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an iPod Touch/iPhone can play 3d games, utilise the g-sensor and run smoothly - for example racing games. Tilt the iPhone, the car turns.
Why can't our phones run these sort of games? Or is it just the case they haven't yet been produced?
From what I'm aware a Diamond is more powerful than an iPhone therefore these games "shouldn't" be a problem?
Shoot me down in flames if I'm wrong, just kinda thought there should be iPhone-esque software for these phones now.
I am right with you, i keep thinking the same thing.
Because Apple has crazy fanboys and they provided a simple infrastructure to facilitate payment and downloading (appstore). They also gimped the iphone out of the box so as to pretty much require people to sign up for the appstore if they actually want to use it, ensuring that they have the user base they need for it.
Now the iphone has several million users - how many Diamonds do you think are sold? Windows mobile itself is bigger, but the capabilities of the phones running it vary too much that profiting from making advanced games is as feasible.
I have wondered about this as well. I think the problem is 3 fold
Firstly, the Diamond has 3d and graphics performance issues for sure. Sometimes my Diamond will slow down terribly when running some simple animations. I have read that HTC are notorious for providing poor graphics drivers and this could be part of the reason.
Secondly, I actually dont think Windows Mobile is capable of doing what the iPhone UI is capable of in terms of interactive gaming.
Thirdly, Apple provide your at home developers a great business model to go out and develop great games and apps for the phone. Plus with the Appstore they know that if they develop something good, people will see it - there is only one place to get apps from - and the developer will make money.
For me, the iPhone is not the right phone, but I would love Windows Mobile and HTC to be able to do what the iPhone and Apple can do.
The iPhone has v-sync, so the 3d graphics are drawn smoothly with no tearing and sadly win mo just does not. At least that is what my mate said who is a games developer. The power is there but you just can't get it to the wheels! This just makes it fundamentally unappealing to a lot of developers.
yeah totally agree, i love the diamond, but i've been using windows mobile for years now, and each new model HAS generally got better and better. however the iPhone is just something else.. for people who aren't nerds and into mucking around iwth their phone etc, i could never recommend a windows mobile over an iPhone. its just so much more polished compared to the diamond.
i'm an AMD fan too, godamnit why do i always have to back the underdog
Yes, even though i have a diamond and have had great fun tweaking it, i still can't help but envy the iPhone users for their graphically superior games and video playback prowess .
Another explanation would be that iPhone games are developed solely for... u guessed it, iPhones! ...whereas WinMo games have to be developed to run across many different devices, with (or lack of) accelerometers, touch screens etc. Therefore, to achieve this interoperability / compatibility across the many different devices, compromises have to be made.
That said, there are still gd games for our beloved devices, my favourite being PDAMill, whom develop aesthetically pleasing games with intuitive controls, and they're cheap too.
Nudge.
So all in all, will it become possible? And what's vsync? Portable to diamonds?
I think V sync is something to do with the way images are drawn to the screen, and it is just not implemented in win mo, I don't know if it could be written into the drivers or of it is a hardware thing, but then I don't actually have a clue what I'm talking about! Can anyone confirm this?
vsync actually makes bad performance even worse since it forces the back buffer to wait until right after a screen refresh before it copies its data to the frame buffer.
it's great if the device is capable of rendering an FPS that is higher than the refresh rate, but in the diamond case it's just another fps thief
if you want games like iphone get an ipod touch. The diamond never advertised gaming as a capability. Think of it this way: The iphone is like a mac with mediocre hardware but also comes with a mid range video card. The diamond/touch pro are like PC's with raging motherboard/cpu/ram combo, but bottom entry level video card. You can get a lot done with the PC, but the fun factor lies in the mac.
Go buy virtual pool mobile, it runs great and it's very fun. Its the best pool video game ive ever seen actually.
Simple reason
The reason to me is simple: Apple cares about user experience. Just look at win mobile contacts, or explorer. Do you think this software is made for 2008-2009 hardware? Now look at iphone's ones... Seriously, Microsoft has the power to make good things for mobile users, but they released win mo 6.1 one year ago, which is mainly the same OS that existed in 2003.
Silly we when we buy pocketpc running on windows mobile.
Just to revive a dead thread for quite a good reason..
I've seen a few videos on Youtube and also a few write ups on the wonderful Tinterweb in relation to Windows Mobile devices running and successfully playing iPhone games through emulation.
Is this just simple hear-say or fake ? I've been thinking for a long time about focusing simply on making the graphical capabilities of the diamond better through customising the graphics drivers. That's the main flaw for me.
According to a few posts the graphics card has 64MB dedicated memory.. is this right?
