Database Users

Your unbiased opinion please

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.
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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:
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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.

What is it with emulators?

I know that the Ameo throttles the CPU back (but I'm not happy with having PHM installed all the time, as I don't trust it to properly slow the machine down), but why do so many emulators fail on the Ameo?
Pocket Plus/4 is really, really choppy and unreliable.
Pocket Atari seems to work sometimes, but at other times I get speaker popping and no functional emulator.
Pocket C64 is just useless and doesn't support the keyboard, it seems; and setting up the controls seems to cause fuss for the sound, too.
This is supposed to be a fast machine, so I'm baffled by the apparent slowness when it does run an emulator. Pocket Plus/4 especially drops to 4% speed; I thought the CPU was supposed to catch up to the demand!

And tried with PHM anyway, still no better.
I just tried the exact same installation of Pocket Atari on the Universal with WM6 installed. It's working quite well; I'm currently playing Rescue on Fractalus (XEGS ROM).
Is it a memory management thing, or Microdrive, or something else?

RichardKAthena said:
And tried with PHM anyway, still no better.
I just tried the exact same installation of Pocket Atari on the Universal with WM6 installed. It's working quite well; I'm currently playing Rescue on Fractalus (XEGS ROM).
Is it a memory management thing, or Microdrive, or something else?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
On the Universal you probably installed it to the SD? If so, have you tested it on the SD of the Athena? I also noticed a few slow downs on my Athena and I have a Universal also to compare to. I have to redo my Universal because it's running very slow so I can't compare at the moment. I have read on the forums that users have noticed a performance increase with some WM6 installs. This could be a factor but I also think that the SD card is faster than the microDrive. Try it on the SD if you already haven't and see how it goes.

ltxda said:
On the Universal you probably installed it to the SD? If so, have you tested it on the SD of the Athena? I also noticed a few slow downs on my Athena and I have a Universal also to compare to. I have to redo my Universal because it's running very slow so I can't compare at the moment. I have read on the forums that users have noticed a performance increase with some WM6 installs. This could be a factor but I also think that the SD card is faster than the microDrive. Try it on the SD if you already haven't and see how it goes.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I don't have a miniSD, I tried it on internal memory (which I'd expect to be fast) with exactly the same results.
Broken Sword demo runs beautifully from Microdrive; maybe a bit of lag on audio. PocketAtari should be less reliant on the Microdrive than any large game.
I definitely think WM6 feels snappier (though my machine did get sluggish; perhaps the memory leak issue mentioned), but there are some WEIRD glitches going on here. One of the most telling things was when messaging popped up; directly before corrupting PocketAtari's screen with a notification, the messaging application's "activation" caused PocketAtari to run at full speed.
I think there must be some CPU "optimisation" going on within the WM5 build on the Ameo, and I don't think PHM actually cured it for me (I tried forcing the CPU fast for PocketAtari, and just forcing the CPU fast overall).

RichardKAthena said:
I don't have a miniSD, I tried it on internal memory (which I'd expect to be fast) with exactly the same results.
Broken Sword demo runs beautifully from Microdrive; maybe a bit of lag on audio. PocketAtari should be less reliant on the Microdrive than any large game.
I definitely think WM6 feels snappier (though my machine did get sluggish; perhaps the memory leak issue mentioned), but there are some WEIRD glitches going on here. One of the most telling things was when messaging popped up; directly before corrupting PocketAtari's screen with a notification, the messaging application's "activation" caused PocketAtari to run at full speed.
I think there must be some CPU "optimisation" going on within the WM5 build on the Ameo, and I don't think PHM actually cured it for me (I tried forcing the CPU fast for PocketAtari, and just forcing the CPU fast overall).
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wow, sounds like it's a CPU scaling issue indeed. Have you tried to disable the internal scaling using something like PHM? Not allowing it to manage the speeds but just disable the internal system and see what happens.

ltxda said:
Wow, sounds like it's a CPU scaling issue indeed. Have you tried to disable the internal scaling using something like PHM? Not allowing it to manage the speeds but just disable the internal system and see what happens.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, still choppy as anything. Thing is it appears that if I disable scaling and leave it at that (and don't let Scale Engine run), then it stays at 104MHz! But even running at 624MHz - surely plenty for a 1MHz 6502 machine to be emulated - it's running at 4% speed!

delay when playing?

hi
I get a slight pause, 3-7 seconds, when playing a game? like backgammon, hearts or bridge, the game play will pause, nothing happens, no response on from screen tabs or menu, then all of the sudden it comes back? any ideas? anyone having the same issue?
thank you for your reply.
My games are stored on the SD card, it is 16 GB sandisk almost 10 GB free, I have also increased the file cache size to 4 MB and file system filter to 8192 sectors.

