Database Users

After reading all posts: let's try to make a sum

At Christmas I will receive my HTC Touch HD and this is why I have started reading all the Blackstone thread since a month.
That is what I understand so far(correct me if I am wrong):
-Hardware: big screen,a bit less contrast than Diamond, but impressive resolution and really (probably for the first time) user-friendly device
-Battery: better than Diamond's one..up to 2 days of normal use
-Video performance: still a lot of work, but coreplayer works fine with low size movies or videos. At the moment there is no access to the internal GPU and only WMP can play smooth .mp4...big hopes for the future. People disappointed due to high hardware capability not used
-Audio performance: quality comparable to Ipod/Iphone, but TF3d interface has still some bugs to be fixed..however, a lot of 3rd software to choose the software we like most ( S2P for example)
-Camera performance: still a bit confused, it seems to be a "standard" 5mp compared to the level of other devices (nokia or sony-ericsson)...however there is no thread that show exactly the power of this camera with lot of pictures in different environments
-Navigation GPS: few bugs to be fixed, but we can use igo8, Navigon 7 and Tomtom 7 in high resolution
-Customization: like the other wm..you can do really what you want (change today, apply tons of software, etc etc)..there are no limits so far, except the hardware's ones.
-Games: let's say that the TOUCH HD is more a "business device" with media specifics...but still far from Iphone games. Let's hope in the future like for the video performance.
-Development: HSPL not yet released (after we would have a huge choice of ROMs!!!..)...hopefully a christmas gift

worksofart said:
-Battery: better than Diamond's one..up to 2 days of normal use
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That astonishes me. I never get more than about a day with only sending SMS and nothing else. Whoever comes up to two days please tell me (and perhaps others) how to achieve that. I even stopped active sync and used the trick (empty active sync server) to not let it start automatically. Is there anything (perhaps obvious for others) I missed?

I think you just about summed it up.
It is a really nice device with lots more potential.
I'm sure you won't be disappointed this christmas!!

How do you stop the activesync?

well, im looking for a better solution on the high quality video playback capability lol

something wrong
alex3683 said:
That astonishes me. I never get more than about a day with only sending SMS and nothing else. Whoever comes up to two days please tell me (and perhaps others) how to achieve that. I even stopped active sync and used the trick (empty active sync server) to not let it start automatically. Is there anything (perhaps obvious for others) I missed?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
there's probably something wrong with your device cause i always get over a day and a half at least i mean have a look this has been covered several times snd most members appear to agree that the battery has improved especially in comparison to the kaiser and diamond both very loved handsets

I must confirm, marvi0 is right. The battery should last for over a day to two days when the device is sporadicaly used.
What I see as potentional problems could be these:
1) bad radio version (i remember these issues on HTC Hima with old ROMs, they could drain battery twice fast than usual).
2) some creepy app, that takes too much CPU use. Remember that the more the CPU is used, the more batt is spend. The power-off works that way: it not only turns off screen, it also sends windows to some sort of standby mode, when most of the apps are suspended. But - if some app could not get to this state, it runs on full throttle on the background. I remember such issue with playing with WM5 screensaver and MortScripts. Check your taskbar, what is running there.

My battery now lasts up to 5 x days max if I use Tweak HD suggested settings throughout! This is an excellent App. As per the camera I wish this could be fixed / replaced with something like I originally used on my Trinity since the adaptive zoom/focus causes rapid movement to alwas go blurred, whilst static images or landscapes are fine.

Battery Last 1 n half day
After lots of phone calls, average sms and few songs...Battery Last 1 n half day...
Which is fine for me

max i got from the battery was 3 days only doing a couple of calls and some sms, i don't use any massive tf3d personalization only changed the background image, installed s2u2, crystal clock and optimized the phone cache, but usualy it's around 1 and half, 2 days

My battery went from 100% to 48% in the space of about 8 hours on Sunday as I was doing lots of stuff on it, trying to get apps working, trying things out, installing, uninstalling etc.
I then had the phone on standby all night (was 48% before bed) and it has been on standby most of today with 1 phone call and a bit of video and calculator, and still on 48%

