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Ok perhaps this might be a question that may not be hontestly answered but, in any case I'm going to replace my sony T610 and palm E2 with one single device. Either the HTC magician (128mb) or Wizard. : D
On the wizard I like the wifi, keyboard, edge, not sure about mobile 5. On the magician I like the smaller form factor, speed, standard sd card, price.
I read in mobile review.com that the performance is not so top with the TI processor turning at 200mhz instead of 416mhz of the magician.
http://www.mobile-review.com/pda/review/htc-wizard-en.shtml
So whats your honest opinion, any regrets, are the benchmark tests correct, whats your real life experiences? or too early to tell........... :?
A good question to ask is, do you really need that top performance ? Do you want a device that has good battery life and does the job with good speed 99% of the time, or something that runs out of battery faster but can display one extra line of text 1/100 of a second faster ?
i had the qtek s110, and replaced it with the imate k-jam and could not be happier.
because of the type of processor the mhz is not as important as it may seem.
i use tomtom navigator 5 and it starts much more quickly than it did before, and i can be listening to mp3's and un-install programs without any dropout from the music.
may seem strange examples but they both should me things were better.
also the keyboard is great for me, as i am too lazy to take the pointer out of the unit to type with.
there are teathing problems but that is our fault for being so impatiant
ok, you have a point about that. but what about video playback with TCMP? in the review, the results were poor. It seems my Tungsten E2 has similar results and thats one of the main reasons that i'm changing it, poor video performance.
In the video index test it placed dead last, and almost last for the pocket quake test. Whats your take? Have you been able to get better results?
I've had my MDA Vario (k-jam) for around 12 hours, and i'm so far not impressed.
Video playback is poopants. (Through TCMP and WMP)
You have to perform some voodoo finger juggling to type
I can't get pocketLAN to browse any more than one folder deep on my PC. (this could be a WM5 related issue though, as my MDAc worked fine doing this)
I cant stream any files what so ever. (WMP says 'parameter incorrect' TCMP says 'file not found')
Lets hope i'm blessed with a little more patience tomorrow.
Hi Mogwai,
I had a QtekS100 and an S110 before my Qtek9100. What do I think ? Very nice tool. It's much better than all the other Qtek I had before. Small, great batterie life, keyboard (very cool for SMS or e-mails), all the possible connections (exept UMTS ). However, I have two complains, first, the processor speed, I would really prefer to have a faster processor (It's connected to my laptop almost all the day, so stand by is not a problem for me), Mobile Navigon is not working properly on it... it's a shame I liked my GPS. Then, my second complain is about memory. It would be better with more memory. I'm used to install plenty of 3rd party softwares and it seems that the memory is fast full......
Concerning the movies, I have some on a storage card... it's nice but don't expect to have DVD quality.
To be honest, if the Qtek 9000 has the same quality without these two "problems", I will go for it :lol:
Mav
Hi Mav,
Thanks for your input. Really dont know why HTC did not put the intel 416mhz processor in the wizard, even if it cpu speed was downgraded. If this is truly a replacement for the magician why leave out something as important as performance for battery life?
I saw the pics of the HTC prophet floating around and it claims to have the intel processor with all the features of the wizard less the keyboard and the magician form factor, THAT would be the phone to have, but not sure if its coming out any time soon, or if it really a new model!
As I am new to ppc's is the wifi surfing experience anything related to surfing on a pc?
mogwai
OK Further to my experience yesterday, i have this to add.
This device (MDA Vario) is so unstable, its unreal.
If i start to stream radio over the 'net through WiFi then do anything else, the audio skips. The loaded MSN, audio skips, stops. device hangs.
Battery Out.
The amount of times i've had to pop the battery in the space of 24 hours is insane.
I'm very very tempted to use my '7 day cooling off period' with T-Mobile, and send the phone back.
Mogwai said:
ok, you have a point about that. but what about video playback with TCMP? in the review, the results were poor. It seems my Tungsten E2 has similar results and thats one of the main reasons that i'm changing it, poor video performance.
In the video index test it placed dead last, and almost last for the pocket quake test. Whats your take? Have you been able to get better results?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
not tried quake, and video playback is ok but not a main requirement for me so i'm not so bothered.
one thing i forgot to say between the two, is wifi is great for me and of course the s110 or other versions of it do not have wifi.
