Related
I just wanna post how much I love this phone... yes its got minor issues as all phones will but its great..
I wanted to show some love for the vibrant and post some things I love about it.. This is a no hate just love thread...
I LOVE the super amoled screen, I've stopped people in there tracks by showing them avatar on it...
I love the awesome gpu that handles games flawlessly. Games like Nova.... Awesome. .....
And I also love the HD video it records... very nice...
SO, what do you love about your vibrant?
Agreed. There is a download if the free demo in the Incredible thread. That game looks AMAZING on the Vibrant!
Here is another link from the X forums. Check below in this thread for a mirror download link. This is nit the one I used this morning, but should work the same I think.
http://ip208-100-42-21.static.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=7273599#post7273599
Ive been a HUGE supporter of the G1 since the day it came out. I rooted it, changed this and that and in the end I rooted the Vibrant only to remove some of the stock apps.
As it sits I have no need/desire to change anything else. It simply rocks.
Internal Memory - Enough no need to Apps2SD
Video Playback - Common it plays Divx/Xvid as is
Screen - Don't even get me started
Battery - Lasts the entire day
Speed - Zooom, Zooom
TouchWiz, I personally like it now. I know two people with Droids and they both think the way it works is slick and one even wants it on his phone. Sure its kinda iPhoneish, but who cares. My car is carish too like the others on the road. LOL
3.5mm Jack..... woooooohooooo I have it plugged into my home audio and its shaking the house with my sub. I mean common carry tunes around with you and use a regular jack opposed to some adapter.
Its light and fits in my pocket just great. Had it out yesterday and somebody asked is that an iphone and I simply replied "The iPhone wishes it was this phone."
Haha. That last line got a pretty god chuckle from me.
I love the screen, I love the performance, I love the style, heck I even love TouchWiz3.0. Having the 3.5mm headphone jack built-in and lock-screen music controls are just icing on the delicious Vibrant cake.
raduque said:
I love the screen, I love the performance, I love the style, heck I even love TouchWiz3.0. Having the 3.5mm headphone jack built-in and lock-screen music controls are just icing on the delicious Vibrant cake.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I noticed that for the first time today. I thought it was a glitch at first until I realized it was half the CD I was listening to, and was really happy to see it pull down.
This is definitely the most impressive phone ive ever seen.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App
Something I just noiced, figured i'd share with the class.
So you don't miss awesome **** like I did.
So I have a competitive racing rc car (team assocoated sc10) I built a ramp to jump the car over my civic. One last time before I sold the motor out of it for something with a little less power. (65 mph in a 7 pound car is a little excessive for off road short course racing.) So I setup my phone on highest res possible to record it doing a few jumps and speed runs and one last one over my car...long ways. Started recording set the phone up so it could view everything while I walked away. Did everything, and actually hit the jump over my car and landed flawlessly. (+10 pts for style). Could never ever do it like that again. When I was done I hit the pause button instead of stop then pressed the back button...sure enough I lost all that video, and didn't realize it until after the guy came and got my motor and batteries that I was selling him :-(
Moral of the story: use stop instead of pause/back. That seems like a bug to me. A very sad and disappointing bug.
Sent from my SPH-D700 using XDA App
Thanks for the tip.
And wow. That really sucks.
I figured that out too, really a dumb feature IMO
Figured that out from day one but that sucks nonetheless. Accept my condolences mate.
I just upgraded to the Trophy and switched to WP7. Love it and not looking back. I miss the slightly bigger screen, a few free apps and google maps/directions, but other than that, WP7 is a winner for me.
Now, what should I do with my fascinate? Is it worth keeping as something like an iPod Touch? Or should I sell it off and just buy a dedicated camera plus mp3 player for that purpose? I'm assuming I could get at least $200 for this, which would get me a nice Rockbox player. I would get an iPod touch, but I'm very allergic to iTunes.
I'd like to use the fascinate (or something else) as an MP3 player and exercise tracker for the gym, offline map use with google maps and HTPC remote control. However, I'm worried because the battery life is utter crap. Is it still that way w/ the cellular radio turned off?
Now assuming I keep it and don't sell it there are some other questions. Which ROM would be best for my purposes? Assume all I need to do is underclock and Voodoo. Still Comm ROM?
Also, having trouble finding accessories. Is there a gym-appropriate case that works well for the gym? Something like a silicone bumper with armband, legband or beltclip/holster? Double duty for around the house would help.
Appreciate your opinions.
the Fascinate is a great music player if you install Voodoo Sound.
Id sell it and get an ipod touch
Sent from my SCH-I500 using Tapatalk
I'm keeping mine and using it like an iPod when the GS2 comes to VZ. With voodoo sound, the audio output of the Fascinate is incredible to say the least. The GS2 apparently isn't near as good with audio, and I know sound quality is pretty crappy from iPods.
Why use it as an ipod if your windows phone is also a great mp3 player? why carrying two devices when one can do all?
sell it, make some money out of it and take your girlfriend out for dinner Lol
Primary phone + gym = don't wanna go there. I love that WP7 has an FM radio and great music, but I view most things I take to the gym as likely to die/disappear/destruct (for historical reasons). Also using phone as a music player for an hour workout guarantees battery failure at a needed point - been there / done that. I like to keep it separate for many reasons. That said, if I get a good enough case, maybe I'll try it.