Okay, I now got my battery life up to about two days with some telephony and SMS and bluetooth always turned on by switching of the light sensor and using a fixed setting of two bars for the light when using battery. This is enough (at least for me) to see everything well on the device in every lighting condition.

alex3683 said:
That astonishes me. I never get more than about a day with only sending SMS and nothing else. Whoever comes up to two days please tell me (and perhaps others) how to achieve that. I even stopped active sync and used the trick (empty active sync server) to not let it start automatically. Is there anything (perhaps obvious for others) I missed?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I'm surprised with your short battery life. I used it almost non-stop and still had 50% left a day later. I find the battery life of HD amazingly good. However, I did took the pain to charge it properly before starting to use it. Although the manual said we need only 3 hours to charge it, I kept unplugging the power when the charge indicator turned green, then plug it in again. I kept repeating this process for about 2 hours after it first turned green. This might have something to do with the long battery life I'm getting, perhaps.

ScarySquirrel said:
My battery went from 100% to 48% in the space of about 8 hours on Sunday as I was doing lots of stuff on it, trying to get apps working, trying things out, installing, uninstalling etc.
I then had the phone on standby all night (was 48% before bed) and it has been on standby most of today with 1 phone call and a bit of video and calculator, and still on 48%
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is very much in line with my own experience so far.

HTCzar said:
How do you stop the activesync?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Have a look at this post http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=3036421&postcount=12

Problems with Battery Life and Cooked ROM's

I have been using cooked roms on my blackstone for a while now. However, my concern from the beginning has been that these are battery drainer.
I bought it second hand and it had call time of around 60 Hours both IN and OUT.
On 6.1, I used internet very little, but I used to call a lot and listen to music as well for about 2-3 hours a day. In that OS, it used to go up to 3 days.
Then I came into the world of xda-developers and things changed . The battery didn't last for more than a day and a half with the usage I mentioned above. That prompted me to buy new battery.
Since then, On cooked ROM's, I leave my email check for every 15 minutes and weather to an hour. With this usage it hardly last for 2 days on the new battery and I hardly make a call!!
If I make calls, use Opera, it would die in literally half a day.
Can people share their experiences about battery life and cooked roms etc???
I really dont want to go back to 6.1 and I want to keep using 6.5 but the battery issues are really annoying now.
I have used pretty much all the ROM's (Energy, PQD, XannyTech, KWBR, blackStonehenge) with same usage and all of them have yielded same results so it's not ROM based...
Cheers.

I'm using the last ROM that Dutty made for us. With 6 email accounts checking every 15 minutes and an Outlook push account, blue tooth enabled and sometimes an hour of phone use. My phone can't go more than 4 hours on a charge.

Thanks for the heads up. In a few hours I´m getting my own Blackstone with a stock OS. I was already set to change the ROM but with this post will have to delay it a bit until a fix can be found.

Oh, it wasn't that bad at first, it could go a full day. It's just as you add programs and then remove them things get progressively worse. I really need to flash it again to clean it up but I hate having to set everything up again. I'm not a habitual flasher

bravo2zero said:
Thanks for the heads up. In a few hours I´m getting my own Blackstone with a stock OS. I was already set to change the ROM but with this post will have to delay it a bit until a fix can be found.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Luckily, I have found one.
All you need to do is stop using your mobile on 3G.
I have tested it on Energy ROM. With 3G switched on, it lost around 25% of charge in a day on email check for every 15 min and weather for half hour. without any calls.
With 3G switched off and the rest of settings, the charge had only gone down by 12% and that included a couple of calls.
To be honest, I dont think you really need 3G unless you are using internet a lot. Even then, you may switch it on and switch it back off.
I will be trying the new MaxSense UI as well to see whether that helps the battery or not!!