Whats not stable the OS? or perhaps there is not enough juice to keep the apps running at the same time. Hope its not an issue with this model. So far leaning towards the wizard, but there may be the S200 or prophet out soon, beginnnig 2006, which seems to have it all! except the keyboard.
Mogwai,
I'm not sure if it's me or not.
I've come from the MDA compact , so maybe i'm expecting too much, but it seems my Vario (k-jam) is very sluggish. I've installed all the apps i used to use on my MDAc.
SPB pocket plus / psshutdownXP / TCMP to name a few...
It's just not performing as well as i hoped.
If i'm on the internet (WiFi), flick out the keyboard do some browsing then flick back and load MSN... it seems to struggle.
I've tried to play videos in TCMP, playback was VERY poor, then the unit hung.
It then seems to get very sluggish and halts.
I can't put up with this every day.
I'm hoping someone will tell me some of the apps i'm using aren't optimised for WM5 and thats the problem.
gazzrenn said:
I've tried to play videos in TCMP, playback was VERY poor, then the unit hung. I'm hoping someone will tell me some of the apps i'm using aren't optimised for WM5 and thats the problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm also an MDA Vario owner and while not having all the apps installed that you have, I can confirm that TCMP playback is absolutely fine on my phone.
I don't have a lot of extras installed except for MS Voice Command, Total Commander, PHM Registry Editor and TCMP.
So I guess it's one of your 3rd party apps hogging the CPU. Also, did the soft reset button not work (instead of pulling the battery out in an earlier post).
Cheers,
Andy
Andy, were you playing the file from the phone storage or from an SD card? I was playing from the phone memory, having not bought a card yet.
As a side note, i've taken SPB pocket plus off there which helped a bit, it does seem less sluggish.... and if i'm honest Andy, i didn't know about the softreset button! :roll:
I'll test playback again.
gazzrenn said:
Andy, were you playing the file from the phone storage or from an SD card? I was playing from the phone memory, having not bought a card yet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
From an SD card (1GB Sandisk if that helps)
gazzrenn said:
As a side note, i've taken SPB pocket plus off there which helped a bit, it does seem less sluggish....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad I haven't tried using that app then - I might have just thought the phone was crap
gazzrenn said:
and if i'm honest Andy, i didn't know about the softreset button! :roll:
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
:lol: :lol: :lol:
I do wonder if there's more to come from TCPMP yet, too: I don't know if the OMAP 850 2D graphics accelerator is supported natively, and if it isn't then it should be possible to push the graphics faster...
So far, I like the device with the caveat that activesync refuses to work with Symantec Security Agent. (Getting rid of that and using Windows Firewall poses no problems...)
I tried my "standard" pocket video test today, the matrix revolution trailer. Average speed in TCPMP 0.7 was 139.32%, 33.44 fps, 571kbit/s from a 24 fps 410kbps file.
Seems to work well
chiark,
Could you try and play that file again from the phone storage?
Video playback on my device (from internal storage) is just hopeless
That is from internal storage - I don't (yet) have a mini-sd card...
Just in case it's something to do with the file, here's the file I use:
http://www.pocketmatrix.com/multimedia/downloads/matrix-rev.ogm
As soon as I get a mini-sd card, I'll benchmark that too to see if it makes a difference.
Are you using TCPMP 0.70?
gazzrenn, I've downloaded this Matrix trailer and run it offf my 1GB miniSD card and it runs perfectly (and is actually quite a good demo of fast moving video on the phone - thanks for the link chiark).
Cheers,
Andy
Sorry, I just noticed you also posted benchmark results. I've done likewise from my miniSD card:
Average speed in TCPMP 0.66 was 142.09%, 34.10 fps, 582kbit/s from a 24 fps 410kbps file.
I have a Cingular 8125. I bought it only a couple weeks ago, and I have to say that if it wouldn't have been for these forums and all the tips tricks and hacks that are being discovered here - I would have taken this devvice back to the store... I have days when I love it and days when I hate it - but overall I have to say that I just barely satisfied with the performance. It just feels like the OS (wm5) is to intensive for the processor in these devices.... and is it just me ... or does anyone else feel like they also are a BETA Tester for this devices and this platform in general .... cause let's face it - these things are not for everyone - it takes a über-geek like me and you to use one
Anyway, I am rambling, but - share your thoughts...