Additionally WP7 doesn't scobble or support replaygain. I like both. Crossing my fingers that someday the APIs will allow Foobar2000 (or an equivalent) to run on WP7.
I don't like iTunes. Will never get an iPod touch for that reason. If they cut the cord, fine, but if I have to use iTunes that's a dealbreaker. I evaluate a lot of tech and it pains me whenever I have to check something on an iPad because that means installing iTunes.
Dinner for girlfriend is fine, but I'm single at the moment. I don't take a girl on a date and tell her I sold a phone to buy her a Chalupa
Ok, so apparently I need to Voodoo my phone twice now. All I thought I needed was to get rid of that damned Samsung filesystem. Is there a ROM that has this pre-loaded?
Com rom would be great...i get over a day and a half with split time on 3g and wifi, listening to music with power amp for about 4 hours at work, and texting on and . voodoo sound is in kernels, but both that are included withCom rom have it
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA Premium App
You can use Winamp and various other apps to manage music on iDevices. Personally, my old iPod Touch easily gets 20 hours of continous music playback (that's likely on the conservative side! I frequently forget to pause my ipod at night, so it'll end up playing ~10 hours, and do that several nights in a row without charging!), while my Fascinate would probably get no where near that amount... Music playback seems to use a shockingly large amount of battery for some odd reason. Either should be more than fine for a couple days worth of work outs without charging, though. There's also definitely going to be every accessory under the sun for the iPod, while the Fascinate will have a tiny handful of accessories (most of which will probably be some generic 'universal' one that doesn't fit quite right and is of questionable build quality).
Also, people keep saying how "great" the sound is from the Fascinate... I doubt with headphones you'll be using at the gym that the claimed difference would matter. When using any reasonably priced headphones, you won't be telling the difference! That's also assuming the audio files you have are of high enough quality to tell as well...
If you're sticking with the Fascinate, I'd recommend sticking with whatever ROM you currently are on until CM7 supports all the hardware you want to use. I'm personally waiting for a fully funcional CM7 before upgrading from SC 2.9.2.
Edit: If your phone is running any ComRom/UKB, you already have Voodoo Sound. Voodoo Sound has been supported in Froyo almost since we started using the kernel source for the Mesmerize back on some version of Super Clean.
KitsuneKnight said:
You can use Winamp and various other apps to manage music on iDevices. Personally, my old iPod Touch easily gets 20 hours of continous music playback (that's likely on the conservative side! I frequently forget to pause my ipod at night, so it'll end up playing ~10 hours, and do that several nights in a row without charging!), while my Fascinate would probably get no where near that amount... Music playback seems to use a shockingly large amount of battery for some odd reason. Either should be more than fine for a couple days worth of work outs without charging, though. There's also definitely going to be every accessory under the sun for the iPod, while the Fascinate will have a tiny handful of accessories (most of which will probably be some generic 'universal' one that doesn't fit quite right and is of questionable build quality).
Also, people keep saying how "great" the sound is from the Fascinate... I doubt with headphones you'll be using at the gym that the claimed difference would matter. When using any reasonably priced headphones, you won't be telling the difference! That's also assuming the audio files you have are of high enough quality to tell as well...
If you're sticking with the Fascinate, I'd recommend sticking with whatever ROM you currently are on until CM7 supports all the hardware you want to use. I'm personally waiting for a fully funcional CM7 before upgrading from SC 2.9.2.
Edit: If your phone is running any ComRom/UKB, you already have Voodoo Sound. Voodoo Sound has been supported in Froyo almost since we started using the kernel source for the Mesmerize back on some version of Super Clean.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
+1. For messing with my iPod Touch files, I use CopyTrans Manager, which is free, it is decent and very reliable.
Heh, without the celluar radios on, android devices have a crazy amount of battery life. Using my hero as an mp3 player it would go 2 days before needing a charge with lite use. No reason the fascinate would be much different especially being used as a mp3 player seeing one of the biggest power draws is the screen it's self. I'd just keep it and continue use, you pretty much have a Galaxy S player.
Depending on how much you use the screen you could probably get around 2-4 days use out of it. Cm7 has a feature where you can hold the volume key up or down to skip a song or play the previous one while the screen is off so theres some potential battery savings there if you make good playlists. If audio quality is important to you, this phone + voodoo sound + a decent pair of headphones will provide a top notch experience.
Sent from my kang banged fascinate, bro.
Just for a better reference point for an older iPod Touch's battery life (the newer ones are better), I last charged mine 3 days ago, and have used it the last two nights for somewhere on the order of 10-12 hours each night, totally somewhere from 20-24 hours... and I currently have more than half my battery left. I'll get at least another 2 nights of similar usage before it gets into the red, so I'd figure somewhere around 40-50 hours of playtime.
are you guys using a dock out something or the internal speaker? I know with my daughters nano (5thgen) a long as its not powering it own speaker it last forever lol but its a lot smaller battery too
Sent from my SCH-I500
devlp1213 said:
are you guys using a dock out something or the internal speaker? I know with my daughters nano (5thgen) a long as its not powering it own speaker it last forever lol but its a lot smaller battery too
Sent from my SCH-I500
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've never owned an ipod myself but I would assume most people use them with headphones...