If so, these things SHOULD be capable of running bloody good games but the drivers are just nowhere near good enough. I did hear about changing to ATI drivers - is this right? If so, where can I find the info on this cause I would like to maybe bash at hybrid-combining the drivers and modifying them a bit as to allow maybe a bit more fluid graphics. If you check one of my other posts on the Diamond, I've been complaining about split-graphics. It's really getting on my nerves as I'd rather just see a full picture move around my screen fluidly. None of this "split it up" rubbish.
Cheers
Driver dev
This seems to be a good thread with most/all of the available drivers posted.
well I have been enjoying copy + paste and fully working GPS on my Diamond ever since
now why hasn't Apple offered this so far?
I guess each company chooses their own battles
glumetu said:
well I have been enjoying copy + paste and fully working GPS on my Diamond ever since
now why hasn't Apple offered this so far?
I guess each company chooses their own battles
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hrrm.. In the new 3.0 SDK update for iPhone 3G and iPod Touch which will be released soon there is copy and paste + redo.. in a very stylish and functional way.
And there will be mms + almost every single function that the iPhone was lacking before + some more.. many, many new stuff for improved gaming, new OS improvements etc.
I watched the presentation on the apple website..
Shoddy_me said:
Hrrm.. In the new 3.0 SDK update for iPhone 3G and iPod Touch which will be released soon there is copy and paste + redo.. in a very stylish and functional way.
And there will be mms + almost every single function that the iPhone was lacking before + some more.. many, many new stuff for improved gaming, new OS improvements etc.
I watched the presentation on the apple website..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Stuff that should have been released last year. The only reason Apple is releasing it when they are is because people's 2 year contracts are starting to expire, and Apple wants to try and persuade them from leaving by finally giving them features they've been demanding from day 1.
Honestly, it doesn't surprise me in the slightest. I knew Apple would do that.
Heres my question:
Smart phones and windows mobile operating system have been around for something like, oh, 15 years now. Why is it some EMO company like Apple releases a phone (badly I might add) and it becomes THE Benchmark for mobile devices? Its just purely unbelievable to me that so many people obsess over "well the iphone can do this, and it can do that.. I want my ______ to do what the iphone does..." If you like the turd and all its glory so much, why don't you just buy one and get it over with??
the iphone is so easy to use, thats why so many people bought one. when everyone has something, it becomes the norm to judge other things by. think of the model t from ford
Model T?
Confused.com. Is that the foreign (for me) Focus? lol
Anyways, I've looked about and the ATI drivers have given me the power boost I'm happy with. However - My images are still split on the screen.
Still trying to get this fixed...
Hi,
im just wondering if you guys who have touchHD's have experienced any problems, in particular with games, being compatible due to the complete lack of hardware buttons?
im considering making this my next phone, but am worried about this
thanks
afhstingray said:
Hi,
im just wondering if you guys who have touchHD's have experienced any problems, in particular with games, being compatible due to the complete lack of hardware buttons?
im considering making this my next phone, but am worried about this
thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
it's not compatible just because of lack hw buttons, it's also incompatible because of wide resolution. I'm having hard time with almost every software, not just games.
oh man, seriously??
does the software just show in part of the screen or will it not run at all??
what about the buttons.....what kind of stuff have you found that cant be played/used since it lacks them?
ok, i just found the sticky on programs compatible with the touch HD.....
seems like quite a lot of stuff works, but quite a lot dosent as well.....
what i need to know is, are there any current HD owners who wishes they bought an xperia or diamond instead? not hardware wise but in terms of application compatibility..
There's a wiki on software compatibility which you should consult.
On Xperia you'll have the same problem, as it uses the same resolution from what I remember.
afhstingray said:
what i need to know is, are there any current HD owners who wishes they bought an xperia or diamond instead? not hardware wise but in terms of application compatibility..
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no
watch a movie, surf the net, work some spread sheets and so on
then say whether youd rather have some buttons or that huge screen
if you want both, youll end up with a laptop not a palmtop
I'll sacrifice some games (as this is all we are really talking about) for the excellence elsewhere
any ways, i have a psp for gaming
jonajuna said:
no
watch a movie, surf the net, work some spread sheets and so on
then say whether youd rather have some buttons or that huge screen
if you want both, youll end up with a laptop not a palmtop
I'll sacrifice some games (as this is all we are really talking about) for the excellence elsewhere
any ways, i have a psp for gaming
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
true, i havent played any games on my touch dual for the past year...i suppose its only games that would be affected. and going through the list i see enough games which look appealing anyway.
furthermore being it a new device the software just still isn't there... but it will come
well that depends on the popularity of WVGA...i reckon VGA is the standard....WVGA might take a while to become mainstream, if at all, no?
would be cool to see some driving games like on the iphone that take advantage of the G sensor lol....
