Database Users

Why do we need Athena if Universal Crossbow is already amazing!

Hey mackaby007,
How could you move from Universal Crossbow to Athena at the moment? I find that for a few days of using crossbow, it's exceptionally responsive, also it's a better and more stable ROM compared to WM5. I noticed right away the extra performance and fast synchronization, Better multiple SMS features, No Longer memory Leak problem(So I don't have to keep soft resetting), Reliable Installing/Uninstalling software, Elimination of occasional pauses problem.
Just the mean of justifying Athena purchase now.

jlingo said:
Hey mackaby007,
How could you move from Universal Crossbow to Athena at the moment? I find that for a few days of using crossbow, it's exceptionally responsive, also it's a better and more stable ROM compared to WM5. I noticed right away the extra performance and fast synchronization, Better multiple SMS features, No Longer memory Leak problem(So I don't have to keep soft resetting), Reliable Installing/Uninstalling software, Elimination of occasional pauses problem.
Just the mean of justifying Athena purchase now.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I agree too WM6 on UNIVERSAL is really good, but there are things Universal can't do, but Athena could! e.g. GPS, extra Rom, Micro Drive, bigger screen.
Personally, i really thing the 5 inch screen is a plus, you can fit so much more info on one screen, i used to think Universal screen is big enough, but after using Athena for almost a month, Universal's screen look really quite small to me.
And also i think the design and built quality of Athena is better then Universal as well.

wu5262 said:
I agree too WM6 on UNIVERSAL is really good, but there are things Universal can't do, but Athena could! e.g. GPS, extra Rom, Micro Drive, bigger screen.
Personally, i really thing the 5 inch screen is a plus, you can fit so much more info on one screen, i used to think Universal screen is big enough, but after using Athena for almost a month, Universal's screen look really quite small to me.
And also i think the design and built quality of Athena is better then Universal as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Perfectly said Wu. Just to add to that.....WM6 is a great O/S, which makes the Universal great for a while longer.....but Athena blows it clean out of the water in every way!! Therefore Athena (best device IMHO) coupled with WM6.....= cutting edge mobile technology with the richest hardware feature....simply no competition IMHO.
It's like comparing the Wizard with the Hermes....same form factor...different device/technology alltogether.

wu5262 said:
I agree too WM6 on UNIVERSAL is really good, but there are things Universal can't do, but Athena could! e.g. GPS, extra Rom, Micro Drive, bigger screen.
Personally, i really thing the 5 inch screen is a plus, you can fit so much more info on one screen, i used to think Universal screen is big enough, but after using Athena for almost a month, Universal's screen look really quite small to me.
And also i think the design and built quality of Athena is better then Universal as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi Wu,
May I know how can you fit more information in one screen compared to Universal? Isn't Universal and Athena essentially the same resolution 640x480, therefore technically you see the same amount of information only bigger size?
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Thanks,

jlingo said:
Hi Wu,
May I know how can you fit more information in one screen compared to Universal? Isn't Universal and Athena essentially the same resolution 640x480, therefore technically you see the same amount of information only bigger size?
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Thanks,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yes that is basically right, but don't forget because Athena has bigger screen, you can really change the font size to smallest and is still visible, (so small font in Athena = Medium font in Universal). This way you can fit more info on one screen, you can also change the icon and everything to smaller one.
For opera it's the same, browsing through internet is so much better now.

jlingo said:
Hi Wu,
May I know how can you fit more information in one screen compared to Universal? Isn't Universal and Athena essentially the same resolution 640x480, therefore technically you see the same amount of information only bigger size?
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
Thanks,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The next of my concern would be the battery life. How much better is the battery life in Athena compared to Universal? Let say if you work on documents with lowest backlight on continuously in universal would last you for 5 hours but perhaps 8hours in Athena?
Thank you guys for the encouragement.

jlingo said:
The next of my concern would be the battery life. How much better is the battery life in Athena compared to Universal? Let say if you work on documents with lowest backlight on continuously in universal would last you for 5 hours but perhaps 8hours in Athena?
Thank you guys for the encouragement.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i would say Athena's battery is truly amazing, personally i think it's much better then Universal. I have not work on documents that much on my Athena, but for day to day normal usage (read news, make calls, send message, play games, GPS), with Bluetooth and 3G always on, with backlight set to highest, it can easily last for 1 day.
Stand by time is good too, i have my athena beside me when i go to bed (battery level is 70%) . Wake up in the morning and is still 70% !