Sent from my kang banged fascinate, bro.
well there are talking about night time use so headphones don't seen logical especially if sleeping... atleast I don't sleep with them anyway haha
Sent from my SCH-I500
If you have one of the custom kernels (PBJ, OTB), just download Voodoo Control (free) from the Market.
Regarding battery life, I went out of the country last year, and had to keep my phone in airplane mode to avoid roaming fees. I basically just used it as an alarm clock (no music, etc). After seven days, I still had about 70% battery left. I really wish I had taken a screen shot so people won't say I'm lying. This was on bloated stock rom, btw.
And I agree with your hate of iTunes. The iPod Touch is an amazing piece of hardware, but being tied to iTunes is also a deal breaker for me. Maybe you could jail break it and not have to rely on iTunes?
Sent from my SCH-I500 using XDA Premium App
devlp1213 said:
well there are talking about night time use so headphones don't seen logical especially if sleeping... atleast I don't sleep with them anyway haha
Sent from my SCH-I500
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I use earbud-style headphones. Those present absolutely no difficulties with sleeping I prefer earbuds since they're far more portable than any other style (just shove them in my pocket and go!).
beenz said:
Regarding battery life, I went out of the country last year, and had to keep my phone in airplane mode to avoid roaming fees. I basically just used it as an alarm clock (no music, etc). After seven days, I still had about 70% battery left. I really wish I had taken a screen shot so people won't say I'm lying. This was on bloated stock rom, btw.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That's not really surprising, the phone should be using virtually zero power in that case. Nothing should be waking it up until the internal timer wakes the kernel, that'll then trigger the alarm, pretty much.
beenz said:
And I agree with your hate of iTunes. The iPod Touch is an amazing piece of hardware, but being tied to iTunes is also a deal breaker for me. Maybe you could jail break it and not have to rely on iTunes?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You don't need to jailbreak it to use something else. I mentioned Winamp earlier in the thread, and someone else mentioned another program. There's quite a few that can be used to sync your music, including multiple programs on Linux/OS X as well. Hating iTunes isn't really a good enough reason
KitsuneKnight said:
You don't need to jailbreak it to use something else. I mentioned Winamp earlier in the thread, and someone else mentioned another program. There's quite a few that can be used to sync your music, including multiple programs on Linux/OS X as well. Hating iTunes isn't really a good enough reason
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I should have said that the requirement to use any program to sync my device is a deal breaker for me. I thought maybe jail breaking would allow a drag and drop (like our phones)
But if it isn't for the OP, I think Media Monkey will also sync an iPod
I personally kinda like iTunes as a music player and the syncing isn't that horrible... but anyway enough about that.
If I was against getting an iPod then I'd keep the Fascinate as an MP3 player. You get to use it not only to play music but you get the added benefit of Google syncing (personally I can't live without calendar, Gmail) and the entire Android Market. Using Voodoo will get you a faster filesystem and awesome sound, and with the appropriate kernel you can configure it for battery life. Without the radio and using wi-fi sparingly you can get some amazing battery life. And don't forget it's got that awesome screen.
If you don't need a camcorder and don't mind limited BT, then CM6 is pretty stable and will be the cleanest and smoothest ROM (MMS is broken too but that won't matter since you don't have service on it). There should be some voodoo kernels for it floating around somewhere in the Development forum.
This is my attempt to review the phone after a year (and a bit) of use. It may seem pointless to review a phone that is at least a generation old, but I think what I have to say gives some insight into HTC as a manufacturer, and Android as a whole. These are also the sorts of things that can't be understood from using a phone for a few hours. I'll also cover Sense in part.
I'll start by listing everything that has annoyed or just disappointed me over the last 13 months.
Battery life
One of my major worries with Android as a whole (and by extension, all smartphones and the direction the market is heading): it is just not acceptable for a phone to not last a whole working day on moderate use (which for me is: about 2 hours web browsing and listening to music, a few text messages and emails). There are ways to avoid this happening (and the question should be, if users can do things to improve the battery, why don't they come out of the
factory that way?) but the fact is that a phone that requires the user to tinker extensively to get a day's reasonable use is not well designed. The trade-off is a thinner, lighter phone. Well, it's not worth it. Consumers are being hoodwinked into desiring crazy thin handsets before the technology is really there to support them. Ever-faster specs are the other side of this sorry tale. Phone software shouldn't need dual-core phones running at above 1Ghz, with 1gig of RAM. WP7 and iOS show this.
Build quality: I've had several serious problems caused by the hardware:
The battery cover - everyone knows about this. It is possible to remove it, and reinstall it, but it's difficult - and it just shouldn't be. That's all there is to it.
Volume rocker - the poor arrangement of the battery cover and the volume rocker meant that when I tried to pull off the battery cover, I broke off the top half of volume rocker. Luckily it still holds on and the volume control still works, but again - not good enough. The fact that there are packages of replacement volume rockers complete with the needed tools on Ebay show this is not limited to me and my clumsiness.
USB port - for no obvious reason, and very suddenly, the USB/charger port stopped working properly - no power was going to the phone. The main board and so the whole until had to be replaced. I'd not been rough with the connection. Which lead to...