i sure hope these get fixed in the coming months by our devs and cooks
i just got a chance to play with an old ATOM EXEC (64mb,qvga,520mhz.no 3g...etc). i was amazed on how much faster and snappier the device. i know that the screen has one fifth the pixels, but not everything is depending on graphics. here are some things i noticed ive grouped them into 5 differnt "benchmark classes
1- anything with any graphics effects(non 3d) like scrolling rotating...etc is infinitely smoother and cooler despite the lower resolution and crappier image quality. pointUI2 was a solid50fps vs only ~20fps on x1, fingermenu 1.10 was about 15-20fps vs only about 5fps, miniflow was about 30 fps vs an unusable ~5-6fps. zooming and panning with htc image viewer was butter smooth unlike the "good enough" on the x1. scrolling and navigating in UCweb feels a lot smoother on the atom
2-opening the windows directory takes about 1.5 seconds vs 4-5 seconds on my itje's 3.5rc1(one of the fastest roms i have tested. cold booting takes about half the time but thats to be expected due to the smaller windows folder.
3-opening demo PocketArtist is 6 seconds vs 8 on x1.
4-youtube videos using the application @normal quality setting does not lag at all. on my x1 it does sometimes when it is viewing while its finishing the download over wifi. m2d was not as good looking as tf3d but its so much smoother
5-navigating various parts of the OS (for example jumping from programs to settings-> clock-> connections - activesync- connections...etc) was just noticeably snappier on the EXEC. switching to landscape was faster on the X1 though
while the experience of the x1 is clearly better due to the screen,resolution,other phone features and all, i just cant but feel extremely disappointed with how things currently are especially the first observation.
I'm really interested in our cooks opinion on how performance may end up being improved in a major way in the coming few months in any of the above situations. I'm obviously interested in the first point as its very easy to notice compared to the other points. can we expect something worthwhile in terms of performance in wm6.5
btw i also tested a cooked dutty v4 htc diamond and i dont think the diamond was much better than the x1 in the performance.
I don't know if your x1 is customised or what, but so far my take is the X1 is the fastest winmo phones I ever own in the last few years, considering those I have owned include both smartphone and professional, wm5 and wm6 (touch pro, samsung i780, omnia, treo 500v, moto q9h, etc)
that reply was more fanboish than i would like it to be . i think the X1 (despite some problems) is the best htc phone made. but current generation QC-based phones (x1,tpro,hd and diamond) seem to be suffering from a performance problem and im not sure whats at blame.
are you noticing better performance than me?????? im using itje 3.5rc1
1- anything with any graphics effects(non 3d) like scrolling rotating...etc is infinitely smoother and cooler despite the lower resolution and crappier image quality. pointUI2 was a solid50fps vs only ~20fps on x1, fingermenu 1.10 was about 15-20fps vs only about 5fps, miniflow was about 30 fps vs an unusable ~5-6fps. zooming and panning with htc image viewer was butter smooth unlike the "good enough" on the x1. scrolling and navigating in UCweb feels a lot smoother on the atom
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
na....im totalli with you that ATOM EXEC is way faster than X1. no doubt. my frnd got an atom. but u hav 2 consider this
1. x1 resoution is 5times more as you said. thats like going from 800x600 resolution to 1920x1250. dats a HUGE jump and just imagine if just a ram and cpu upgrade is enogh to handle that kind of load.
2. also, i noticed that you r running tf3d. now installing that copies bout 1400 files into your windows folder. dat will take time.
3 .i don agree with apps running faster. youtube or PocketArtist, both run lot faster on x1.
4. navigation (for example jumping from programs to settings-> clock-> connections - activesync- connections...etc) is faster because, there are more things installed in you x1 than in your atom. also dont forget the fact that atom runs on lower resolution. a QVGA app that takes 200KB of RAM might take upto 2MB of ram when converted to WVGA.
im not the best guy to understand the problem and the solution but if i were to guess it could be one or more of the following :
1- very slow performing on-board flash memory 2-unoptimised code in apps for w/vga
3- used 528mhz cpu is not fast enough
4-none of the common apps i mentioned makes use of the hardware(which means that they will be slow even on tegra + 1ghz cpus
5-HTC/SE made a bad design by putting slow cpu/graphics on a WVGA screen. they are biting more than what they can chew
as mentioned earlier. can we realistically expect a major change in performance if the cooks and devs here focus their effort on improving this
THE GRIZZ said:
im not the best guy to understand the problem and the solution but if i were to guess it could be one or more of the following :
1- very slow performing on-board flash memory 2-unoptimised code in apps for w/vga
3- used 528mhz cpu is not fast enough
4-none of the common apps i mentioned makes use of the hardware(which means that they will be slow even on tegra + 1ghz cpus
5-HTC/SE made a bad design by putting slow cpu/graphics on a WVGA screen. they are biting more than what they can chew
as mentioned earlier. can we realistically expect a major change in performance if the cooks and devs here focus their effort on improving this
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
well first thing as mention your running TF3d and that take up alot of the speed on your x1 i did reinstall of my phone to the newest orginal rom from se without any kind of tf3d and gotta say my phone was twice as fast when it had tf3d on it..also most of todays apps are not optimized for the newest phones out on the marked second try some real test with some games (eks Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2 - Call of Duty 2 -) (convert some mp3s or videos on the phone) Test with some emulators like fpsece - pocketsnes - picodrive then you will hopefully see what your x1 is good for
i noticed when i have lot of apps open ..the phone becomes slow..and simple functions such as opening Menu's takes more than 1 second.