I have virtually every device that HTC have made; So far the Athena (My one is a dopod U1000) is the best so far. It is by far the most usable that i have come across. The screen is Wow and best of all the phone is so dam stable. BT works across all profiles, all my software works, I am a heavy user of the phone both voice and data, I must admit as a very heavy user by the time i get home my battery is like around 40-50%, possibly also because all my apps are on the microdrive. (TomTom runs so fast installed on the MD that when i installed the Maps on the SD card the difference was unacceptable compared to the MD) TBH when i got my Universal it was a little disappointing (way too slow did not support HSDPA), and no soon as the TYtn was released i upgraded. The tytn is also a great phone but the screen size is too small compared to the Universal. The Athena Rocks! best HTC device I have had so far..

i agree with you faisal. I do a lot of remote oncall support for my office and my athena has now completey replaced my bulky laptop, allowing me to connect to my office whenever, wherever I am.
The athena offers a much better and user friendly screen size, although much bigger than the tytn, its size certainly outweighs the annoyance of having to scroll all the time.
To most people the athena is massive but after using it for a week i find myself liking it more and more, as I have said it has now more or less reduced my on call laptop to a brick in the corner gathering dust.

faisal.husain said:
I have virtually every device that HTC have made; So far the Athena (My one is a dopod U1000) is the best so far. It is by far the most usable that i have come across. The screen is Wow and best of all the phone is so dam stable. BT works across all profiles, all my software works, I am a heavy user of the phone both voice and data, I must admit as a very heavy user by the time i get home my battery is like around 40-50%, possibly also because all my apps are on the microdrive. (TomTom runs so fast installed on the MD that when i installed the Maps on the SD card the difference was unacceptable compared to the MD) TBH when i got my Universal it was a little disappointing (way too slow did not support HSDPA), and no soon as the TYtn was released i upgraded. The tytn is also a great phone but the screen size is too small compared to the Universal. The Athena Rocks! best HTC device I have had so far..
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey faisal, nice to hear you enjoy your device so much, me too here ! just wonder when you say you install all app on Micro drive, do you come across any problem at all? any more battery drain? And also when you say TomTom on MD is much faster, how much faster is it? I have install mine on SD and it seems really fast as well. (e.g. Load up TomTom in 5 sec, GPS signal in 10 sec, route planning in 7 sec).
After all, will you suggest me to move all my app to MD?

wu5262 said:
Hey faisal, nice to hear you enjoy your device so much, me too here ! just wonder when you say you install all app on Micro drive, do you come across any problem at all? any more battery drain? And also when you say TomTom on MD is much faster, how much faster is it? I have install mine on SD and it seems really fast as well. (e.g. Load up TomTom in 5 sec, GPS signal in 10 sec, route planning in 7 sec).
After all, will you suggest me to move all my app to MD?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Wu5262 (got it right this time.) I have not had any issues yet running software from MD, even spb shell, which should be installed on main memory works perfectly installed to MD. In regards to TT6, you will notice the difference when switch to browsing the map, play about with the zoom and pull the map up and down, you will notice it redraws much quicker when run from MD compared to SD. As virtually everything runs from MD there is more drain. Average usage (I use HSDPA a lot, do a lot of browsing with opera and use Sling box viewer an average of 2 hours a day so thats streaming TV via HSDPA, an average of around 10-15 txt and at least a total of 45min worth of calls (not all at once)) with 100% charge at the start of the day by the time I get back from work around 6.30 7.00 pm, my battery indicator is between 50-60%. I have not found it an issue yet where I get worried that i may not have enough charge to last till the end of the day. For back up I use WM5storrage to mount the drive and then run a Robocopy script which does differential copies, so I do a backup every day of my MD which takes on average less than 2 minutes every day.