GPS. One of my biggest disappointments. Although it worked reasonably well to begin with, when my internals were replaced because of the USB port failure, the internals must have been from the batch with the poorly connected GPS module. Everyone knows about this issue by now. I never ever ever get any GPS signal, no matter where I am or what the weather's like. Yes there are solutions, none of which worked for me, and I couldn't bare to be without my handset for another 7-14 days to get it repaired. Very poor.
HTC Sense
I've not found Sense to have any additional functionality that make it worth the resource overhead on top of Android. Really the only useful thing it does is linking contacts between my contacts and Facebook and Twitter (though this brings it's own problems, for instance forcefully importing a friend's outdated phone number from Facebook without giving me the option to choose the stored number instead). I've never been able to use the default Android calendar app because the Sense one replaces it, and I don't like the Sense one at all, it's quite unintuitive.
I find the extra chrome is not especially attractive, and doesn't make efficient use of space. It looks very mid-late 00s. So dumping Sense was one of the first things I did, first in favour of ADW Launcher and lately GO Launcher, for it's superb and beautiful widgets.
HTCSense.com - I've nearly forgotten what it did. Suffice to say, none of the services were useful enough or reliable (they didn't work at all for the first few months) to keep me coming back.
General Android issues
Music playing
There are many brilliant music-playing programs for Android. I've happily paid for two that I love using (PowerAmp and PlayerPro). Sadly, four years in, the experience of getting music onto an Android phone lags behind iPhone fundamentally. Spotify subscribers will call me a dinosaur for caring about this, but for those of us with large mp3 collections that they like to change up on their phones regularly, it's an unhappy experience. Technology
blogs would have you believe the iTunes/iPhone experience can be replicated, but my experience is that this just isn't true.
To give an overview of the problem (for anyone thinking of coming to Android and hoping to use their phone for playing music), here's my experience of using several Windows music management apps, and their limitations as a solution for managing Android devices.
DoubleTwist - marketed as iTunes for Android - laughable, and crushingly disappointing: ignoring slow performance and instability, not finding all files, misreading mp3 tags, all DoubleTwist does is sync a playlist to the phone (over Wi-Fi if you pay the upgrade). If you use iTunes, it will sync any playlist that you create in iTunes - but does anyone want to install iTunes if it's just to transfer music? I hate having it on my system. The main failing is that it has no easy way to select tracks to be transferred - they have to be added to a playlist. Unlike iTunes, you cannot tick or untick songs from the main library. If you want to remove a song from your phone, you have to find and then remove it from the appropriate playlist. Which is far more time consuming. No developers of music management software for Windows seem to understand this. The same problem applies to Winamp, Songbird, MediaMonkey, all of which I've tried and none of which work as well as iTunes does for iPods. All have various bugs or limitations (Winamp won't let you browse the syncing playlist by artist/album, only letting you edit the sync list as a great big long list, does a really poor job of finding artwork and lyrics. But the wifi sync option is very cool, if slightly pointless. Songbird is still unstable after years of development and has enduring problems with recognising tags.)
So far the best option is MediaMonkey, which is fast, stable and has some brilliant additional functions even in it's free version. It does allow you to browse tracks stored on the phone by artist and album which makes it easier to remove tracks, but doesn't give the selecting tracks from the main library option that iTunes has. Also, CD-ripping is only available in the paid version ($40).
Ideally I'd like to see Google develop or encourage the development of an iTunes equivalent media manager for Android phones on Windows that would do the simple job of syncing music easily, effectively, and without bugs! However this would go against their ambitions for getting everyone to to everything (including music) through the cloud, so I don't have much hope.
Another small issue I've got with music on Android is that the system's music management library doesn't recognise the album artist tag on music files. This means that when browsing music in any application by artist, compilations are split out into each artist. This makes for a messy library. I want the option to have all compilations combined under the 'Various Artists' name - simple to implement, but only possible by recognising the album artist tag.
Android Market
A constant source of irritation to me is a couple of bugs in the Market. The first of these is automatically starting updates which stall before downloading starts, requiring you to long-press and cancel, and then manually re-start each of the updates. Tedious. The other major problem is that about 1/3 to 1/2 the time, completed downloads will fail to install, often repeatedly. No idea. It works eventually, so it's not an issue of compatibility. Aggravating.
In progress...
I have had the DHD for a year too and came from a Iphone and I agree with some of your issues.
Battery life: For me at first I was having to charge at sometimes 1 or 2 in the afternoon >< but now I get to midnight often with 50% charge if i have been using lightly, a day with some gaming music and calls its 15% 20% left this is around 11 when i normally goto bed and put it on charge so battery life is ok for me now (I am on stock sense rom 2.3 something, the latest one)
The GPS been flaky really annoys me sometimes taking 3 4 minutes to get one Sat, makes hoping in the car and getting directions something you have to add 5 minutes to your journey for.
Build Quality has been fine for me, but I have not opened really since i put in my SD card and it's been in a clear gel case with protector since day 1 so looks immaculate. I think the GPS issue is a design flaw.
HTC sense is ok, I only use a couple of their widgets but yea it's not really that useful and can be replicated with many things often free from the market.