so when this happens.,..i use the 'FreeRam' of SKTools...and clear up everything.
then it becomes fast as before.
lets not get sidetracked from the main issue that our x1(HD,tpro,diamond also) performs quite badly in certain 2D graphics applications as i mentioned in the first post. can the graphics accelerator on our x1 be used to accelerate.
the iphone had a 400mhz CPU with no graphics acceleration and half the memory and the interface of all its apps looks slick, smooth and cool. if the iphone can do this with its hardware, how come our phone cant. i think there is more to this then the resolution
THE GRIZZ said:
lets not get sidetracked from the main issue that our x1(HD,tpro,diamond also) performs quite badly in certain 2D graphics applications as i mentioned in the first post. can the graphics accelerator on our x1 be used to accelerate.
the iphone had a 400mhz CPU with no graphics acceleration and half the memory and the interface of all its apps looks slick, smooth and cool. if the iphone can do this with its hardware, how come our phone cant. i think there is more to this then the resolution
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
One of the major problems here is windows mobile. It's just a mess.
Another is the resolution. Even on 2d, it makes a hell lot of difference. There's like ... 500% more pixels, with only 50% more performance.
THE GRIZZ said:
lets not get sidetracked from the main issue that our x1(HD,tpro,diamond also) performs quite badly in certain 2D graphics applications as i mentioned in the first post. can the graphics accelerator on our x1 be used to accelerate.
the iphone had a 400mhz CPU with no graphics acceleration and half the memory and the interface of all its apps looks slick, smooth and cool. if the iphone can do this with its hardware, how come our phone cant. i think there is more to this then the resolution
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
If you did look around in XDA, you should know that Qualcomm's CPU is well known for it poor performance (especially for 2D/3D). X1/HD is already the best you can get compare to Kaiser but still far left behind PDA w/ Intel Xscale CPU. See for yourself for Diamond vs. Asus P565 (the current performance king):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZHYimU-VHM&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCI6JyfmuPU&feature=related
Since it's bascially a hardware issue, there is not much we can do on it performance side. But X1 still my best one I can get base on it's overall features (3.5mm audio, USB 2.0, WVGA, UTMS w/ US's 850/1900), build quality, form factor, and of course it's look.
iPhone? It does have PowerVR chipset for graphic acceleration. And it's simply a joke for this date if I have to give up multi-tasking (for all 3rd party apps) for it's smooth and cool factor. My X1 is a workhorse and I want it to run IGo8 w/ Coreplayer player over A2DP/AVRCP concurrently.
Resolution does indeed play a big role. When I launch a program that needs WGAFIXv3 running, i notice how the framerate is practically doubled....
Hopefully Windows Mobile 6.5 will do justice just as Windows 7 is doing TREMENDOUS justice in terms of speed/performance. I finally appreciate the direction Microsoft is taking. It seems that ever since the introduction of Windows Media Player 7 (all versions up to 6 loaded in a SNAP and then 7 and up started taking forever to open unless you upgrade to the latest/fastest PC), back in the day, Microsoft's norm was to build more and more bulkier mega-code-loading software and this rubbed off on the mobile side of things too. Even SQL Server Express 2005 takes sooooooo long to load on PC's. Everything of theirs needed soooo much disk access to open up until Windows 7 came along.
So yeah I'm hoping a slimlined approach on the mobile platform will redeem the Windows Mobile brand
Diamond vs. Asus P565 (the current performance king):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZHYi...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCI6J...eature=related
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these things in the video are very CPU intensive stuff. the stuff im complaining about is far simpler stuff
i am talking about simple none 2d graphics intensive image scrolling and simple dialog boxes movements. surly this stuff is not that hard to handle. decoding mpeg4 video at full screen is surly FAAAAAR more work and yet the x1 does an OK job hadling it. choking at something like displaying dialog boxes, schrolling screen full of text, handling menu selections...etc fingermenu,ucweb, miniflow, album, s2v are hardly graphics intensive stuff
question: is anyone noticing much better results then mine on a lite or even naked ROM
anything with any graphics effects(non 3d) like scrolling rotating...etc is infinitely smoother and cooler despite the lower resolution and crappier image quality. pointUI2 was a solid50fps vs only ~20fps on x1, fingermenu 1.10 was about 15-20fps vs only about 5fps, miniflow was about 30 fps vs an unusable ~5-6fps. zooming and panning with htc image viewer was butter smooth unlike the "good enough" on the x1. scrolling and navigating in UCweb feels a lot smoother on the atom
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have replied to your post on the Turbo X1 thread, there are some answers, but maybe not the magic bullet you and I have been both looking for.