[Q] Basic phone (long battery life)

Hi
I've been reading xda threads for long now and I have always wondered if there was a way to transform a smartphone into a basic phone. Let me explain myself.
I own an HTC HD2 and I'm really satisfied with it's big screen, power, ... I live in a house with electricity cool and thus charging it every 1 or 2 days is not a real problem. But once a while I have to live a fews days or a week without electricity (for example holidays like a one week camping), but I still have to receive a few important phone calls.
I'm using Android right now and this led me to think of a linux build (for example launched from WM) that would only enable us to browse our contacts directory and manage phone calls. The interface would be very simple, without beautiful effects, and I guess it would be possible for the battery to last very long this way, since most of the apps launched on powerful OS would not even be included. There would be not slidings, no transparency, and everything that require power.
I'm sorry if such a topic exists but I took some time to search and nothing appeared. And please don't replay "It is not the purpose of smartphones" since I know that, I've made a choice and I'm satisfied, but I just want to know if there's a way to make it even better.
I'm not (yet?) a developer so what I ask might be unrealistic, but I'm convinced this idea could be useful to most people. There could also be other ways to achieve this, like another OS or just a WM mode...
Don't you think it would be great to be able to switch to this when long battery life is needed ?

dalapigi said:
Hi
I've been reading xda threads for long now and I have always wondered if there was a way to transform a smartphone into a basic phone. Let me explain myself.
I own an HTC HD2 and I'm really satisfied with it's big screen, power, ... I live in a house with electricity cool and thus charging it every 1 or 2 days is not a real problem. But once a while I have to live a fews days or a week without electricity (for example holidays like a one week camping), but I still have to receive a few important phone calls.
I'm using Android right now and this led me to think of a linux build (for example launched from WM) that would only enable us to browse our contacts directory and manage phone calls. The interface would be very simple, without beautiful effects, and I guess it would be possible for the battery to last very long this way, since most of the apps launched on powerful OS would not even be included. There would be not slidings, no transparency, and everything that require power.
I'm sorry if such a topic exists but I took some time to search and nothing appeared. And please don't replay "It is not the purpose of smartphones" since I know that, I've made a choice and I'm satisfied, but I just want to know if there's a way to make it even better.
I'm not (yet?) a developer so what I ask might be unrealistic, but I'm convinced this idea could be useful to most people. There could also be other ways to achieve this, like another OS or just a WM mode...
Don't you think it would be great to be able to switch to this when long battery life is needed ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hello,
That is actually quite interesting, but the first time I have heard of such a query in the 9 months this phone has been released.
Just out of interest, have you tried running the phone with just the standard WM interface to see how long the battery lasts?

Alternative solutions:
1 - You could always try wind-up, or solar charger.
2 - buy the cheapest PAYG phone you can get (on your network)and put your HD2 SIM in it.. These tend to last quite a few days on standby and you don't really care if it gets bashed or wet.

fred_up said:
Alternative solutions:
2 - buy the cheapest PAYG phone you can get (on your network)and put your HD2 SIM in it.. These tend to last quite a few days on standby and you don't really care if it gets bashed or wet.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
could u really do that? </3

@fred_up
Those are nice ideas ! (Infact I've lost my cheap phone recently)
Morpheus, what you mean is WM without sense ? I'm not sure there would be a huge improvement...

dalapigi said:
WM without sense ? I'm not sure there would be a huge improvement...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
you can turn Sense off in Settings/More/Today,
and according to BattClock power consumption on my Leo (YMMV) is:
Sense: 100-300 mA
Windows Default: 42 mA

Turning off sense would give you a noticable amount of battery life......
The sense interface is a hungry hungry beast........
The linux idea is nice but the problem is that it would be running on top of windows and therefore not save any battery.........
Luckily I still have my trusty (4 days without a charge) N95........
The old girl still comes in handy...

D4rkSoRRoW said:
could u really do that? </3
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Whenever I break my good phone I just use a T-mobile PAYG phone until I can order a new phone. Or if I'm going camping or biking or something.

nice i will try to disable sense ! thanks for this tip
about linux, i believe i read that wm is completzly shut down when launching android (it only serves as a trigger ?)

Running SPB Mobile Shell, I lose 1% of battery life every 3 hours on standy. That's with data and wifi turned off and just the phone running. That would give me about 300 hours of standby time. In theory that should last you a week with a few short calls.
Problem with Android/Ubuntu on this phone right now is you have to run it off the sd card, which draws a lot more power. Whenever the screen is on it draws a lot of power anyway. The best I've done so far is 6% drain over 8 hours with just the phone running in standby.
The most obvious/best solution for you is to just bring an old dumb phone instead or as backup. Then you can just slip the sim card out and use that to make/receive calls.