Android music players: At first coming from Itunes I liked the fact I could add a new song with drag and drop but in retrospect its better to have a database driven system like itunes for organizing music and playlists means you end up with your music nicely organised tagged and searchable.
The market i have had no issues with really (Though IOS apps are overall slicker than Android still, though Android has caught up in a few now)
I think Android looks really promising with ICS and will finally root and put a Rom on once one is hacked on the Desire HD.
Overall the handset has been nice and I like been able have live wallpapers and change themes with things with different launchers, the Iphone got boring from a OS perspective whereas Android you can change everything and seem like you have a new phone.
Now for the gotcha...I solved all my Android & HTC problems by getting a Samsung Omnia 7 16gb WP7 I have had both phones now concurrently for 8 months and the WP7 is my everyday phone since about 3 weeks into buying it, but I have the desire HD with a backup sim in it and carry that too.
It lasted all day from day one on a charge and I found the OS to do everything I needed without any tweaking, that been social networking, syncing with google calendar, making calls, listening to my music and surfing the web on the go. (I am not really a phone gamer, maybe play the odd puzzle game like jems or something.)
It's a bit like the iphone I guess everything just kind of works with no tweaking but it looks different and you can actually make your home screen look really nice and personal with live tiles of your photos news feeds etc. And Zune I love its a really cool looking desktop client, it checkerboards album art when you play music and my phone wirelessly syncs any new music when its on charge over night (though PC has to be on ofc) I would never go back to drag and drop into folders now. WP7 has its quirks and annoyances too but I think it does the things I need better.
I still love Android though and may get the Galaxy Nexus, However will wait and see the reviews, if Android still has jerky lag scrolling and the random stutters on the homescreens and in browser will wait until next gen, hopefully though they have got the accelerated GUI working well enough, and it looks a lot nicer seems much more integrated from the demos I have seen less hodgepodge than it currently is.
It's great to have three different phone OSes to be able to choose from, currently its not looking like one will get a monopoly like MS did with windows so hopefully we can continue to have some choice and variety for years to come which also drives innovation which means better experiences for us the users!
I gave up with it
I eventually gave up with my HD a couple of weeks ago. The phone, as you wrote, has some strengths and some (serious) weaknesses.
The battery is awful. I stated that the first week I got it -- and the deniers said it was fine. It's not. It's crap. And seriously harms the device.
The phone is also heavy. If that sounds dumb, it's not when your hand is tired holding the damn thing for 45 minutes.
And, after a while, the phone lags badly. Only a complete reset fixes this.
The camera is also so-so, and slow as Hell. Video recording is poor and jerky.
Fortunately, there is a cure to all of these problems -- the Samsung Galaxy S2.
bobbyelliott said:
I eventually gave up with my HD a couple of weeks ago. The phone, as you wrote, has some strengths and some (serious) weaknesses.
The battery is awful. I stated that the first week I got it -- and the deniers said it was fine. It's not. It's crap. And seriously harms the device.
The phone is also heavy. If that sounds dumb, it's not when your hand is tired holding the damn thing for 45 minutes.
And, after a while, the phone lags badly. Only a complete reset fixes this.
The camera is also so-so, and slow as Hell. Video recording is poor and jerky.
Fortunately, there is a cure to all of these problems -- the Samsung Galaxy S2.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Bye Bye....
I've had my DHD for about 6 months now coming from a TyTN II on WinMob 6.0 which I still have. This one is miiiiiiiiles ahead. I agree that the major put-off with the DHD is the battery and I don't care how much freaking tweaking one does, it SUX!!!! I don't get a full day of moderate use at all. I am constantly plugging it in to charge. This seems to be a common Android device problem. Battery technology just has not kept up with the rest.
That being said, I am happy with most everything else. I love my music and I use Mortplayer. I love to be able to just plug my phone into my laptop via USB and just copy and delete music at my leisure. This goes for videos, series, movies etc.
I have the best apps I believe for my various needs. I will elaborate on this a little later.
I dumped SENSE!!! I have been using GO Launcher for the last 3 or 4 months. I love it! I also only use Live Wallpaper.
My GPS is great. I have had no issues at all. I get a lock indoors in an average of about 20 seconds flat. I have made no alterations or mods whatsoever. My phone is stock, unrooted etc. Don't fix it if it aint broke!
The apps I mostly use:
OfficeSuite Pro
Sygic Navigation
Perfect Viewer for comics
QuickPic gallery
Total Commander
Moboplayer for movies
Mortplayer for music
GO Keyboard (THE best Android keyboard after having tried seven or eight different ones)
Vlingo
Camera ZoomFX Pro
Photaf
PicSayPro
I hardly play games.
GO Contacts and Dialer
GO SMS Pro
Whatsapp
Black Facebook
Google+
LinkedIn for Android
Agile Locker
Animated Weather Pro
Weather Bug
Sense Analog Clock (The best one imho) Lots of skins available
GMail
Pocket Informant (Calendar)
Lookout Security
Equalizer
Volume Ace
Whiteboard Pro
Lots of dictionaries
Aldiko Book reader (The best for Android imho)
Camcard
Barcode Scanner
Camscan
Barcode Generator
Neocalc
Opera Mobile
...And various other tools and utilities.
well what i say m my sig tells everything about it . its just the worst decision of my life to buy it and even bad thing is that no one want to buy this kind of bulky phone here so i m kind of stuck with this phone still.
when i see ics boot up and running on dhd but not sgs2 well first time this phone give me some happiness .