after messing around to get speedbooster to work. i managed assign higher priority to some of the apps that are suffering. its giving some worthwhile enhancements nothing major though.
im begening to think that the only way we can get get improved performance and iphone-like "experiance" is for all the software need to be re-written to use the graphics hardware of the QC chipset. that does not look very likely even on future software since the majority of the avalable phones dont have it. writing software for wm requires it to be written for the lowest common denomiator hardware.
software for LCD hardware will continue to make WM software a bit ugly for a very long time indeed
I am quite mystified by threads such as these but I put it down to two things... 1, I am not such an intense nor knowledgable user as the OP of the thread and 2, I dont use my phone in the same way or do not expect it to be used as I would my laptop or have the same level of software as the OP of the thread...
TBH I have been amazed by the capability of this phone and am pleasantly surprised time and again by its speed, functionality and performance... most of my programs are up and running in incredibly short order, I can access menus and the like almost instantaneously and even the windows folder (previously the worst folder to access using file explorer time wise) is much faster now when I open it... (I have upgraded to the R2A ROM and its much much better)... I find that videos are very watchable and play with no lag and the audio/video in sync... overall its exactly what it says on the tin in my ever so humble experience... although in my own admission I am not very savvy when it comes to these things so perhaps I am misunderstanding the fact that it is supposed to be as fast and capable as my laptop...
even the new generation htc phones (diamond2, touchpro2 )are using the same QC msm7200a present in all common WM w/vga phones http://www.htc.com/www/product/touchdiamond2/specification.html .
i think its about time software development should focused on creeating two versions of the same software
-qvga for compatibility with any phohe (including non graphics accelerated vga phones)
-w/vga version with hardware acceleration since all htcphones released since the kiaser use it
Shadowdh, i think the x1 is the best htc-made phone ever. but i dont understand why many people(you included) are ignoring (or not noticing) the fact that its quite slow in certain aspects that i have highlighted in the first post
THE GRIZZ said:
Shadowdh, i think the x1 is the best htc-made phone ever. but i dont understand why many people(you included) are ignoring (or not noticing) the fact that its quite slow in certain aspects that i have highlighted in the first post
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The Grizz,
I believe it's similar to the whole issue of being able to notice "ghosting" on LCD screens. I personally know what it is, but yet I don't care enough to want to bother about it. For others, some people may not know what ghosting is until you show it to them and once you have "opened their eyes", they irrevocably develop the habit of constantly taking note as it happens on their screens.
And I believe this is ultimately the same issue with the issues you describe. Some people are just really content and amazed with the fact that such a small little bugger can still pack a punch. Sure, it'll slip up once or there, but for the most part, people are happy with what they've spent on the phone.
My 3 cents,
Cheers.
THE GRIZZ said:
1- very slow performing on-board flash memory
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Maybe the SD card tuneup could help you speeding up the off-board flash memory goving you more speed from SDHC then internal flash...
THE GRIZZ said:
3- used 528mhz cpu is not fast enough
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
One of the basic science rules is: if you gain on one thing you have to give in on other things.
Higher speed means higher power consumption. In time a higher speed will be possible with the same power consumption because the cpu size becomes smaller. But for that you will have to wait.
So what do you want? A speedy phone with unacceptable power consumption or do you want to timetravel to get the newest technology before we can imagine how it should look like ?
So far i have tried NFS undercover, Flight commander and Boom Blox.
They are all running with some lag. not smooth at all.
Is anyone else noticing this?
Update: I just hard reset my device to see if the problem is caused by something i installed. After a hard reset the OpenGL games are still lagging which is very frustrating. I had the TG01 before and all these games were running fine. what a huge disappointed from the HD2!
Ya the Phone is quite new just yet even HTC admitted the original ROM's performance is not what it should be and are working on an update. It should be sorted soon so don't panic
Also as soon as the SPL is cracked and the modders start playing with ROMs, expect to see performance improve even more than stock ROMs
^^^^^^
It's simply unacceptable for us or HTC to expect people to patch things up through hacking their phones by SPL and installing custom ROMs from XDA.
I reckon that less than half of future HD2 owners will know how to flash custom ROMs into their phones.
This is quite a dissapointing news indeed...these things should work out of the box.
jagnet said:
Ya the Phone is quite new just yet even HTC admitted the original ROM's performance is not what it should be and are working on an update.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I only see something similar on italian rom not the others.
Let's try to narrow this down a little as i think there is a problem with the drivers on the device. the HD2 itself is super fast, it is just opengl games that lag.