faisal.husain said:
Wu5262 (got it right this time.) I have not had any issues yet running software from MD, even spb shell, which should be installed on main memory works perfectly installed to MD. In regards to TT6, you will notice the difference when switch to browsing the map, play about with the zoom and pull the map up and down, you will notice it redraws much quicker when run from MD compared to SD. As virtually everything runs from MD there is more drain. Average usage (I use HSDPA a lot, do a lot of browsing with opera and use Sling box viewer an average of 2 hours a day so thats streaming TV via HSDPA, an average of around 10-15 txt and at least a total of 45min worth of calls (not all at once)) with 100% charge at the start of the day by the time I get back from work around 6.30 7.00 pm, my battery indicator is between 50-60%. I have not found it an issue yet where I get worried that i may not have enough charge to last till the end of the day. For back up I use WM5storrage to mount the drive and then run a Robocopy script which does differential copies, so I do a backup every day of my MD which takes on average less than 2 minutes every day.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
thanks for the info, i will keep that in mind, maybe next time when i upgrade i will install everything to MD.
One more question, do you have any issue with spb mobile shell? does your spb menu load up correctly? mine one don't load up straight away, i need to point here and there to get it to work. when it finally loads up, all my sound is gone.
I have heard other people having the same issue as well, might to do with landscape VGA. Anyway, i have disable the spb Menu to load up from startup folder and only use the mobile shell plugin.
Your one working with spb menu?

wu5262 said:
thanks for the info, i will keep that in mind, maybe next time when i upgrade i will install everything to MD.
One more question, do you have any issue with spb mobile shell? does your spb menu load up correctly? mine one don't load up straight away, i need to point here and there to get it to work. when it finally loads up, all my sound is gone.
I have heard other people having the same issue as well, might to do with landscape VGA. Anyway, i have disable the spb Menu to load up from startup folder and only use the mobile shell plugin.
Your one working with spb menu?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yep, got the same problem with spb menu.

I have the same problem with SPB shell, how do you disable the sob menu from the start up menu? which files do i delete?
thanks

faisal how do you install SPB mobile shell to the MD as when i install it it doessn't give me a choice where to install and only installs on the main memory.
thanks

bashi007 said:
faisal how do you install SPB mobile shell to the MD as when i install it it doessn't give me a choice where to install and only installs on the main memory.
thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm weird, I will test it again, but am certain it gives me a choice

bashi007 said:
I have the same problem with SPB shell, how do you disable the sob menu from the start up menu? which files do i delete?
thanks
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
go to windows/startup and delete the spb menu there

Hi faisal, when you installed your Tomtom did you let it auto start from the SD card and then copy everything over to your MD or did you use Activesync to move all the setup files to your MD first?

Yes, I have to agree U1000 is so damn stable. It's probably the most stable and the most problem free out of many PDA's that I have used before. It's much more stable than Universal. And that's for sure. All my softwares are indeed working flawlessly. Bugs problems that I used to experience under Universal WM5 seemed to have already been ironed out completely. It's the most mature WM5, which is very impressive IMO.
At the moment, I'm reluctant to upgrade to WM6 in June unless they offer similar stability which I doubt it after knowing Microsoft for a long time.
Well I was having a lot of problems with Universal WM6 and Vista, Office 2007, WDMC. Synchronization problems, Slow Word processing problems, partnership problems, Contact notes disappearance and many others...
I'm so happy that I bought U1000 after so many considerations.
faisal.husain said:
I have virtually every device that HTC have made; So far the Athena (My one is a dopod U1000) is the best so far. It is by far the most usable that i have come across. The screen is Wow and best of all the phone is so dam stable. BT works across all profiles, all my software works,
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Me too agree...just superb...