Yeh
It's been mentioned before, and I have been able to reproduce it every time. I can't remember if it was on this forum or another but if you tap the screen too fast it stops the game responding. Mine are installed internally to the device so i don't think it's a storage problem.
It seems to be reproducable with 100% success rate.... and as one forumer said "it works well, shame it's a bug"

thank you for your reply. I just tested it with SkyForce Reloaded, no taping on the screen just move your plane around and, as you said, same delay. Actually I plaid around more with the settings and after increasing the cache size and the system filter cache to the next level (8MB & 13684) respectively the pausing is a bit less around 1-3 seconds not bad, I will try and increase those cache sizes but I do not know what are the ramifications on the phone itself ? I hope none

maherb said:
thank you for your reply. I just tested it with SkyForce Reloaded, no taping on the screen just move your plane around and, as you said, same delay. Actually I plaid around more with the settings and after increasing the cache size and the system filter cache to the next level (8MB & 13684) respectively the pausing is a bit less around 1-3 seconds not bad, I will try and increase those cache sizes but I do not know what are the ramifications on the phone itself ? I hope none
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have no idea because I have never tried playing with the cache sizes. One posible improvement would be to move your games to the internal storage. I try to keep all apps installed there and only media on the memory card. (Or apps t hat don't get installed and just run "portable" with non "performance related" functions.

thanks again, I will try that when I am home. Still at work

I moved the games from the SD card to the main memory, a much better improvement, there is still a very slight pause less than a second, I am happy with that much better than before

Good
maherb said:
I moved the games from the SD card to the main memory, a much better improvement, there is still a very slight pause less than a second, I am happy with that much better than before
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Glad to hear it helepd somewhat.
Other than that I can't see any other solution. Although I said the bug is reproducable it never occurs to me when playing normally, it takes rapid screen presses much faster than any game I have would require.
That being said, I have only played the games for a total of about 10 minutes. So I don' know if you're getting unusually poor behaviour or if it's standard.

*Music issues thread*

I thought I would start a thread for those experiencing music play-back issues.
I get 'skipping' when playing back music, but the really annoying thing is that sometimes it does not occur at all. This means I cannot, by process of elimination, determine what the cause is. Today I listened to an album with no problems at all, but last night the same album was skipping very badly - so file type cannot be to blame (it was AAC anyway).
If anyone else is having similar problems, please post and detail your phone model and network.
I have the graphite model on Orange. I have alerted HTC tech support to this problem and am awaiting a response.
Thanks.

Well, I still get intermittant skipping during the beginning of tracks! This is VERY frustrating, especially as I cannot pin down the reason and some people on here seem to have no problems at all. So my music player is effectively useless. I hope the update addresses this issue, but something tells me it won't...

Sorry but I have no problems at all really. Maybe a bit of hiss at the very lowest volumes but other than that I have happily replaced my ipod touch

simcarloc said:
Well, I still get intermittant skipping during the beginning of tracks!
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Click to collapse
I get the same problem, but only when i listen to one song and it changes to the next. If i select another song theirs no skipping.

I get the same problem, but only when i listen to one song and it changes to the next. If i select another song theirs no skipping.
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Click to collapse
Exactly the same here, does anyone out there have a clue why this is happening?

I have this problem too - Hero on Orange in the UK.
I have stuttering with BT playback and also the 'stretching' problem where a track goes off-key, like a dying 1980's walkman. Have tried turning off Wifi/Mobile/GPS but still occurs. Is better if the phone is 12 inches away from the BT headphones, but that kind of sucks.

Are you using bluetooth?
I found that having wifi turned on while using bluetooth caused stuttering, and this was fixed by turning off the wifi.

There are a variety of different issues you may encounter. For those having stuttering issues at the start of a track, are you using the stock SD card supplied with the phone? I think that is only a class 2 SD card, which provides a lower transfer rate which some people think can hobble things - particularly if you have other SD things going on like apps2sd and swapper. I have a 16GB class 6 card installed and haven't noticed any stuttering.
Cutting other background tasks such as Twitter (or at least dialling it back from an update every 5 minutes) may help things.
YMMV.

I've had a few Heroes now and only my most recent one had a stutter problem. The apps and settings were set to be the same on each phone. The MP3s were the same on the same card. I have no idea why one phone would have problems like that when the others didn't.
Happily, I applied the latest Rom and based on listening to half an hour of music last night it seems to be fine now.
Everything works better with this ROM it seems so look forward to release / get flashing.

I can confirm that since installing the Modaco update ROM, I no longer experience skipping/interferance. I have not listened to a large amount of music so it's early days, but things are looking good!
For people's information, I have a class 6 16gb card and yet I still used to get problems. So I think SD cards are not the source of the problem - especially since the update appears to have cured the problem.
Thanks.

I get stuttering and tempo changes over bluetooth using 2.73.405.5 (MCR 2.0), ie. the latest 'official' ROM, AFAIK.
Mid-tune stuttering seems to be down to weak BT transmission, i.e. if I turn my head to the left whilst cycling, I get stutter, if I look forward, it's OK. If I have the handset in one pocket (nearest the BT headphone receiver) no stutter, if I have the handset in the other pocket, I get lots of stutter.
All of this with BT headphones that worked flawlessly with my iPhone 2G...
Hope this gets resolved soon (are you reading HTC?) or the phone going back to Orange for a Nokia N900

I had major stuttering at the start of almost every track with the original ROM. Although as for the OP sometimes it would be fine. Usually it was resolved by a reboot, but not always.
The latest ROM is a lot better (I have installed Generic 2.73.405.5, not MoDaCo's Customer ROM).
There is still occasional stuttering at the start of tracks though when the phone has been on for a long time and I have been making phone calls (the Phone and People apps do not seem to ever shut down once they have been opened - maybe this is the cause), but a reboot now ALWAYS solves it.
Syncing apps also cause a tiny stutter so tweak your apps like Peep etc so as not to be syncing every few minutes.
So, HTC have gotten some of the way there, but they could still improve things from here. Let's hope the next update sorts it (although we're still waiting for 2.73.405.5 to be officially released so who knows when the next one will be?)
Dave

Disappointing SD Card Music playback on Shift

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.
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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.