Got HTC HD2 home!

Forums › Legacy mobile platforms (Windows Mobile, Palm OS, Web OS, Symbian, Meego, Blackberry) › Got HTC HD2 home!

NZtechfreak

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#49088 17-Nov-2009 19:09

...and loving it!

Still setting up/charging though, more thoughts later!

Twitter: @nztechfreak
Blogs: HeadphoNZ.org

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Master Geek

#274022 17-Nov-2009 20:06

great to here - who'd ya get it thru if you dont mind me asking - Clove, handtec?? see the 3foot drop test and knife attack on screen test ??.. :) HTC HD2 stuff will be good to see your thoughts in relation to comparison between your samsung i8910HD.. screen/camera/keyboard etc.

Lenovo

Lenovo computer and accessories deals (affiliate link).

macuser

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#274033 17-Nov-2009 20:32

Pics or it didn't happen

NZtechfreak

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#274034 17-Nov-2009 20:54

Hehe, pics soon!

The screen is really wow, even coming from an i8910, which itself has a fantastic screen.

Loving the integration with Facebook in the contacts - associate contacts with their Facebook accounts and it grabs their pictures for you and even shows their most recent status in the contacts screen...

Everything pretty easy to set up, had contacts sync'd in a jiffy, youtube, facebook, twitter all set up via wizard on first boot, HTC music player captured all my album art, so far so good!

Twitter: @nztechfreak
Blogs: HeadphoNZ.org

kyhwana2

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#274061 17-Nov-2009 22:34

NZtechfreak: ...and loving it!

Still setting up/charging though, more thoughts later!

!! Nice!

I guess i'll have to wait till you upgrade to the HD2 "Pro" and then the next phone and buy that off you ;)

Holding out with the HTC TP for something like the HD2 Pro.. although the Motorola "milestone" droid is looking good. Want something with a hardware keyboard.

NZtechfreak

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#274087 18-Nov-2009 01:06

Got it home a few hours back, first impressions, ghastly camera aside, are excellent!

Build quality is excellent

Screen excellent - although I wish it was AMOLED its hard to complain too much about it - its resolution is awesome, its touch sensitivity falls just shy of the iPhone, only slight negatives are that in some circumstances you can see the dot matrix on the screen (but only if you look closely in the right light, certainly not enough to distract), on very close inspection some colour banding is evident (as per the GSMarena preview, again I don't think this is something you'd notice in regular use), and of course since it isn't AMOLED you don't quite get true blacks, its night here now so I can't yet comment on sunlight legibility

Onscreen keyboards for me are simply excellent, I see quite a few complaints at XDA about typing onscreen, but my take on that is that its a bunch of guys who are seriously habituated to resistive screens not taking the time to adjust

UI is the fastest I've ever had on a smartphone, just snappy everywhere, including screen rotation (which is such a refreshing change from most devices), I haven't yet been dropped out of Sense and into 'full' WinMo - by that I mean that in some areas there isn't a fully skinned alternative, but what is there is nicely tweaked for finger use (File Manager being the one I've come across so far)

Multimedia:
- Plays back DivX etc via Coreplayer perfectly
- HTC music player collects all of my album art and music tags correctly (used mp3tag to tag my collection)
- as mentioned camera is pretty bad as you'd expect from an HTC handset, have yet to really test it out much yet
- haven't yet tried the FM Radio

Browser:
WinMo Opera Mobile is a joy to use, especially at this resolution on a screen this large, at this point in time nobody has got a working install for flash in Opera, but I'd expect it soon from XDA