Yes i am, with it overclocked, upgraded rom and various hacks lol... Plus it gives this forum a boost - most problems are fixable
The 195 Mhz of the Wizard are enough for PDA/phone activities. But it's too little if you want to do more wiht your device. For example, when streaming mp3 via WiFi and then immediately encode to A2DP, the machine CRAWLS.
And it is getting worse with WMV video: it won't playback any QVGA WMV videos, too slow of a cpu (tried both WMP and TCPMP).
So, it depends how you use your device.
the 8125 processor 195/200mhz is just as fast as the Verizon/Sprints Xscale 400mhz process just different chips that clock speeds differently. it's like comparing a Intel Centrino 1.5ghz to a 2ghz mmx the centrino can blow past the mmx chip in a benchmark... but anyway the device is pretty fast being that it's small and can hold a decent battery life.
a lot of people add tons of plugs to there device that really slows it down. crappy coding in a plugin can make the 8125 really slow
I have to concur with phlojo on this: I migrated from a Himalaya (XDA2) & WM2003SE onto an MDA Vario. I was seduced by the prospect of built-in wifi, smaller footprint and WM5, but I have been severely disappointed by speed, memory space and stability. The poor stability is probably due to lack of memory, but there are other 'features' :x that infuriate, like a hit and miss alarm. Today I got 2 at the same time - but I have known it to miss alarms or to lose WEP keys, which is a PITA to type in as you can't paste the key on WM5; you have to type manually.
It was suggested in this thread that these issues were caused by additionally installed user applications. All I can say it that I'm only trying to run the same apps as I did on my xda2 (GPS map finding, opera & TCMP). At the moment I give it 6/10. If I find a smaller memory footprint rom to download, this might go up.
I think those considering the upgrade version of this phone need to check the hardware specs before taking the plunge. I've got this on a 18 month contract, so I'm stuck with it for a while.
running wm5 on a vario is like running winxp on a celeron 700
definatley needs more ram as well
Hi everyone,
I was quite concerned when I went from my Dell Axim x50v to the MDA Vario.
I was worried that the jump from 624Mhz to 180Mhz would be a bridge too far!
And it nearly was.....until I upgraded my ROM to 2.17.x.x, now it is reliable, doesnt randomly reset without warning and the performance is very good.
I use Tube 2 quite a bit and Tom Tom 5.21 and find there is little noticable difference to the Axim.
I am sure media encoding and streamng would be a totally different kettle of fish though - 180Mhz is just not enough for this kind of 'work', I am sure the Axim would struggle with this too!
The question is, is this really what you want to do with your Phone/PDA when theres such good 'tools for the job' such as the Sony PSP?
Mark
as a new user to the ppc scene. i dont really know what to expect. i should be receiving my 8125 very soon..
It set to come stock with whatever cingular puts on it..
any advice from the start? im really new to this whole rom thing so dont know what to do exactly..
ive read on here that overclocking boosts performance?
Im really impressed with mine, it works twice as good as i expected it to and thats with minimal hacks, its not even overclocked
im using the latest O2 ROM and i cant say i notice any slowdowns at all.
as i've said before, it performs so much better than my old XDA IIi and thats a 500Mhz WM2003 device!
i honnestly cant complain about it in anyway ... well 1 thing i spose, the stock headphones are horrible, but they work
Mediocre phone barely useable for business
I came from a kyocera 7135, treo 650 to this phone. I had two purchase 1 program and install 3 third party apps to get the functionality of the 7135 on the treo. As for the 8125 wizard this phone is a toy. I use my phone and pda functionality to the fullest and its just been extremely frustrating. DPAD navigation is a joke if it exists for the application. Phone integration with the PIM is worthless just try to copy a phone to the clipboard it only allows to save as new contact. MS made a big deal of respond to missed calls with an sms on the treo 700. Why exclude that feature on this version. Like everything they do nothing is consistent. My favorite flaw though is something that palm does very well. Hard reset the device and your screwed. Apparently not everything is backed up. You are required to reinstall many apps.