Ditching the X1, getting a new phone

Well after 3 weeks of use I have had it with my X1. It is the slowest phone I have ever come across.
Here are the problems im getting and I have just had enough of them
Phone can freeze when switching between landscape & portrait. Can take up to 2 minutes to figure out what its doing, sometimes its a hard reset
Fidilly interface, I use the SPB panel because of this which is great but everything else is just useless. Tried setting an alarm by rotating the hands? Its so fidily
I get a new message while im on my inbox and sometimes the message takes up to 2 minutes to load. Last night I was waiting 1minutes 43seconds for the message to open (yes I timed it) It just had that piechart icon rotating
Sometimes I cant open the messaging section. I click messaging and nothing happens. I can try to open it as many times as I want but nothing happens. I have to remove the battery..
By screen went green once, everything was green so I had to remove the battery to sort the problem
Doesnt always sync with my PC, no idea why
Cant remove hotmail contacts or sort the contact list because it just adds all my email contacts when I go online
Opera & IE are clunky and full of bugs. IE is slow as hell and cant open some websites. Opera keeps opening the virtual keyboard and changing between fullscreen and menu mode
Panels take a lifetime to load and freeze when switching between view modes
The crappy external speaker, who wants to hear a song full of white noise when you phone rings?
Battery icon - sometimes I have one, sometimes I dont
My signal on my phone seems poor compared to my old LG Viewty. Where I had a decent 3g signal I now get a poor standard signal, if a signal at all
Phone seems to have gotten slower and slower since I first started it up
There are a lot of things I do really like about the X1 but most of these are hardware such as the keyboard, the screen resolution, build quality, wifi, gps etc
I am seriously considering either swapping my phone via o2 or selling it and buying a new phone. I dont understand why interfaces and phones cant be as fluent as the iphone/ipod.
It does a lot of stuff yet the interface is as fast as hell. I am not a fan of the iphone itself due to its rubbish hardware specs but you can't knock the interface. Also I just got an ipod touch so there isn't much point in me having an iphone.
Personally i think the problem lies with WinMo as its very bloated and slow compared to proprietry operating systems or Android/iPhone.
Can anyone recommend me a good phone to get, I was looking at the Samsung Omnia but it doesnt have Wifi or GPS so its a no go really

Dude you must have a faulty phone, I've had mine for a couple of weeks now and haven't had most of the problems you have raised. However it was laggy and slow when I first got it and I still don't think the panels work fast enough to be really usable but once I changed the ROM it was MUCH better, more responsive, Opera actually makes browsing online a good experience!

ukguy said:
Dude you must have a faulty phone, I've had mine for a couple of weeks now and haven't had most of the problems you have raised. However it was laggy and slow when I first got it and I still don't think the panels work fast enough to be really usable but once I changed the ROM it was MUCH better, more responsive, Opera actually makes browsing online a good experience!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The only faulty thing about it is the firmware, and when I went down that road with my Viewty being buggy as hell I got into the biggest of arguements with my network provider.
They didn't get what I was saying, they keep offering me the same phone as a replacement etc etc and I was nearly thrown of the network as they just winded me up so much.
This phone had high expectations from me and I have to say, it failed miserably. I decided to go back to SE after my LG as they were some of the best phones I had. But this phone just doesnt compare and I personally think its WinMo thats letting it down

i never experience any of the problems you mentioned above. May be it is a faulty unit.