Software and social networking:
- Facebook integration is wonderful (it grabs all your Facebook friends profile pics to populate your contact pics, also displays their latest status update in the contacts list, picture upload is supported of course), the Facebook application is passable - better than anything S60 has to offer, but falling short of Android and iPhone offerings
- the inbuilt twitter client seems decent (I wasn't a Twitter user until this phone), so I can't comment too deeply on this
- inbuilt youtube applicaton is excellent, has really improved since a year ago on my old Touch Pro
- I liked how easily all these were setup, simple wizard at start up and I had all those accounts and my push google sync up n running
- has quite a nice inbuilt software package outside of the social networking arena too - Quick GPS, WiFi Router, Google Maps, Office Mobile, Jetcet Print (really going to enjoy being able to print wireless to my home network printer! nice surprise to see a full license for this on there), Microsoft Myphone (kinda like Ovi sync, but seems more robust and allows sync/backup for things like SMS), Teeter
- has windows marketplace, which seems OK, although at this point in time the amount of good WinMo software on the store is less than the tip of the iceberg of all the good software out there from places like XDA

GPS:
- performance seems very good on my limited test of Garmin and Google Maps, with Quick GPS data on board my cold start time was less than 30s and locks after that were immediate, will be interested to see how it goes with tracking my cycling to and from work in terms of maintaining lock strength while in my jacket/armband Vs my current i8910 (which is the best GPS unit I've used so far on a handset)

Although I've yet to find anything myself, theres a few reports of bugs at XDA. There is one problem (an omission on HTCs part) in that they've buried the Task Manager amongst menus, rather than having the X in the corner for quick access. Fortunately the XDA community has already sorted this one, and I'm seeing quick resolutions to some of the other complaints floating around. Will post more as it comes to light.

Twitter: @nztechfreak
Blogs: HeadphoNZ.org

kyhwana2

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#274155 18-Nov-2009 10:22

Durp

NZtechfreak

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#274215 18-Nov-2009 13:43

GSMarena review is in.

Here are their negatives, and my thoughts on them:

Main disadvantages

* It's a pretty large phone - agreed, fine for me, your mileage may vary

* Poor sunlight legibility - still checking this out, likely agree with them

* 65K color limitation of display has color gradients banding - yup, but to be honest this doesn't really bother in actual use, I recall they've made more of this in the past than actual users have tended to...

* Card slot under the battery cover - suboptimal design decision, likely mandated here due to the requirement for slimness

* Disappointing photo and video quality - I've indicated I agree above

* Limited image geotagging (available only through Footprints) - a simple registry entry enables this

* No dedicated camera key and no lens cover - for me again these are bad design decisions

* No DivX/XviD video support out-of-the-box - Coreplayer fixes it, but I agree that this should be out of the box like on the Samsungs

* Preloaded CoPilot Live navigation software is a trial version - true

* No secondary video-call camera -never used it anyway, don't care, others may differ

* No voice dialing - I think there is work going into this right now at XDA

* No handwriting recognition - true, non-issue for me

* Dodgy web Flash support - I don't miss it much to be perfectly honest, that said it would nice to have it, I guess we'll be waiting until adobe release the new flash to WinMo around January

Pretty fair review from the point of view of the negatives they've picked out, some of the negatives are already fixed thanks to XDA, others should be sorted in the near future.

A few more of my own thoughts:

- took my first call today, in-call quality for me was top notch - where I work the network coverage is awful and most other handsets I've owned have sounded a little patchy in-call, but here it was fantastic
and crystal clear

- I agree with GSMarena that this is the best contacts management system ever

- Music player audio quality subjectively for me is good, I had noted the treble was a little lacking, audio booster seems to really improve the sound (I tend to use the rock preset, which boosts trebles) and I wonder whether they tested the audio quality at GSMarena using audio booster...

Twitter: @nztechfreak
Blogs: HeadphoNZ.org

NZtechfreak

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#274501 19-Nov-2009 14:57

Installed Smaberg's taskmanager today - restores the usual HTC task manager (similar functionality-wise to Handy Taskman). An earlier fix was breaking the inbuilt Twitter app, but this one is perfect.

Drove to work using Garmin - worked perfectly. Cold start lock time 11secs (between 8 and 12 seems to be average from a half dozen or so tries in overcast weather, will post again when I've had a more significant sample size to see whether the average converges on the upper or lower ends of those margins). A little slower than my i8910, but perfectly acceptable.