Performance the device has to be overclocked. Its performance isn't even acceptable out of the box.
To make the device usefull you need to overclock, install a few apps for menu navigation, a few progs for system maintenance, upgrade rom, make varios registry changes. If it this forum didn't exist I would have sold the phone bought another Treo.
The device or WM5 is good on two items. Wifi and web browser. Palm droped the ball on this big time although the newest version of blazer is supposed to be much better there is still no wifi.
MS needs to work on their PIM/Phone integration and the dpad for the device. the dpad hould navigate to all controlls and menus on the screen.
anyway just my gripes.
- Richard
I love my Vario. Everyone I show it to loves my Vario. That's even without google maps mobile, which I got working today.
Yes it is slow out of the box, I ran it for my first 2 months at default speed, I only setup overclock a few days ago, but now I have it overclocked 20% 24x7 and it's so much better.
I am totally happy with it. Of course I would love the faster CPU and UMTS and scrollwheel of the Wizard II, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.
I am happy with the software side. Very happy. It is the first XDA that I can rely on for receiving phonecalls, which afterall is what its for. Hell, its the first one where caller display works properly.
An overclocked XD mini-s plays QVGA videos fine for me.
I bought it knowing it would need hacking, but yeah, were it not for these forums and me being a phone nerd I'd wanna take it back.
I am not happy with hardware. The gap between the botom of te screen and case is appauling. Stuff gets down there, then the touchscreen stops working and its an arse to get out. The stylus falls out and the black paint flakes off.
Also, it randomly fried my 2GB mini-SD card, something which I have never forgiven it for as I still have not managed to replace it. Using this device without a card is impossible. If you have more than 5 photos on it, it constantly comes up with low memory errors.
The main reasons for the dreadful performance are two.
first, the processor has very small data and instruction caches. second, wm5 has this great nifty trick where system calls from a user-space process gets intercepted by the os, run, and then the results go to the process. Or something like that.
Plus, a significant portion of the os and user interface must be .**** i mean .NET which makes it even slower.
I use the custom 2.17 rom available on this site and I'm quite happy with it. Granted, I don't use it's every available feature or play mp3s and video with it often, but I do now and then, either as files or streaming off the web, and it all works fine. I was overclocking for a while but found I didn't really need it and haven't used it since the 2nd or 3rd week I had it. It's definately slower than my old Blue Angel but WM5 is so much smoother in operation than 2003SE which makes up for it. Also, just like with a pc where the keyboard is faster and more convenient than a mouse, the keyboard is much faster and more convenient than the stylus and I avoid pulling out the stylus when at all possible.
I guess everyone's milage may vary but my experience has been a very good one.
Wizard Performance
I must begin by saying that I really love the Wizard after using the ROMs and hacks on this site.
My first Windows device was a n xv6600 with verizon's EVDO network. The xv6600 has a 400 mhz processor. It was very fast but had horrible battery life, poor reception, and had to be soft reset all the time.
When I first got the 8125 Wizard, I almost sent it back. it was slow and locked up often. Next, I tried the Qtek Test ROM which worked better and had A2DP. However, I was still resetting all the time.
Now I'm running Exelencin's 2.17 Custom ROM for TMO. It works very well. The unit performs all tasks just as fast or almost as fast as the xv6600 (Blue Angel) which I still have and use as a benchmark.
I'm hooking up to the Wifi at work and home between 900 and 1200 kbps. That's faster than the EVDO speeds on the Blue Angel. The Wizard streams video from the web very well on Wifi. I'm getting Edge connections through TMO in SLC from 60 to 95 kbps. Though the EVDO is supposedly 3 to 4 times faster, it sometimes takes just as long to download some pages.
I use a ton of BT devices, including but not limited to:
I-PHONO 450RX and MOTO BT820 stereo headsets; Jabra headsets, my HP laptop with BT, and my Audi A6. The Wizard works much better than the Blue Angel. The Wizard even transferred all my contacts directly into the Audi. The BT connections are clearer and work from a longer distance.
I use a variety of foreign language dictionaries, read my mormon scriptures on the wizard. These memory intensive programs actually run faster on the Wizard than the BA. I put all programs on the sd card except one's like voice command which must be in device memory to work well. I also keep all pictures etc. on the mini sd card. Voice command can also be activated with my jabra or moto stereo headsets.