Either a faulty unit, or filled with network bloatware! In short... not a problem of Xperia. When switching landscape to portrait it takes a second for me usually... at most 2-3 seconds. Same goes for other stuff.
I wasn't impressed with my Xperia at the beginning either... but after applying a few tweaks here and there and installing applications and stuff, it is by far the best phone ever! (and i am using the original rom - no cooked rom)
Maybe you should try installing a cooked ROM?
Either way... good luck with whatever phone you do decide to go with. I can, however, say with 99.999% certainty that most problems that you are facing are either due to a faulty device/firmware or is due to bloatware or something...

I did have the exact problems here, also did 3 of my friends who baught the phone.
It is crashing alot and is slow. However I think I will wait till the first firmware update.
But even if they didn't fix these problems, I don't really have an alternative phone, no phone has the specs I want except experia. I mean ofcourse other than win mo, because if it is a win mo phone you are seeking then know that all the win mo phones have the exact same problems, maybe less because they have been around in the market for a longer time, but they still do crash.

celinelust said:
I did have the exact problems here, also did 3 of my friends who baught the phone.
It is crashing alot and is slow. However I think I will wait till the first firmware update.
But even if they didn't fix these problems, I don't really have an alternative phone, no phone has the specs I want except experia. I mean ofcourse other than win mo, because if it is a win mo phone you are seeking then know that all the win mo phones have the exact same problems, maybe less because they have been around in the market for a longer time, but they still do crash.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's kinda shocking to hear. Have you tried tweaks and stuff? Maybe hard-reset the phone to remove all bloatware....

Feel free to give the phone to me

[email protected] said:
Feel free to give the phone to me
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Oh crap! I forgot to ask that...

this is strange, my xperia is the best winmo phone I've had. stable like a rock, fast, no lockups, nice batt life... everything works great (and would do better once they update the rom with a better one)

cursor said:
this is strange, my xperia is the best winmo phone I've had. stable like a rock, fast, no lockups, nice batt life... everything works great (and would do better once they update the rom with a better one)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here...

Wth...
Im going to flash my phone and see if its any better.
Anybody got MSN and want to guide me through it?

Evostance said:
Wth...
Im going to flash my phone and see if its any better.
Anybody got MSN and want to guide me through it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Good luck with that. I hope you get it working perfectly! This is definitely a wonderful device and the fastest WinMo device.
I've never had the need to flash my set, so afraid don't know anything about it... otherwise would have offered to guide you through.

I have original rom and I think the phone is great! fast and solid!

101% something's wrong with YOUR phone only... althought i have my grumbles, but not so bad at all

Get O2 to reflash it, they will do it for free if you complain about lockups

Evostance said:
Wth...
Im going to flash my phone and see if its any better.
Anybody got MSN and want to guide me through it?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's easy, just install hard-spl and then choose from the xperia rom forum one that you like (my preference for now is Itje's HD v2.1).
Follow closely the instructions on the Hard-SPL and rom thread you choose and it will be a breeze.

I just flashed it to IT-Xperience 2.1 and the phone is a hell of a lot faster.

good for you . I am planning to buy Xperia so it will be nice to hear what problems still occur after the update

Evostance said:
I just flashed it to IT-Xperience 2.1 and the phone is a hell of a lot faster.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
What is "IT-Xperience 2.1"? Google has 0 hits.

HD2 Arrived....

I received my HD2 about an hour ago, so far everything works really well.
I am downloading a CoPilot map at the moment, Australia. It gets better GPS reception in my house than iPhone 3GS did, actually locks onto signal.
Damn thing is fast, very nice.
I found Task Manager (basic version) under the Settings Tab > Miscellaneous > Task Manager. This may be in other versions, I just hadn't seen anyone mention it.

Congratz! Keep us posted on your cool toy

Nighthawk said:
I received my HD2 about an hour ago, so far everything works really well.
I am downloading a CoPilot map at the moment, Australia. It gets better GPS reception in my house than iPhone 3GS did, actually locks onto signal.
\\
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hey congrats on joining the Leo club! Haha
Where are you getting the CoPilot map for Australia from?
Let us know how it goes

Nice to hear they have Aussie maps for CoPilot... have been having trouble getting a solid answer from any resellers.
Get mine 23rd.
Roll on Monday! (never though I'd EVER say that!!)