If you own an HD2 please post if you see a lag when playing OpenGL games, the name of the game and your ROM version.
If you do not see a lag please post the same.
I am using WWE 1.43.479.2 ROM and treid the follwing:
NFS undercover: lags in portrait, less lag in landscape.
Boom Blox: Lags in both portrait and landscape
Flight commander: Lags in landscape
Tower Defence: lags in landscape
Xtrakt: no lag at all
Electopia (openGL ES 2.0): no lag
It could be due to the fact that games like NFS were written for MSM72xx processors specifically and have their own drivers that don't work well with Snapdragon...
Just to clear up a few misconceptions:
- HTC has acknowledged that there are performance issues with a particular ROM, however, as far as we know, these performance issues have absolutely nothing to do with OpenGL games. They affect the HD2's general performance doing non-3D stuff. So far as one can tell, these issues don't seem to affect the British version of the phone. They were discovered by an Italian site. Distribution of HD2's in Italy has been halted. I heard one rumour that the same thing has happened in France.
- HTC never puts proper hardware drivers on their phones - never has and quite possibly never will. If you check out this website you'll see that complaints about lack of proper drivers on HTC phones date back a good three years, and pretty much every phone HTC has ever made has had similar issues. If you go back four or more years, there were no drivers then either; but the hardware HTC bought from Qualcomm ran (for its time) fairly fast even without them, so it wasn't too much of an issue. The trouble started when Qualcomm's latest hardware didn't reach its advertised level of performance without proper drivers.
Three years ago, nothing ran with proper acceleration on HTC's phones, not even HTC's own software. Nowadays the software that is actually built into the phone can make use of hardware acceleration, but third party software that you install yourself typically can't.
This doesn't just apply to 3D acceleration, it causes problems with (for example) video playback on most HTC phones; Coreplayer (3rd party video player) runs a lot slower than HTCAlbum or Windows Media Player on HTC phones, but it runs faster on many other phones. (This is unlikely to be a practical problem on the HD2, as the CPU is powerful enough that Coreplayer can play anything you might reasonably want to play using the CPU alone; but it's a real problem on phones like the original Touch HD, the Touch Diamond2 and Touch Pro2).
- The blame for this is (arguably) shared between HTC and Qualcomm (the company that makes the chips HTC uses in its phones). Qualcomm has several different prices that they charge for their chips, depending on the level of software support that you buy with them. As I understand it, HTC chooses to pay the amount which allows their own software to get proper hardware support, but they won't pay the more expensive rate which would allow them to make a phone which offers hardware acceleration to third party products. (By contrast, Toshiba pays the full rate). To what extent this is HTC's fault for not paying and to what extent it is Qualcomm's fault for charging more than HTC can afford is unclear.
- The chances of anyone on XDA dev reverse-engineering an OpenGL driver for the Snapdragon chipset in the near future are, I would say, fairly slim. It's not impossible: a guy called Neo has produced a Direct3D driver for the older Qualcomm chipset used in phones like the Touch Pro and Touch Pro2. (See here). However, it's not on a par with what Qualcomm would produce, even after several years of work.
- It's possible that someone might be able to rip off a driver by stealing files from the ROM image of a TG01 or a NeoTouch - however, even if that worked, that would be illegal. Such a driver couldn't be distributed via this website or even advertised on it, otherwise Qualcomm would sue the website for intellectual property theft. So, if you really want to get the entire XDA developers website permanently shut down, then a good way to go about it would be to post here asking for someone to produce a pirated driver.
- The game Xtrakt is designed to directly access Qualcomm hardware; effectively it bundles a 3D library and a hard-wired driver within the game itself, rather than depending on support from the software on the phone. Consequently, the fact that Xtrakt runs smoothly doesn't mean that the phone can accelerate anything else. It's too early to be certain, but it looks as though Electopia may use the same approach.
- The upshot of all this is that I wouldn't get your hopes up for proper 3D acceleration on the HD2 in the foreseeable future.
EDIT: Note that the above is correct as I understand it but if you feel you have a better understanding than I do on any of these points, then feel free to correct me!
vangrieg said:
It could be due to the fact that games like NFS were written for MSM72xx processors specifically and have their own drivers that don't work well with Snapdragon...
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Xtrakt was written specifically for MSM72xx processors, and (according to this thread) is lag-free on the HD2. (Unless there's a Snapdragon-specific version of it that I'm not aware of). I would speculate that it's the other way round - games with hard-wired acceleration (like Xtrakt and possibly Electopia) run okay, but anything which expects the platform to handle 3D acceleration doesn't.
techdave said:
It's simply unacceptable for us or HTC to expect people to patch things up through hacking their phones by SPL and installing custom ROMs from XDA.
I reckon that less than half of future HD2 owners will know how to flash custom ROMs into their phones.