7 days with CyanogenMod 7

This is work in progress and I will update it for 7 days. Original posting can be found here
I'm sure you have heard someone telling you would spend way too much time with your smart phone. As if one could spend time with or without a tool. My phone, besides some rare occasions, is always with or near me. Yet it doesn't mean I spend time with it! I spend time with people, and I might spend my time spending time with using my smart phone to write an email. An if I spend time adjusting it to my needs or the latest desire aroused reading some blogs, so what? I do this for the sake of communication!
How come nobody understands that find difference in concept?
Day 1
25/05/2011, 11 a.m.:
Been checking my emails on the go twice, surfing on xda forum, chatting with the HTC support, writing an email to a friend, again checking my mails but also the market updates - what a pain to see there are no updates available for my installed apps. I check if it is not Sunday. No it’s not Sunday!
I discover how handy Evernotes can be. Copied an address out of the chat conversation and send it straight off to Evernotes. Must admit it was a little fight until I had marked the exact text line I wanted to have copied as it did not recognize it on its own. It would have blown me away had it read my thoughts.
I’m really thinking about one of those tables all the time. I’m kind of pissed somehow about the unfortunate fact there is no real handwriting recognition function on phones or tablets yet that really works - would be mind-blowing! I read the HTC Flyer does make advanced use of the stylus pen for note-taking somehow. I’ve seen some handwritten notes and compared them to the scribbling I am producing this very moment on real paper and there doesn’t seem to be that much of a difference.
However, I will have to type that later and I question this concept of me thoroughly doing it without giving up after a couple of minutes.
I’ve had way too many thoughts die due to the lack of an adequate and effective tool to digitalize my thoughts. I’m way much more impressed by my analogue brain-eye-arm-paper-to-key motion sequence I’ve happily produced as I realize I have really typed and added almost everything I wanted to say.
25/05/2011, 5.51 p.m.:
I wonder if I should give cyanogen latest night builds #87 a try again and get rid of my perfectly working Android Revolution ROM setup. I’m downloading, charging and backing up my phone for every eventuality...
Day 2
26/05/2011, 5.33 a.m.:
I have CyanogenMod Nightly Build #87 setup & running. Will see how it gets through the day. Fingers crossed the battery will not drain exaustingly.
26/05/2011,5.45p.m.:
In the mood for taking some screenshots and willing to do a brief review of my cyanogenmod 7 experiences...
Day 4
28/05/20011, 7.55.a.m.:
Can't hardly believe I haven't changed that much. Phone is working pretty fine, except there seems to be a problem between Fullscreen Caller ID and the call recorder that came with the modified kernel I flashed yesterday. I just won't use FSCI, instead, when I make a phone call it will try to use both the default dialer as well as the full screen dialer as the same time. The result is devastating: it will dial the number twice.
Day 6
30/05/2011, 1.53 p.m.:
Left home at 7.30 pm, battery went down to 51% by 12 a.m. and 32% by 2 p.m., whilst all I did were a few twitter & google mail updates, no phone calls, watching videos or other heavy-consuming processes.
Seems like the un-official CM7 nightly ROM I have flashed (Chezbell-cm7-20110529) is a battery killer! SetCPU is enabled, with a powersave governor profile activated when display is off, undervolted –25mA script running and I am nevertheless more than half-way out of battery within not even 7 hours – not really a full working-day yet!
Feeling unhappy and unsatisfied, after that the phone had been running so smoothly during the weekends ( some heavy 3G and EDGE-surfing in bad reception areas, gps navigation etc etc without a problem and far less battery drain). Phone was way more responsive with CM7 #87. Will switch to LORDmodUE 2.1 kernel tonight and see if it helps.
Day 7
31/05/2011, 3.13 p.m.:
I did it! I ruined it all! My sd card is totally erased! Holy frigging s’#!§t! What happened I still can’t recall exactly but I guess in any case I should learn to be more careful and most important: read and think before I act! I flashed a kernel while surfing the xda on my way home and now I don’t even find that stupid thread.
I guess it is a good point to stop my documentation now and draw my conclusions of my 7 days with cyanogenmod nightlies now.