So far everything has been fine, friggin great machine.
SIZE...
It definately feels the right size to me, easy for me to hold and use.
SPEED...
Damn!!! <--- enough said
HTC SENSE...
Kinda cool, most of it works well. There are a few little issues with some aspects of it, having to back out of some meus as there is no Exit or "X" available. Nothing that would stop me from getting the device.
WIFI...
Connected straight away to my Billion 7404VNPX unit, didn't do a signal strength test - I will tomorrow. Using WPA2-PSK/AES security, no broadcast SID and MAC address restricted.
GPS/COPILOT...
Really quick to lock signal, average 10 seconds I would say. I have been impressed with CoPilot on the HD2, looks really nice. Saying that, CoPilot has a few annoying points. No "qwerty" keyboard and it thinks my street is only in one suburb, not the one I live in. I have seen this on the dedicated Navteq units as well - all the other GPS's are fine.
It actually picked up the sats in my house, first device I had do that. While it didn't find the sats everywhere in the house, I'd say it worked in 60% of it. Weakest was four sats, near an external wall it jumped to seven or more. That's better than my dedicated TomTom that I "used" to use.
It gave me the option to pick a map to download for the trial. I choose Australia for obvious reasons.
I really do like the ability to HIDE CoPilot, actual button on screen.
GPS/TOMTOM...
I am loading TomTom tonight and will update this tomorrow.
CALL QUALITY...
Better than my iPhone, noticeably. It is stronger and cleaner, where I normally would loose signal (iPhone 3GS) I didn't with the HD2.
BLUETOOTH...
Will test this tomorrow morning when I go out to Rhodes Shopping Centre.
VIDEO...
THe HTC Album played my videos that I ripped for my iPhone without any problems (*.mp4 and *.m4v). It wouldn't play an AVI I downloaded . So, I installed CorePlayer and it played the AVI without any problems. Video (DVDs) that I ripped for my iPhone worked without any additional work on my part, that's nice. More importantly, they looked great on the bigger screen.
I know some of you are concerned about it being able to play 720p etc. While nice, my main concern was not having to re-do videos I already had done, again. I don't, so to me that makes it a winner. I'll just keep making the videos the way I was, they looked great.
OK, I might fiddle with the next one I RIP to see what I can get working. I don't need to as the quality was fine already, but it will be fun to try (a.k.a. play).
KEYBOARD...
Yes, the HD2 is a sensitive "gentle" beast when typing. I hit the wrong key a couple of times hear and there today, just a matter of getting used to the keyboard. I didn't have any lag or anything like that. Only issue I saw was getting used to a much more responsive screen, light touch is all that's needed.
SMALL OS BOXES/ITEMS...
There are still remnants of WM, for obvious reasons, that you may run into if you roam about the device, which most of us on this forum will do. While it was fiddly trying to click on the small items, it wasn't anything major and since I don't roam about my device continually every day (once I get it configured I I leave it alone) I personally don't have a problem with it. Some of this may disappear with WM 6.5.1 - definately with WM7.
MS OFFICE 10 BETA...
Haven't played with this yet (installed it), waiting on getting Sharepoint 2010 BETA up and running next week (already have Exchange 2010 running). I'll then give it a go and see how it all works together.
SOFTWARE...
I've only installed a couple of things so far, I am running the latest version of everything. I checked every title before installing.
1. Resco File Explorer (no issues, running on Storage Card)
2. SPB Wallet (no issues, running on Storage Card)
3. PocketBible (had to soft reset three times before it would launch - working fine now, running on Storage Card)
4. Resco Soduko Touch (no issues running, graphics/text need update to support high resolutions (jagged edges), running on Storage Card)
5. CorePlayer (no issues, running on Storage Card) ***Change VIDEO OUTPUT to GDI***
6. Dutty's Task Manager (no issues running - have two task manager apps installed (one included with Leo is very basic), running on Internal storage) *** I disable Sense before installing this, then re-enabled it after finshed install.***
7. Skype (no issues, running on Storage Card)
I'll add more as I experience it... Going to load Electopia tonight and see how that goes.