All in all, the Wizard rocks with the right ROM and settings. The battery life is simply outstanding. I can go one to one and a half days without a recharge.
The only time I get the wizard running slow is when I have half a dozen programs running. I wish programs would close when closed. I'm tired of going in the memory settings and shutting down programs I've already closed.
All in all
I have an imate Kjam which I got in MArch this year. I have installed and removed TONS of software and only had to do one hard reset as a result of crap dictionary software. I only have a speed issue when opening large Word docs with tables in it. Otherwise I am a happy camper with my device. I will not use the overclock software as I believe you are looking for trouble.
I will never go back to a regular cellphone now.
I regularly use mortplayer, TCPMP with full feature movies, Media player and Real One Player, and I have NEVER had speed/memory issues.
Remember guys that this little sucker has a DUAL CORE processor!!! It handles graphics BETTER than other faster clock speed processors.
ENJOY!!!
Something else to keep in mind for those with issues with video playback is that the 1.0 version of TCPMP is basically built from the ground up. They are reporting a VERY large increase in speed all round.
Yes you may have to fork over some cash to get all the codecs but for a player like TCPMP I dont think that $20 or so is that big an ask.
Lastly - and something I think is overlooked often - The wizard is a pretty fair phone with good battery life. I bought the unit because it was reviewed as a useable phone, sure I wanted a PPC as well but the phone had to work and not die in 1hrs use.
If all I had wanted was a PPC I would have bought something else, but I hate single taskers and to me the wizard is a great multi-tasker.
Good and bad
After applying a bunch of the tricks available on this site, I am overall quite happy with the T-Mobile MDA, over the Treo 600. I also agree that this site is necessary, but treocentral's forum was necessary, too: every advanced device needs educated users to achieve full functionality.
The biggest nuisance to me is not the speed but the fact that it is not responsive for a long time, 20 seconds or even more, occasionally.
The second biggest nuisance is that I can't search my 700 contacts for a keyword and get an answer in a realistic amount of time. On the palm, that took a couple of seconds; here, even overclocked at 240, it takes 20 minutes. What is with that?
The third nuisance is caps/shift lock, which is mostly that I am used to the Palm method and partly that the palm method makes more sense (turn on sticky with a double press, turn off with a single press of the caps or shift key).
Better things about the MDA: multitasking. wifi. VOIP. Today screen with SPB weather and diary. Runni8ng programs from the mini-SD card. Sound quality (phone and music).
8125 Works Like A Champ
My Cingular 8125 Is absolutely Fantastic...
Previous History...
I had a Samsung x427m freebie Phone and a Used Hp1910 Pocket Pc Off ebay...(150bucks) Did everything I wanted at the time... Played movies encoded at 220bit just fine... Plus I'm Cheap... had games... NES Roms... Mobipocket.... mp3's Liked the 3.5 screen...Kept it for 3-4 years...
8125...MINE...lol
1gb minisd Card
Motorola h500 Bluetooth Handsfree
1 Delux Black aluminum Case...
Firest thing I did was Update the Rom...
Cingular_RUU_225111_BETA_Custom_A2DP_THMS_RNGRS.exe
I knew That I would need to do that Much before I started any Computer geek will tell you you to find the newest Firmware/Drivers...lol
added vjvolubilis.cab to use my motorola H500 Bluetooth Handsfree To listen to music...works good...
Did the Wifi Update so It would actually connect to my wifi... I like WIFI...lol
Kept Wisebar Advanced off... Decided that it Slows up stuff a little, and doesn't like landscape with the only theme I'd actually use...no big deal,
Installed Battery Pack Pro... A MUST HAVE... lets you setup custom little icons to quickly pick application or game to run.... and will let you endtask Without having Wisebar on there... also shows battery time left and memory...
Installed MS Voice Command...
Installed Sprite Backup Another MUST HAVE... Make a quick backup when everything you want is running perfect and everything is installed...
Mobipocket reader Pro.... BOOKS>>>>BEST PROGRAM EVER FOR THIS...
Full Screen, From TXT and other pda formats... Scrolls Best way to Read a book in the Known universe...