Pocket Scrobbler works for listening to Lastfm radio, however the scrobbling function may be broken by the latest version of HTC music player. I still have a few simple things to try at the suggestion of the apps maker, who is very responsive, so we'll see if its a simpe fix. EDIT: Working now, just needed to make one little change in settings.

Will be trying out bluetooth headset/keyboard with it tonight and see how it goes, be interesting to see whether HTC have fixed their music player to work with the BT AVRCP profile (didn't work for the HTC music player on my Touch Pro [did work with WMP], but that was over a year ago, so we'll see).

When I find my PSX discs in the depths of the garage I'll also try out the FPSece emulator. YouTube has plenty of videos of this running smoothly on a TG01, so should be similar here.

Twitter: @nztechfreak
Blogs: HeadphoNZ.org

NZtechfreak

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#274556 19-Nov-2009 18:34

Well, A2DP/AVRCP work with HTC Music Player now. I officially can find no use whatsoever for WMP Mobile.

Forgot to mention in the GPS comments - the dragon is making itself felt in route recalculation. Once garmin knows you're off course (once it puts on you on the wrong road for ~30m or so, which makes sense since thats the general lower limit of lock accuracy) it recalculates. The recalculation is instantaneous. Few more lock times 10s, 11s, overcast conditions still.

Can also comment on sunlight legibility - not great. More or less typical for HTC devices.

Tried out Jetset print, a software that usually costs $30US for a license, that comes free with this handset. Once it was setup (my Epson printer model wasn't listed, just chose another Epson Stylus model and it worked perfectly) its like magic! Wireles network printing, just great when I want to print a document without getting out of bed in the morning :)

After a couple of days battery life seems decent enough, it lasting the requisite 16 or so hours for me, reasonably heavy use during that since its a shiny new toy.

Today its been on 12 hours:
- half hour watching video
- around 20 minutes GPS
- half hour music player (including bluetooth on)
- 30 or so SMS
- half hour browsing on 3G
- weather/twitter on hourly downloads
- half hourly email retrieval
- 15 minutes connected to WiFi while sorting out printing to my wireless network printer
- probably another 2 hours miscellaneous 'screen-on' time (mucking around, little gaming etc)
---> currently battery is at 45%.

Others seem to be finding the remaining battery life indicator seems to go down more slowly once you're under 50%. I'm not sure whether thats true, or whether that reflects more judicious use. Certainly it could be true, for example my i8910 goes from 5/7 bars to 1/7 bars very rapidly, but then sits on one even with sustained high-drain use for hours. Will give more feedback on battery as the days pass.

Side comment about battery life: Widely variable battery life being quoted by users at XDA. In general I see a trend where the more knowledgeable forum members are getting better use than others. I'm suspicious that the ones having trouble are the usual muppets who got a new toy they are ill-equipped to use, as they tend to also be the ones asking the simpler questions.

EDIT: Think Outside Ultraslim Stowaway BT keyboard working perfectly as a generic keyboard (meaning only the Windows "Start" shortcut button works, have yet to try installing drivers to see whether it'll work with the other shortcuts). Device sits comfortably in landscape or portrait orientation in the cradle.

Twitter: @nztechfreak
Blogs: HeadphoNZ.org

Damager

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#274587 19-Nov-2009 21:03

Excellent review!! Looks like itll be my next phone after my TP2. You cover pretty much everything that I consider important. Looking forward to more feedback.

- Telstra HTC Touch Pro2 - Energy ROM WM6.5.5 20 Oct/Cyanogen Mod Froyo 2.2 - R.I.P
- AT&T Galaxy S Captivate 16GB on XT (now with brother)
- Samsung Galaxy S2 on XT- Runs ICS 4.0.3 Resurrection Remix 9.2
- Business Hours - Work In The Electricity Industry, After Hours - DJ/Turntablist - Will Scratch Vinyl For Free'
- What's next??? S3?

NZtechfreak

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#274600 19-Nov-2009 22:20

Hmmn, just discovered that Coreplayer has no subtitle support. I see other users are saying that TCPMP is working well, and that does have subtitle support. Will have to try it.

Twitter: @nztechfreak
Blogs: HeadphoNZ.org