Copilot
Copilot Australia map downloads straight to the device.
Very nice. It works well with pinch & zoom.
I can't for the life of me, active it.
There is no Aus version download online, and no way to get an activation number. I've emailed them but no answer for 3 days.
motlking said:
Hey congrats on joining the Leo club! Haha
Where are you getting the CoPilot map for Australia from?
Let us know how it goes
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

I agree the download to device and software is nice. I haven't tried activating it yet so I can't comment. Would really suck if you can't activate it. If you hear back anything definately let me know.
On another point...
For some reason Opera isn't renering some web pages very well (www.seek.com.au). If I go to the same page with IE it looks right. Normally I haven't had any issues with Opera, but for the time being I'm going to use IE as it is rendering pages better.
***UPDATE***
I've found the the Opera browser renders the majority of pages equal or slightly better than IE, however, not always.

My experience with the HD2

I have the device for 5 days and i went through every little corner of it so i would like to share this with you and maybe help others make a decision to buy it or not.
Hardware:
1. Very good build quality. The rubber coding and the metal plate feels good.
2. Its incredibly thin!
3. The camera has sharp edges which scratches my desk. I always put the phone on top of the leather pouch that came with it so i don't scratch my desk.
4. The screen is impressive. Having a capacitive 4.3'' screen on a WM device is like being in haven.
5. The earpiece does a good job. Its better than my (sold) TP2, but not too loud (as some have reported).
6. The speaker is decent. Not too loud and not to quiet. Having a device so small i guess its impossible to put a better speaker.
7. The 3.5 mm jack entry is so enjoyable. I always struggled with charging and listening to the headphones at the same time. It was impossible on my previous phones without some big, ugly adapter.
8. Finally we have a standardized port for sync/charge. Unfortunately i can't find a microUSB cable anywhere. The only way to get them is to order them online.
Software:
1. HTC Sense is very well done. Having a 1GHz processor it moves along panels and menus very fast. When i took my TP2 in hand after playing with the HD2 i felt like trowing it away. Once you played with the HD2 you never go back.
2. HTC skinned most of the settings of WM which is a good thing and a bad thing. In some cases the skinned settings don't show every little option in that category so its annoying, but i managed to get a shortcut for the windows mobile settings in my start menu.
3. The facebook integration doesn't let me choose what i want to update for my contacts. On my TP2 i would get asked if i want to get the contact's photo and his birthday. Now it doesn't ask anything and if the contact doesn't have a facebook photo but it has an outlook photo (set by me) it deletes the photo. After getting back my contacts i stopped using the facebook integration. SOLVED
4. The twitter client is OK, but i expect an update from HTC in a future rom where lists are implemented. Otherwise its useless.
5. Doing pinch to zoom in Opera is a joy. Having a large screen, web browsing becomes a pleasure. Now i can say that i can always rely on my phone to do web browsing.
6. Google Maps and iGO 8 work fast and the GPS signal comes in about 10 seconds with the proper tweaks.
7. The FM Radio just doesn't work. I only get static and its not like i'm in the middle of a field. I'm in a 4 million people city.
8. The Audio Manager does a good job but there's a problem with the Audio Booster which doesn't stay on after the first song you play. There's a solution for that but its ugly. Once you start the audio booster don't press done, just leave it running by pressing the home button for example.
9. The camera takes very good pictures. I applied the super fine tweaks. I own a semi professional camera and i have some experience in that area and the pictures taken by the HD2 are pretty OK for a phone camera.
10. In regards to the SMS issue: i don't have it. The device already came with the GSM only selected as a band for sending text messages. The only downside is that i tried once to send an sms to 16 persons and i got around 5-6 undelivered messages. I know it has a limit but i applied the tweak to make the limit go to 50 but no result.
11. My Location works and doesn't work. It gets my location but when its time to get the weather it fails. It shows and error message that it cannot retrieve the weather. So i disabled it completely.
12. The unlock screen is useless. I always set my phone to turn off the display after 1 minute. Watching a movie resulted in a lock. I removed it and installed S2U2 which accepts exceptions and it works great on the HD2. It's like it was meant for this device.
13. HTC Album creates a rather large cache on the main storage resulting in a decrease in available MBs. That is not acceptable for me so someone from xda modified the exe file (changed the path of where the cache is stored) and i installed it and it works great so far. The cache is now in My Documents folder on the storage card.
14. I changed the icons in the start menu using the reSTART application and the iReflect icons found on xda. Now my start menu looks very clean and beautiful.
15. I can type really well on it. I just have to trust the keyboard. I'm not using XT9 cuz i don't have my language there but with the ABC mode i'm quite fast. Its not always perfect but that's to be expected anyhow. I make a lot more mistakes on my brother's iPhone than on the HD2 (and the iPhone keyboard is famous for its accuracy).
There is a downside to all of this: the battery life. It's a little disappointing. I feel like i use an iPhone now. I usually get a full day out of it with moderate use. I plan on buying a desktop cradle and a spare battery just in case.
I'm running the 1.48 version and judging by my experience so far i'm almost certain that there was a batch of phones that was bad, that's why some owners state problems with hardware or software.
If i missed something let me know, or if you have any questions fire away.