I must say i haven't had many if any of the above issues, build quality is solid as a rock for me, phone been dropped a few times works perfectly well...
Sim cover did tend to be a pain to get off when i first got the phone, but i learned to pull it off by holding the sides of the cover and just gently pulling down.
The Volume rocker does suck, i don't think there's any debate here. You actually have to physically see the screen in order to know you've changed the volume level because it's not tactile whatsoever.
Battery life isn't as bad as people make out. Especially with custom roms, i can have 3 hours screen time and still last the full day in standby without my battery dying.
Camera performs quite well with the right settings as hamdir has demonstrated in his guide.
Overall i'm pleased with the DHD it's not perfect no, but for a year old smartphone it's got plenty of life left in it.
Ok... let's start with Music. The desire hd audio chip sucks. Period. My HD2 kicks its ass all over the place. Still... what you describe as a DHD problem with music sync etc, is present on most if not all Android devices. We only have mass storage.
Now, i do use MediaMonkey... but not the Free or Paid version. I downloaded the latest Beta4 and it manages my 180gb of mp3/ogg/flac/wav/ape whatevah. It syncs what i want and converts on the fly (why would i use FLAC on a cellphone?)
As for battery, with my DHD it lasts 2 days with very moderate use, but 3G always on, 2 google acounts, facebook, etc etc. Wifi is kept on, and when i arrive home, it connects to my wifi at it's own pleasure.
Battery door: Battery is not mean to be removed/inserted all that much. My DHD lasts months without a restart, so i don't see why you should need to remove that as often.
Volume rocker: Due to the above probably, it's still in it's place.
GPS: On this one i'll have to agree... it sucks. That plastic cover on the back is a issue, so much that a homemade fix is necessary.
As for the necessity of dual cores and so what... There really no NEED. We don't NEED this. We were fine with those dumb phones back in the Nokia Black/Green day.
As we want more, we need more... more processing power.
Now, i've used WP7 and iPhone. Lets not compare. WP7 is limited has hell. What it does, it does well. But it suffers for the same as iPhone. It need Zune to make it worth it. iPhone need iTunes. Who the hell designs a cellphone that requires a computer ?
So... please drop the comparision between WP7/iOS with Android. Yes, what they do, they do better than Android. But they do so little.. so so little..
Wrong thread
Black1982 said:
Bye Bye....
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
You write in the wrong thread br0. Go and cry on Samsung threads. It's not me it's DHD community which says this. Bye! Bye!
You understand Black1982: I'm with you.
Hello
I too use HTC Desire HD only problem is battery
Nice Thread.....
For me 1st year is just getting over today. This phone is awesome, I came from Symbian UIQ3 (W960i) phone. Actually I blindly chosen this phone due to Android+Dolby+HTC. But now am very happy with this decision. I had battery issues and GPS problems, but thanks to XDA devs all these gone over time. I will keep this phone till it dies.
Samsung Galaxy S2......
....is a very fast piece of plastic!
My brother has one and frankly I wouldn't swop my DHD for it ......EVER!!!!
After the DHD I will get another HTC. I am on my third HTC now.
I have seen Sony-Fricssions, Samdungs, (actually the proper name is SAMpple), and frankly HTC is still tops as far as build quality, etc. goes.
What can I say.....I luv me DHD!!!!
BTW, how on earth do people get 2 days without charging? Maybe flashing roms? but I don't want to do this.
The audio on my DHD is actually quite good. I use Equalizer and Volume Ace with Moboplayer and Mortplayer. I have an in-ear Phillips headset and the sound is maybe not the best but it is certainly good. Bass and loudness & clarity is actually quite good on mine. My family complains that my phone is too loud! hehehehehehe
Why do people keep whingeing about the battery life...its a smartphone...what more do you need to know...I've had a few of them...they are ****e,the galaxy s lasts about an he longer,look at this way,if your on the laptop plug it in...you got a sky hd box..plug it ...any device with a USB stick it in ..if your battery goes down to quick you can tweak it to be fair,in general though it just is accepted...the iPhones are even worse!
Htc sense is quality in my opinion,I've tried roms without and didn't gel,I like the DHd it still isn't old in my eyes
Sent from my Desire HD using XDA App
Nice review there. Honestly, I agree with the first few points of TS regarding the battery, Sense and GPS.
For the battery, its also the major setback I noticed when I got this phone. It's not crappy, its utter bulldung. But hey, due to the battery prob forces me to snoop around and found my love, ROM flashing! It's a mixed blessing I guess. Without the battery prob, I wouldn't stubble upon the amazing devs at XDA. as for the battery prob, it lasts for me through the day, an hour of music, Bluetooth headphone connected, a little mail, text and 10 minutes call max got me through the whole day.. all that is possible with a little thing called flashing. It does improve battery life. Period.
Sense.. hmm.. no idea, skipped the whole marketing thing.. sense location and what not. What ONLY like about sense is that u call silence a call by flipping it over, or turn into a blowhorn during a conversation with the same method. Lol. But other then that, its not much about to bother look let alone try.