[Q] Bringing redundant Touch HD out of retirement! Q&A.

Ok so my first and main question is, are people still using their old blackstones, if so what for?
I'm EXTREMELY interested. I don't want to be another consumer who throws redundant tech away every 18 months if I can find a use for it. Besides it feels like a part of mobile history, the last of the resistive touch screen era, the new windows phone is too tiley, rigid and related to the disaster that was and is windows 8 and as a techie I like to tinker with things as such windows mobile 6 is just nostalgically beautiful. I could even still see myself developing an app for it in the future even now if I thought of something worth having because it reminds me of my beloved iPAQ which unfortunately I no longer have!
At the moment I'm running a Note 3 which is brilliant and HIGHLY recommended, in between I've had an S2, another good phone so as a phone the touch HD's days are well and truly over, It is however still a fairly decent pocket PC with GPS so at the very least I could still keep it in the car as a backup tomtom.
I first got my hands on an iPAQ 4150 (my reason for joining XDA!) a decade ago, I was 15 at the time and I'd coveted iPAQs for years so when I finally got one I felt like the king of kids along with my 5 friends and younger brother who also had various flavours of pocket pc (his Axim X5 - ironically now worth about £5 is sat on the desk next to me). While I used it for many things including videos, playing monopoly, universal remote, bible, reading ebooks and taking notes in class its main purpose was as a fancy MP3 player with that wonderful bass boosting app called Pocket Music!
On this basis and for old times sake I've decided that I wish to resurrect my Touch HD as a Pocket PC and second mp3 player.
This brings me to my next question, whats the largest/fastest micro SD you've managed to get yours to recognise? I just tried the 64gb sdxc from my note 3 and unfortunately no luck there.
One thing that has disappointed/shocked me somewhat is how difficult it seems to be to find all the millions of programs that used to be, handango was packed, and I've long since deleted all the things I used to have fortunately I did manage to torrent a copy of pocket music! Wahoo! :victory: guilt free it was paid for a long time ago.
So far, I've removed my 6.5 Energy ROM and swapped it for Duttys 6.1 XT turbo for the sake of speed (it was the ONLY 6.1 ROM I could still find - the original orange one having long since disappeared from their (and seemingly any other) website. While the energy home was beautiful it was laggy and drudgerous to use (im sure its fine on LEO) which brings me to my third question.
Does anyone know how I can keep touchflo but still use the default windows mobile 6.1 start menu? I like the touchflo homescreen with the clock and I would still find the weather tab useful over wifi so I would like to keep that if possible but I haven't found a way to have that with default start menu on dutts rom. Alternatively, could anyone point me toward the Orange Rom?
Last question, overclocking, if I remember correctly 670 mhz is easily achievable but at the time I fiddled with this (many years ago) we could only do it while plugged in. I'm certain that has been answered elsewhere but while I'm here, I might aswell add it to the list. Is it now possible to have the OC running on battery power?
To summarise; I want a mininmalist almost iPAQ like OS, windows mobile 6.1, few fancy bits, no social media, no crap, if I could remove facebook from this version of duts rom and other things I deem unnecessary I shall, I want it as fast as possible (my iPAQ was fast and simple with a 400mhz processor so there's no reason this can't be), with the biggest SD card I can find. I want to overclock it, and I'd love to know if there's anywhere that we can still find all the thousands of interesting old apps and games that seemingly used to be out there. I've even toyed with the idea of asking about windows mobile 5 although I dropped the thought when I realised I'd probably lose camera functionality.
And remember first and foremost, I also want to know.. How do you eat yours? :silly::laugh:

Quick update, this rom looks absolutely delicious in 6.1 guise:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=460640
Download links here:
http://www.4shared.com/dir/elwe84Mo/Kwbr.html#dir=Lj5MJ7Y2
Had to sign up for 4 shared, flashing now.

Works brilliantly and after flashing 10 roms in a day its my favourite by a long way, only thing is that the weather function won't work via wifi (not tried gprs), any ideas anyone?

