seeing in ALL devices in the next few years...
Dan @ Feb 19th 2008 11:19AM
nicely said. If I remember correctly, I said something very similar to that over at PPCGeeks which surprisingly calmed quite a few people... lol.
I am, however, with all of you when you say HTC screws all of it's customers out of the quality product they're paying for and they need to man up soon else they're going to lose me as a customer... This much I KNOW...
Moco Binson @ Feb 22nd 2008 7:38AM
HTC's most recent press release: http://www.dailytech.com/HTC+to+Release+Software+Fix+for+Video+Issues+Next+Month/article10751.htm#cmt256752
Someone (Ajax9000) in response:
Misleading marketing does not go down well with consumers, regulators, or courts/tribunals and it seems to me that HTC is digging itself into a deep hole here.
There has been comment that just because the device has the hardware, that doesn't mean there is a commitment to enable it. One analogy was with PC, motherboards -- just because the chipset may support (say) SPDIF out, doesn't guarantee that there will be an SPDIF port/header. So just because Qualcomm promotes an advanced feature in its chipset marketing, doesn't mean that the device will support it, let alone the service provider.
This is basically what HTC claims in the above press release.
BUT, as was pointed out in dailytech.com/Article.aspx?newsid=10393... HTC (not Qualcomm) promoted the advanced features. HTC has issued at least one press release (http://www.htc.com/press_room/03-press-070905.htm ) in which they go well beyond merely saying this chipset is used -- they quote Qualcomm so as to explicitly list advanced features of the chipset, and in the next paragraph note that they have released ten products based on these chipsets.
That Lin's new statement now says "unlocking extended capabilities of chipsets like the MSM 7xxx requires in-depth and time consuming software development, complicated licensing negotiations, potential intellectual property negotiations, added licensing fees, and ... " arguable puts HTC in the position of implying that their earlier claims were misleading.
Just to reiterate that point -- on September 5, 2007 HTC ( not Qualcomm) highlighted the advanced features of the chipsets and then immediately associated those with its products. Lin's new statement disassociates the advanced features of the chipsets from the HTC products. IMNSHO this is not a clarification, it is a contradiction, and a contradiction that implies that their earlier claims were misleading.
All this= CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT BABY, FTW!
dude @ Feb 22nd 2008 9:10PM
just smoke and fumes.
oh, and is it me or did HTC remove the 'Rich multimedia experience' thingie from the Kaiser's webpage? http://www.htc.com/product/03-product_tytn_II.htm
maybe this statement here:
"Communicating on the go is easier than ever with an innovative, ergonomic LCD design that positions the touch screen perfectly for reading and creating e-mails, using applications, or even just playing games."
would become:
"Communicating on the go is easier than ever with an innovative, ergonomic LCD design that positions the touch screen perfectly for reading and creating e-mails."
one day?
lol...
Charles E Woods @ Mar 12th 2008 9:37PM
just got my Htc Touch replaced, the 2nd one seems to work better than the first one, which was a piece of crap. someone let me know when the updates are available. THX
Marc Grondin @ Apr 8th 2008 9:14AM
Anymore news on this? I have a Touch from telus in canada. tried searching the web for more on this but came up empty