GPS... Hmmm... First few locks are slow.. sure. But hey, nothing like rooting, flashing CWM GPS.zip can't handle..
Finally.. its a beautiful phone.. albeit its weakness in some areas. It's like a classic car, few chinks here and there, but with a little personalized tweaking, it'll be your phone indeed. I cherish it more than any other phones I had cause its me in an aluminum shell... It's a great phone. And I'm a happy owner.
Ps: want a phone that last a week? Get a Nokia 3210. Lol.
sent from Borneo
What with the obsession with itunes, googlemusic works just fine for me, with a couple of hundred random tracks synced via banshee for offline appreciation
Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk
What with the obsession with itunes, googlemusic works just fine for me, with a couple of hundred random tracks synced via banshee for offline appreciation
Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well... Google Music works fine. I bet it does, i can't have it yet. Not here on my country anyway. But i can have iTunes.
I don't like iTunes. To be honest, iTunes is everything i HATE on a media manager.
But, it has a advantage that GMusic does not. iTunes does not store your entire collection on the cloud. I have 180gb+ of media... this makes Google Music a "no no" for me.
In just about two weeks, it'd be our anniversary
With DHD being my first smartphone, I really didn't have much expectations of it. I just bought it then because the HD7 was still unavailable. Sense rocks. Sure the stock eventually grew very laggy, Messages does not send messages.. But hey, that's what Android Market is for.
Eventually tried rooting and flashing custom ROMs, and hell yeah, I think I may well use it for, if time allows, still another year. In the internal side, I find nothing wrong with it. It's not like it's gonna replace my computer or anything. At this point, I kinda appreciate Sense, especially Sense 3.5, the UI is just perfect, and the Beats Audio works well at default compared to how PowerAMP does. Equalizer app makes it more perfect.
The build quality for me is kinda mixed. We gotta love the metal casing. But the detachable plastic parts, they're questionable. I also bought the phone with the power keys in a deeper position than advertised out of the box, which at the time I was unaware, so it's kinda takes more effort to press it.
Just around five months ago, the volume rocker somehow broke off and fell somewhere while I was walking home. I usually joke with my friends that DHD comes with a stylus.. a toothpick for pressing the volume lol. The h and t in the htc logo behind the phone got lost as well. I can only see the shining c with holes on the h and t lol.
But, given that the phone fell on the road with a strong impact once, fell in a pail full of water once while having a call, and ran against the rain with it once, and that my phone is still alive, I guess I like it. The mic's busted though.
I think I gotta bring this baby to the hospital, er the service centre one of these days. I still love it today. Custom ROMs rejuvenate it. )
Almost all the issues are caused by the alluminum body. You can't have a handheld radio device with metal casing that doesn't have some plastic parts to embed the antenna. Well, actually you can, but then you'll have to expose the antenna and explain to the users that they are holding the device the "wrong" way. But having the metal body has one great advantage over plastic - with proper care it still looks as good as new. I have mine DHD for little over a year and it's like brand new. And the only protection it has against the elements (including my two kids) is just the stock screen protector. I love that feature so much that it was one of the two things that drove me in the direction of choosing acer a500 for a tablet. And I seriously can't understand all the people complaining about the battery life. Mine lasts two days with normal usage and can easily last a workday with moderate to heavy usage. And if you don't have any access to a power source / usb plug near your workplace, I somehow doubt that your work requirements involve spending 8 hours playing with your phone . And I'm on a rooted stock 2.3.3 ROM with no battery tweaks whatsoever. Actually I pluged my phone yesterday for an hour while having lunch (that could not charge the battery completely) and 30 hours later I'm on 20%. True - I didn't use it that much (maybe 20 minutes talking on the phone) but it's still what should be expected of a smartphone. BTW iPhone4 battery life is worse despite it's tiny screen and limited functionality and I hear 4s is even worse.
Sent from my A500 using XDA Premium App
daedric said:
Well... Google Music works fine. I bet it does, i can't have it yet. Not here on my country anyway. But i can have iTunes.
I don't like iTunes. To be honest, iTunes is everything i HATE on a media manager.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not available here officially either, but hey us XDA'ers aren't going to let that stop us are we?
Sent from my Desire HD using Tapatalk
snowpatrol1702 said:
Why do people keep whingeing about the battery life...its a smartphone...what more do you need to know...I've had a few of them...they are ****e,the galaxy s lasts about an he longer,look at this way,if your on the laptop plug it in...you got a sky hd box..plug it ...any device with a USB stick it in ..if your battery goes down to quick you can tweak it to be fair,in general though it just is accepted...the iPhones are even worse!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Why? Because it's not satisfactory, that's why. Do you not understand the concept of a review?