This is quite a dissapointing news indeed...these things should work out of the box.
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I find it hard to disgagree with any of that.
but i do see the drivers under the Windows folder. they file names are identical to those in the tg01 so the drivers are there fit the games only the games don't run very well.
they do however run very well on the tg01
AFAIK, NFS also comes with its own driver. I may be wrong though.
techdave said:
^^^^^^
It's simply unacceptable for us or HTC to expect people to patch things up through hacking their phones by SPL and installing custom ROMs from XDA.
I reckon that less than half of future HD2 owners will know how to flash custom ROMs into their phones.
This is quite a dissapointing news indeed...these things should work out of the box.
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come on guys, this happen to all kind of phones and it is absolutely normal, where on earth anyone of us see a perfect phone with perfect rom???? are you guys just expecting too much?? give HTC some time, HD2 is easily the best phone ever made and I would consider it is finally a good phone in the decade?
precsmo said:
come on guys, this happen to all kind of phones and it is absolutely normal, where on earth anyone of us see a perfect phone with perfect rom???? are you guys just expecting too much?? give HTC some time, HD2 is easily the best phone ever made and I would consider it is finally a good phone in the decade?
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That's some nice sweet talking there. HTC won't do anything if it's not affecting the general performance of the phone. It's the same as with my current phone the Polaris. HTC never did anything, even when many many ppl complained about bad 3D performance. If there was any real alternative to the HD2 I wouldn't buy from HTC again.
So I suppose it's not a big deal that WM doesn't have many modern 3D games, because the HD2 won't be able to run them smooth anyway.
EDIT: @Shasarak: Thanks for post #7. I agree and think you hit bullseye.
precsmo said:
come on guys, this happen to all kind of phones and it is absolutely normal, where on earth anyone of us see a perfect phone with perfect rom???? are you guys just expecting too much??
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There's a colossal difference between expecting a ROM to be "perfect" and mererly expecting it not to contain any major bugs. The latter is entirely reasonable. There's also nothing unreasonable about expecting hardware to be shipped with the drivers needed to use it properly (if that does turn out to be the problem here).
Shasarak said:
There's a colossal difference between expecting a ROM to be "perfect" and mererly expecting it not to contain any major bugs. The latter is entirely reasonable. There's also nothing unreasonable about expecting hardware to be shipped with the drivers needed to use it properly (if that does turn out to be the problem here).
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I agree but be advised that the drivers are there..they just for some reason don't perform very well.
On the other hand the drivers on the TG01 were performing very well with the games i tested (but the device was very buggy and poorly built, thus i don't have it anymore), so maybe we can copy the drivers from the TG01 to the HD2 and it will work well?
so much for the god of mobile CPU's in the snapdragon....
Then again, it's not snapdragon's fault..
niknik76 said:
Then again, it's not snapdragon's fault..
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Yeah - the the TG01 has a Snapdragon chipset too, but the games work on that - the problem is specific to the HD2, it's not a problem with Snapdragon phones in general.
vangrieg said:
AFAIK, NFS also comes with its own driver. I may be wrong though.
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Well, you could be right; but if you are, and that's what's causing the problem, then why does it run lag-free on a TG01 but not on an HD2?
Shasarak said:
So, if you really want to get the entire XDA developers website permanently shut down, then a good way to go about it would be to post here asking for someone to produce a pirated driver.
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clubtech said:
so maybe we can copy the drivers from the TG01 to the HD2 and it will work well?
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Click to collapse
Producing a pirated driver, hosting it here, and someone copying drivers from a TG01 to a HD2 are two different things right?
I've tried many 3D games, for example:
- Speed Forge 3D
- Quake 1
- Quake 2
- TinyWarz
None of them runs perfectly.
So if you want to be able some smooth 3D games, just pass HTC Hero, take a look at Motorola Milestone (powered by 600Mhz ARM Cortex) it performs way better (even if it has 2x2 larger resolution)
Some comparison videos
hero: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTDdiq21EOc
milestone: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ7qbqSnLU0
Qualcomm MSM7200A 528 MHz sucks (as i've haven't already know this.. my fault). It really show it's weakness when you run several task at the same time: download someting, listen to music and try to browse the internet/navigate to menus, etc.
I load websites on the browser quite often and the experience is not snappy on complex sites. For example the scrolling in pocketnow.com is so slow..
Beside of the CPU, HTC Hero is a cool phone. Too bad that HTC chosed this poor cpu.
i dont find the phone that bad on games. websites are also fine, on the pocketnow.com site you mentioned i can shoot about the page with blistering speed and i mean drag my finger all over fast with no lag..
Have you tried a different rom?
Speed Forge 3D is fine on my Hero. mcr 3.2 b5
@anarchyuk I haven't tried any ROM. My hero had already the latest HTC firmware..