TCPMP --- VIDEOS --- Need I say More.... full lenght dvd is about 100mb an hour... at 248 bitrate
Age Of empires Gold ---- Works Good... Good Game.... Still Wishing for AOE2 on PPC
Pocket Tombraider... Works Good... Amazing....
OverClocking Utilities
I've Tested it with the defaults 200mhz 240mhz and 252mhz, seems stable with all haven't compared battery test with them yet
Cingular 8125... Finally SET ME FREE....lol
Music
I still need to Put Pocket Music Player on there... Don't care for Mediaplayer10 but media player 10 works ok...
Movies...
I encode movies from dvd using Lathe around 248 bitrate... Plays them Perfect... without needing to overclock over 200 don't know why anyone would want higher bitrate on such a small screen...
Games - Havn't tried NES yet, but SNES was still too slow...Oh well... I'm fine with Super Mario Brothers 3 --- I'm Still afraid to Remap the phone on and off buttons for games... don't want to miss a call...lol
Tested Battery at 200mhz... thats what I keep it at... looks like playing a movie 248 bit and music and movies, reading, with blutooth off, wifi off,
will give you somewhere about 6-7 hours... WOW... my old PPC only would go for 2h 35min... Oh... the Screen Brightness was at 50% which is what my old pda looks like at 100% and looks great... brightness could go Way higher but not Necessary (wow did I just say that)
Bluetooth... H500... number 2 Handsfree device Cost me 35 bucks including shipping on ebay... Works Very Well When Close to device... Like 7-10 feet...
I use a phone like almost never.... But using the BT to Voice Dial Numbers Is Great...
I was afraid to get this because of the suposedly slower 200mhz processor... what a joke... This is way faster than my old Pda clocked at 300mhz...
I'd say the only drawback is the 2.8 screen, but it seems no to make much difference...
Price... $400 bucks... I bought it New Off Ebay... Unlocked... payed about 50 bucks more than cingular sells it for but keeps me from their stupid 2 year contract... seems worth every penny...
a friend of mine returned hers after about 5 days because she didn't know any computer stuff... had lockup problems because she didn't update Rom... The usuall stuff...lol These arn't for the completely computer illiderate...(at least straight out of the box) But I'd be hard pressed to find a better Device...
I'm pretty happy with my 8125. It's zippy enough for me. I even have Wis Bar Advance 2 loaded along with a bunch of other today plug ins and it's fine at the factory 195mhz clock speed (Though I've recently up'd the clock speed to 228 just because I can, feels zippier w/menus and webpages). It's never frozen up on me, I use Explorer A LOT (3-4 hours a day minimum) for browsing email and webpages at work. I have my Motorola H700 BT headset with me at all times so bluetooth has been turned on since I've had the device. This is the best phone I've had so far. Kicks the **** out of my Treo 650. I was a hardcore Palm user (Owned many Clie's and a Treo 600+Treo 650) and it took me a lot of convincing to "try" the 8125 but now I'm just in love with it :wink:
i cant get the video playback much past 500kb/s +/- 100kb/s (which is ****), and im running at 264mhz.
this is only about half the speed of normal mobile video bitrates. i dont think the limiting factor is miniSD card speed, cuz i got the same benchmarks from mp4s played off the internal storage.
i know i can encode video to fit the wizard and that works fine for most purpose, but i also want to have streaming video podcasts that come straight to the phone. fiddling with the settings on tcpmp didnt really help... vlc might do the trick, but vlc menus are intolerably slow for me
anyone have had the same problem? any ideas/suggestions? ill surely be puzzling over this...
Try TCPMP (freeware) don't forget to install plugins too. Google for it :wink:
I think he is using tcpmp
Well overclocking and using TCPMP is the best you can get for video playback. However, i could be something with the codecs being used. I see this on PC's all the time, the the codecs dont quite match, playback can stutter etc.
Other than that, maybe a slicker ROM might help but it's a unlikely and a bit drastic..
yeah i have a similar problem. I have encoded episodes of simpsons, family guy and south park into 3gp format. each one is about 25mb in size, and of average quality. when i start playing them back, they're fine for the first 8 - 9 minutes, but EVERY time at about 9 minutes in, the picture starts stuttering slightly, its not too bad, but quite annoying, even overlocked at 240mhz it still does it so i knwo its not the processor speed ? any ideas ??