Why do you even have a mobile phone if you never leave the house/office? If you're happy to stay plugged in all the time, why not just use your laptop for computing etc and a landline for phone calls? You do realise that smartphones are meant to be mobile too, don't you?
tkolev said:
I seriously can't understand all the people complaining about the battery life. Mine lasts two days with normal usage and can easily last a workday with moderate to heavy usage.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Seriously? Seriously, try reading my post again. As I described, I don't get the same performance as you. Clearly lots of other people have the same problem. I don't know why this is, but it doesn't stop it being a fact. What's not to understand? Do you think I'm making up my experience for fun, or something?
ghostofcain said:
What with the obsession with itunes, googlemusic works just fine for me, with a couple of hundred random tracks synced via banshee for offline appreciation
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I didn't realise there was anyway to access Google Music in the UK yet - I'm going to give it a try out of curiosity, but... continuously drain my battery and be dependent on a decent signal? No thanks. I'm really still not convinced cloud storage of music and video is the way forward at present in general. Plus the Google Music app is pretty bare bones and it doesn't seem possible to play music downloaded from Google Music in other music apps.
I'm not obsessed with iTunes, it's just really good for syncing music to portables. My point was that there's no decent equivalent for Android phones.
Bluetooth doesn't want to work for me, don't drink and XDA
Have you actually wiped the phone? You just said you installed roms.
Wow what the heck are you talking about?
Instead of complaining here, go buy a new iPhone and enjoy 24 days on one charge.
Sent from my Nexus 6P using XDA-Developers mobile app
dladz said:
Any input, besides the derogatory kind is appreciated, although some derogatory input is sometimes hilarious, so i'll take that too.
Sorry, i've had a bit to drink, i'll edit the mental bits tomorrow, i'm just upset mate
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
*facepalm*
Say no to posting under the influence
dladz said:
Have had this phone since around 4 months, for the most part, i love it.
It's my first Nexus, i can see the fascination, i can understand why people like it.
However............. That being said..................... I do have some issues.
I have a Moga pro pad, something which in itself isn't cheap, i used to use this on my previous phones, all of them (except my iPhone which thought it was a headset or something?, I have no idea what it thought it was, probably wanted to mate with it or rip it off or something)
Anyway, it's always worked, the thing even connected to my sketchy, but brand new Fire Tv Box, i was playing Mario Kart 64 on it, literally two days ago.
It used to work perfectly on my phone a few months ago and yet now? Nothing, i can't connect my Jawbone Prime, I can't connect my Moga Pro? I can't connect anything?
Is there something i'm missing? Is there a baseband image i've overlooked? OR not heard of as nothing has been said except a vendor? Of which i've installed!!!
Has anyone else had a similar experience? OR infact found a work around? Brought stability? Found a way to connect besides waiting for a whole day?
ROMS:
Resurrection
AOSIP
Pure Nexus
Dirty Unicorns
Beyond stock from these roms, there are no changes being made, I am literally installing and pairing? I'm sure it works, but jesus it takes too long, if it connects at all.
I've seen bluetooth fail, but I know it is not common, what could have changed, both of the devices i'm trying are both high end and work on other devices, as i'm writing this, it feels like hardware EE will be getting a harsh earbashing from me if this is the case.
Any help, relevant situations, similar appearances or happenings? Any advice or knowledge would be greatly appreciated, i fail to see that Huawei, who actually deal with connectivity, would sell a unit with such a poor unit that it would fail within a few months?? If this is the case then they've made my decision to buy a P9 very simple, I won't. Cheap tat.
Any input, besides the derogatory kind is appreciated, although some derogatory input is sometimes hilarious, so i'll take that too.
Sorry, i've had a bit to drink, i'll edit the mental bits tomorrow, i'm just upset mate
Feel like beating someone to death with a clown show, with potatoes in the toes >: ( Proper venomous clown shoe pastings. For a few days whilst they work out why it broke in the first place, or just cancel my damn contract and let me just buy an M10 which i'm sure will be superb, jokers.
Not happy, sorry for moaning.
PS: EDIT: The battery on this phone ??? It's crap!!! All this SOT crap??? It's a load of bull, i get a day, at best 2? And that's when i have to work like a slave.
My M9 had better and that's saying something.
Whats worse!!! My iPhone 6 ( i know) ( they were £8 a month with work, it was so cheap i wanted to see what the fuss was about)
I'll share a pic now, you will be shocked, 8.1.3 IOS.
Nearly 5 days off one charge!!! Amazing, whatsapp installed, email, made calls,, played games?? All; of it.
However i'm not stupid, i updated it once, went from 8.1.3, to 8.2 and i lost over 20% in one night, just because wifi was on, reverted back as i backed up first, went back to my superb battery life.
I'll post a pic in a min, but that phone was like a marine, as much as i hate to admit it, it's just people abusing the device by overcharging and over apping and choosing poor OS's, I chose wisely and jesus, near 5 days on 1 charge, i was amazed. Performance and stamina. Never seen anything like it, made me sick that apple could acutally do that. : (
The nexus hasn't been optimized at all, that also annoys the crap out of me.
(END EDIT: Just realised this just turned into dlads blog)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I have 4 different devices connected to my Bluetooth from my car to headphones and a couple of wireless speakers. All connect fine without dropping and sound great on my 6p
murphyjasonc said:
I have 4 different devices connected to my Bluetooth from my car to headphones and a couple of wireless speakers. All connect fine without dropping and sound great on my 6p
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Same here, I am able to connect with other devices, my JBL Flip 3, and even my Moto 360 without a single drop.
Just flashed another rom, maybe it's my Moga? Odd. Running resurrection at the moment, think it's franco's kernel.
Just hoping it's not the device.