Very well written. There's one point I'd like to correct, though. You can set the contacts tab to show Outlook pics even with Facebook integration. Here's how:
1. Start editing the contact.
2. Tap on the contact picture icon on top right.
3. A list of available pics for the contact should come up. The second of which is your Outlook contact pic, if you have one saved. Tap it.
4. Voila
Now, can you please link the reSTART and ireflect icons? I'm curious and want to check them our. I did some searching, but the results returned are staggering.

iReflect icons: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=533993
reSTART: http://forum.xda-developers.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=186033&d=1242539721
PS: Thanks for the tip on the facebook integration. I'm now going through all my contacts and changing the photos.

Nice review, lorin.bute.
I have switched back to this device after 4 months iphone 3Gs usage. This device is the best I have ever used in the past 7 years. The screen reacts and the softwares run just as fast as iphone 3Gs but with rooms for my customization. Just looks forward to the upcoming WM6.5.3 to enhance this device, and most likely WM7 in 2010.

The battery life is indeed disappointing. Well HTC wanted it to be slimmer than the iphone.
A desktop cradle and a spare battery is a must i feel. We are all using a relatively new battery. Just imagine 6-12 months down, it may not even last a day. A cradle apart from showing off the phone also prevent from tripping the cable while charging.

Well, if a spare battery is a must for the HD2, then what do all the iPhone users do?
The iPhone has even worse battery life and you can't swap out the battery...

freyberry said:
Well, if a spare battery is a must for the HD2, then what do all the iPhone users do?
The iPhone has even worse battery life and you can't swap out the battery...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i use mobile chargers.
click it in the iphone and it starts charging. works perfectly.

Yes, I had one of those, too, for my iPhone 3G
That was more of a rhetorical question, but I can add that those chargers are less convenient to carry around than a second battery.
Just looks forward to the upcoming WM6.5.3 to enhance this device, and most likely WM7 in 2010.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Look here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=606932

freyberry said:
Well, if a spare battery is a must for the HD2, then what do all the iPhone users do?
The iPhone has even worse battery life and you can't swap out the battery...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Like what my friends do. They charge whenever possible, i see their phones wired most of the time in office.

[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.