[quote="bendog2784" ]I think he is using tcpmp[/quote]
ooops.! sorry not to read all...
Well I bought a 32Gb SD card and excitedly copied my MP3 music collection onto it.
However, playing these on my Windows 7 HTC Shift results in a disappointing playback quality, with 'popping' and 'glitching' occuring about every 6 seconds. It's almost listenable but rather anoying.
My Vista laptop plays the mp3 music fine from the SD cards, the issue is specific to the HTC shift, it's SD card drivers and the SD card slot.
When the MP3 is copied onto the Shifts hard drive, it plays perfectly.
I have tested all 3 of my SD cards, one FAT 4Gb, one FAT32 4Gb, and one NTFS 32Gb, and all of them exhibit the same glitchy MP3 playback on my HTC Shift.
I have tried all players on my shift, Windows media player, itues, and the lightweight VLC. All result in the same poor music playback on my Shift when the MP3 is on the SD card.
So there seems to be a problem with the Shift specifically, with MP3 playback from the SD card slot.
Has anyone else experienced this?
I have yet to try other music formats, but I'll write up my findings here.
It's disappointing as I don't want to clog up my Shifts hard drive with music files.
Could any of you shift owners do a quick test to see if an MP3 file plays smoothly from an SD card in your shift?
No problem with my 4gb sdhc.
dannyt84 said:
No problem with my 4gb sdhc.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's good news. Thanks for taking the time to test that.
Are you running Windows 7?
My device driver reckons the SD driver is up to date.
I'll try installing the SD formatter 3 patch this evening so see if that solves it.
Yes, windows 7. Let us know.
Negative. I installed patch KB976422-x86, rebooted, reformatted the SD card and re-tested. But the same glitchy playback occured.
Hmmm. I'm going to try safe mode or strip down all the services and startup programs to see if any of those is causing it.
Can you try playing with buffering inside the players? Maybe, like when playing big files from the internet on a low bandwith it makes things run not quite so smooth. By the way, what is the bit rate you are using? Playing with the quality of the recording can also have some influence: lower bit rates go smoother through the bus if it is struggling with higher bit rates. I've seen it happening at work with CD/DVD players.
I had high hopes for resolving this problem as I make backup images of my Shifts hard drive from time to time, so I restored an image that was made soon after windows 7 was restored. But the music still played back badly from SD. Even after I uninstalled all unecessary programs and killed unecessary tasks.
So I still haven't resolved this. I had a red herring solution, but it turned out that if I play the SAME mp3 twice, the second play is fine as the file must be cached on my hard drive following the first read.
My next thoughts are with services and the BIOS. My BIOS reads 1.0.0.18.
This is a little surprising as I know the latest HTC released BIOS is 10.0.0.8. I had loaded 1.0.0.8 before when I was Vista, but since installing windows 7 I didn't bother changing the BIOS as I thought it would be independant of the OS and persist. Do Windows 7 installers put the HTC Support BIOS 1.0.0.8 on their shifts?
wovens said:
Can you try playing with buffering inside the players? Maybe, like when playing big files from the internet on a low bandwith it makes things run not quite so smooth. By the way, what is the bit rate you are using? Playing with the quality of the recording can also have some influence: lower bit rates go smoother through the bus if it is struggling with higher bit rates. I've seen it happening at work with CD/DVD players.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thankyou Wovens. These are great points which I hadn't considered. My MP3s are 160kbps. Fairly hight but not excessively so.
Buffering and quality will be by next area of investigation.
UPDATE:
I have had the very same MP3 music playing smoothly now from the SD Card. Amazingly, this was on my restored latest hard drive image which had ALL my programs installed. What's even stranger is that I didn't do anything specifically to get it working. I just left Windows 7 to rest for a good 10 minutes before attempting to play the music. I have suspicions that the OS 'gets busy' doing someing that interferes with the SD card.
I'm getting there... and I'll post my findings which should hopefully conclude with a culprit and a permanent solution.
I9000 cannot play mp3 smoothly unless completely disable data network.
Does any feel that the I9000 cannot play mp3 smoothly?