So from what I've been able to garner the Touch HD takes micro SDHC but is not compatible with the newer SDXC. While this limits us to 32GB it's still good news because the old walkman mp3 player I have been using was 16GB and these days the fastest top class 32GB micro SDHC card can be had for as little as £12.99! That means I can essentially double the capacity of my mp3 player for £12.99! Clearly, there's still life in the old phone yet!
http://www.mymemory.co.uk/compatible-memory/Mobile_Phones/HTC/HTC+Touch+HD_Memory_Cards

I still use mine as my mobile phone and for Tom tom and storing passwords. It's gone through a few batteries and a new stylus and a new screen. It constantly gives me the shixs because it's a slow ass phone. I'm just waiting for that perfect unicorn rainbow encrusted replacement phone. Thanks for recommending the rom, I'll try it out to see if I can be bothered putting up with this hunk of junk a bit longer.

joshwuk said:
Works brilliantly and after flashing 10 roms in a day its my favourite by a long way, only thing is that the weather function won't work via wifi (not tried gprs), any ideas anyone?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
weather works on mine with wifi.
Holy crap the touch hd is a slow phone. Everything takes at least 3 seconds to respond when clicking. THere must be a quicker rom... I did install the sense 2 version.

I installed the 6.1 weather one. and I overclocked it using http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=747813
The weather didn't work at first. I dunno what fixed it, but I turned off location awareness in settings on touch flo. then i went to weather deleted all the extra cities, then i updated and turned on location services when it asked and it worked. may be a fluke.

AvocadoBaby said:
I installed the 6.1 weather one. and I overclocked it using http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=747813
The weather didn't work at first. I dunno what fixed it, but I turned off location awareness in settings on touch flo. then i went to weather deleted all the extra cities, then i updated and turned on location services when it asked and it worked. may be a fluke.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
"all settings" fix in settings tab
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=5507019&postcount=6328

geez the touchhd was a dumb phone. I still am using it because i'm too cheaparse to buy a new phone. But damn... iphone killer it was not. Slow piece of rubbish with a bad camera.
Spent ages trying different variations of manilla and boy are they laggy. A bit better with overclocking. so tried winterface, point ui, spb mobile shell, cHome. Finally the today screen with resco plugin is the quickest. I can't believe i've been putting up with spb and touchflo all this time instead of the today screen.

I bought my Touch HD in december 2008. I have been using it until september 2015. Reason for replacing it was a standy time of only a few hours. (I ditched my Motorola A780 for the same reason btw.) I bought a new battery, but that didn't solve the problem. I was running the WM 6.5 Energy ROM, which made it more touch friendly than the original WM 6.1.
The Moto X Play I have now looked ridiculously big at first, but now I am used to it the Touch HD seems ridiculously small .
I liked using it, but noe I have more reasons to not want the Touch HD anymore: speed (or lack of it) and the non-capacitive, scratch sensitive touch screen.
I am not into replacing a phone every one or two years. I think 7 years is a nice lifetime for a smartphone. So my Moto X Play has at least another 6,5 years to go.
I know I am kicking an old topic, but it's an old phone too. I wonder if there are still people who use it as their everyday phone.

It is permanently in my car always on the charger, serving as music player and backup phone.

I'm still using mine
I've tried the modern Windows phone and Androids but they just don't have the functionality that ~I need. I like being able to use my fingernail on the touch screen for better accuracy than a great big fingertip. I like having a full QWERTY keyboard like the Resco keyboard without constantly having to shift from numbers to characters to symbols. I like the drop-down menus and I like the fact that I don't have to search for the phone app to use my phone as a phone.
The only downsides are the reception in poor signal areas is not as good as my wife's Samsung and the OPERA browser doesn't work very well but then I have a laptop for serious work.
I somebody would bring out an updated version of this phone running Win 6.1 mobile then I'd bite their hand off and upgrade but as it is I'll stick to my Touch HD as long as I can keep it running.

Use all the time
I use mine every day for telephone, email, calendar/diary syncs with OUTLOOK, contacts, word, excel, as a clock, as an alarm.
I use it occasionally as a SatNav, read the Bible on it.
It's now getting a bit long in the tooth and with 2G/3G starting to get switched off I'm now looking for a way to migrate all my stuff including Win Mobile 6.1 to and Android phone. If anybody has a good way to upgrade an Android phone to Windows Mobile 6.1 then I'm all ears.