@deejay300 by fine, do you mean like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSxGrjxuyEU . Compare with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ7qbqSnLU0 #0.22
You will see the difference
Much better than the hero video. I would say that that was pretty shocking in that first video. Obviously the hero isn't quite as smooth as the droid but it was pretty close.
Pretty much the same as this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cK_d...E2D406D9&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=19
Yeah, poor 3D and 90% of the users don't care.
If you want to play 3D game, buy a console and let people that love the agenda, contacts, GPS, mail, Internet enjoying their device.
They are as you said more strong and better devices for games! Buy them.
What I don't understand is why you even post such a topic, purely to bash the qualcomm cpu?
Reading you're sig makes it even more funny that you nag about the hero, knowing it wouldn't be able to outrun any phone with the same cpu.
So if you expected more it's you're own fault.
As you said 90% of the hero users did know about the 3d performance of the hero and don't nag. Are satisified. Those people thought before they bought.
You obviously didn't, don't come and nag to us about it...
There was a hope that the this qualcomm cpu run better in Android (and as general UI is smoother than WM).
I really don't understand why people just told the good parts of a device. The people should know that htc hero doesn't renders flash video perfectly, for example.
I like Hero, I really like the phone (even if it has many lacks, hope it will be fixed soon) but I want to tell others about its negative aspects. So people which want pure performance should pass this phone.
@profete162 let's be real. I surf a lot and the internet experience is not super great. The load time is not super good. Plus, flash experiance is far from perfect. Not to mention that on some sites the scrolling is soo laggin at least on mine (for eg: pocketnow.com). But yes, internet experience it's way better that the from my ex-WM (Touch Pro) one. I don't use the phone primary for games, but a nice 3D game from time to time it would be nice.
@deejay300 yes, still not smooth..
DSF said:
There was a hope that the this qualcomm cpu run better in Android (and as general UI is smoother than WM).
I really don't understand why people just told the good parts of a device. The people should know that htc hero doesn't renders flash video perfectly, for example.
I like Hero, I really like the phone (even if it has many lacks, hope it will be fixed soon) but I want to tell others about its negative aspects. So people which want pure performance should pass this phone.
@profete162 let's be real. I surf a lot and the internet experience is not super great. The load time is not super good. Plus, flash experiance is far from perfect. Not to mention that on some sites the scrolling is soo laggin at least on mine (for eg: pocketnow.com). But yes, internet experience it's way better that the from my ex-WM (Touch Pro) one. I don't use the phone primary for games, but a nice 3D game from time to time it would be nice.
@deejay300 yes, still not smooth..
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I think you should try a custom rom instead of the crappy stock htc one! adobe are rumoured to be releasing new versions of flash for certain handsets all the time that will work much better with web flash. So you never know you might get a better experience soon. Not so much if you go by http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/26/flash-10-1-snubbing-non-armv7-android-devices-too/ as the Qualcomm® MSM7200A is arm9!
I'm waiting the official 2.1 update from HTC, there are rumours that it will be released somewhere in march
And about the Flash 10 .. I don't know..
No, the HTC Hero will not be supported b/c it does not have the correct Android OS version and its chipset is not powerful enough. We require a device with an ARM v7 (Cortex) processor. Examples include the Qualcomm Snapdragon chipsets and TI OMAP3 series.
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http://gizmodo.com/5480985/why-most-current-android-phones-will-never-get-flash-101
DSF said:
There was a hope that the this qualcomm cpu run better in Android (and as general UI is smoother than WM).
I really don't understand why people just told the good parts of a device. The people should know that htc hero doesn't renders flash video perfectly, for example.
I like Hero, I really like the phone (even if it has many lacks, hope it will be fixed soon) but I want to tell others about its negative aspects. So people which want pure performance should pass this phone.
@profete162 let's be real. I surf a lot and the internet experience is not super great. The load time is not super good. Plus, flash experiance is far from perfect. Not to mention that on some sites the scrolling is soo laggin at least on mine (for eg: pocketnow.com). But yes, internet experience it's way better that the from my ex-WM (Touch Pro) one. I don't use the phone primary for games, but a nice 3D game from time to time it would be nice.
@deejay300 yes, still not smooth..
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I loved the HTC Hero - but the performance of its video playback was one of the reasons I quit and bought the Google Nexus One, which addresses just about all of the shortcomings. On the Nexus all my video podcasts and itunes music videos play without a glitch. Different roms were great but didn't solve some of the core performance issues. Still, the Hero was the greatest phone I had up until last year (and I had a lot!). It's great how these phones just keep getting better!
I dont see any lagging on my phone with these games.
even not with movies from torrent sites wich are mp4, doesnt matter what size, framerate or whatever they were encoded on, as long as it was mp4 or m4v it was great.
just downloaded the movies as an IPOD movie