It always has some pause (0.3~0.5 seconds) during play any mp3 even in 128 kbps CBR [around pause for 5-8 times in each 5 mins mp3]
I just found that, if GPRS/EDGE/3G(HSDPA) is turned on, this problem will be happened. That is no problem with Wifi.
One more, if you try to keep the Data connection e.g. downloading a large file via GPRS, that will be no problem as well.
I do thank that when any app/module want to access the Internet and "start" the data connection, this "start" will trigger the mp3 un-smooth problem.
Anyone playing with issue as well?
Am I alone?
Have no issues of the sort, FLAC and mp3s play flawlessly.
Stock rom, JF3, non-rooted, no ATK or taskkillers in general.
maybe your phone is sync-ing too much stuff in the background
try turning off Facebook, email sync, tweet sync, etc, etc
I played a lot of Flacs with mine and it did have tiny pauses now and then as you described. Sounded as if the cpu was busy (synching or doing something else) or maybe there was heavy I/O activity and we know the SGS isn't brilliant at that.... in any case, decoding lagged sometimes.
Still, the pauses were fractions of a second and fairly rare (perhaps once every 15 minutes or so). Audible, but tolerable given the overall good audio quality of the gadget.
I am new from i9000 and I have the similar issue.
Although I had disable all the network traffic (APN/WIFI) and I was only running the MP3 player, the song still played with some stop.
I had try lots of MP3 player apps, such as Astro player, TuneWiki, Kiss Music Player, MixZing, etc. No one can play song smoothly on my device.
Can anyone tell me how to improve it?
glitches if flac
Just another confirmation I've noticed the same issue with flacs on JG4. I get a glitch every 5 to 10 minutes. I've not listened to many mp3s so I don't know if it happens with them as well.
Yeah mines the same. Gets worse when the signal is dropping, almost useless when im on the train.
Contemplating about using my trusty itouch just to listen to music. Btw its unrooted with the one click lag fix
Sent from my GT-I9000 using XDA App
Its the firmware, I have tried many since the phone came out and about 50% of the firmwares have this problem, songs fine but every few mins there is a tiny pause/skip or what you want to call it, I have just moved to jpc but not tried any music yet to see if this one has same issue, but seeing as most are leaked there is always going to be an issue with something, guess the time we can really complain is when the real 2.2 comes out, if that has problems then its fair to have a go at Samsung.
I've upgraded to JM2 now, and I still don't have any troubles with my music player. mp3s and FLAC, no skipping or anything. Just smooth.
Oh and btw, I play my music from the internal SD.
Same problem here on JM6 (with and without ryanZa lagfix) with mp3's and videos.
No matter if internal or external sd card. Glitches occur approx. every 3- 5 minutes.
I'm not sure but i think there were no problems with stock JF3 firmware.
Edit:
Flashed back to stock JF3.
Music is playing flawlessly.
solved... kind of
Found what was responsible for my problems with music and video playback.
D-Clock Widget by mt. On every minute change playback stutters.
So check your widgets and apps running (in the background)
greets,
nerv
Eww leak on a clock ...
hey there. Please check if you are scrobbling music on your phone through last.fm!
I had this problem too. I used many scrobblers same problem. I disabled it now
another thing to check
many music player software will automatically download lyrics and arbum arts to the phone, those can also slow down and make it sluggish
Solution is not existed under 2.1, but don't worry
wunit said:
I9000 cannot play mp3 smoothly unless completely disable data network.
Does any feel that the I9000 cannot play mp3 smoothly?
It always has some pause (0.3~0.5 seconds) during play any mp3 even in 128 kbps CBR [around pause for 5-8 times in each 5 mins mp3]
I just found that, if GPRS/EDGE/3G(HSDPA) is turned on, this problem will be happened. That is no problem with Wifi.
One more, if you try to keep the Data connection e.g. downloading a large file via GPRS, that will be no problem as well.
I do thank that when any app/module want to access the Internet and "start" the data connection, this "start" will trigger the mp3 un-smooth problem.
Anyone playing with issue as well?
Am I alone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'd like to change to I9000 and now I have HTC Desire, and I know what about you say. Under Eclair the garbage collection is terrible. Every garbage collection takes 0.1-3 secs, and then everything frezze.
Don't worry the Froyo will cure this - have to wait only 2-3 wks.