HTC Desire HD

When I first had my hands on the Desire HD, I actually thought I fell in love with it. The overall quality is just what you would have expected from HTC; The use of good quality material (over some cheap plastic material assembly), the polished user interface including the initial set up process. The phone feels heavy but it makes you think of the good solid material instead of the negative aspect of the weight. The tactile feedback on the screen gives a “tight, controlled mechanical” response you would expect from a high quality haptic technology based components. The initial take of the phone then was this should be what HTC Desire was 6 months ago. But it turned out to be more than 6 months gap.

Like all romances, love at first sight is never definitive, and with Desire HD it is a good classic example of that. The quality one can expect from HTC is not just about the positive ones. There were still alignment issues with the housing and casing covers, and the stability of the HTC applications that were bundled with the phone remained questionable, just to name a few. Before this blog entry degenerates into rants, let me just highlight three key areas that had subdued my enthusiasm about this phone.

With all the fantastic technical specifications that Desire HD is carrying, the phone fails miserably in the screen display and camera department (of course in my humble opinion). If Samsung Galaxy S had changed my perception about what a mobile phone can do as far as video recording and playback are concerned, Desire HD proved why the former is the best selling Android phone in the marketplace today. That is despite all the great things you can find about the phone itself. At a first glance, Desire HD screen display looked fabulous. The Super LCD screen appeared to have match the bar set by Samsung’s Super AMOLED screen. But when I placed my Desire HD and Galaxy S side by side,  my jaws dropped and I was almost screaming, “What is so super about the SLCD!?”.

From the video below, the display on Desire HD is simply washed out. The display colors looked faded and flat, whereas in the Samsung devices they looked vibrant. Looked at the contrast and brightness!   The conclusion I got?  I would never want to watch any movie on my Desire HD, if I happen to spot somebody around me carrying a Samsung Galaxy S.

Moving on to the video recording capability. Despite the specification of being able to take 720p video, Desire HD  was never able to match the video recording capability I had experienced in Galaxy S. The ghostly motion effect is still there, especially if the video is taken in an indoor setup (flash is a moot point because I could record a smooth video indoor with Galaxy S). If that was not bad enough, there was a severe bug in Desire HD, that resulted in video recorded with random stuttering effect. So when you are trying to take a HD video, this bug becomes a big joke. Incidentally this bug occurred only when I set the video camera mode to 720p. Essentially, the phone had problem recording at 30 frames per second in high definition. There are “dirty” workarounds, but I was never happy with this video recording function since day one.

a sample of video recording using Desire HD. Notice the freeze in 0:16 frame.

Then comes the software aspect of the phone. I remembered when I first got HTC HD2 more than a year ago, I had to endure the buggy SMS application for more than 2 months. If text messaging is an essential mobile function for you, that bug effectively rendered the phone unusable. Despite the bad experience, I remained hopeful when Desire HD was first launched in the market.  HTC development team must have learnt a big lesson out from that saga and delivered a better quality product this time round.

How wrong was I again! One of the selling point of Desire HD is that it is “smarter” than before with its Htcsense.com.  The latter is essentially a service based feature which enables the phone owner to locate and control the phone remotely. Theoretically one can locate the phone with the help of GPS, or initiate a ringing on the phone so you can locate its presence acoustically. One can even initiate remotely, to redirect phone calls and text messages, or wipe out data in case of emergency. Sounds great isn’t it? And of course I said that is in theory, because until last month, I could do nothing of these, even though these were advertised features. The  HTC support acknowledged that the performance stricken services (or applications) in htcsense.com were buggy and the development team was working on it. Being an IT-trained professional, I can understand how software can never be perfectly free of bug. However, the line should be clear between a software in alpha stage versus one that is go-to-market ready. HTCsense.com was clearly at a former stage, so it baffled me why the product was being launched in the first place. Perhaps it should not come as a surprise given the pressure to launch in the market, but it looked like somebody in HTC had done his maths. That the market share gain (through early product launch) will take care of the market share loss (due to the product quality problem).

A web-based service that looks good but not functional at all

On the otherhand, the HTCsense.com could also be more smarter than it is. As of now the services become useless when the phone battery get depleted. Imagine you discover that you have left your phone at home when you reach the office.   You want to remotely redirect your phone calls and/or text messages, only to find out that your phone is “uncontactable” because it runs out of battery. But I digress.

In all my correspondences with HTC support, it was clear to me that they could not commit a time to fix the problems. I gave up, and was looking to sell away the phone, or to do something about the phone myself. With xda-developers.com, I could save a hell lot of my time from building my own ROM or optimizing my kernel which I did for my previous phones. I found Leedroid custom ROM and kernel, flashed it, and the phone finally became what it should really be in the first place. However, there are things that do not change, such as  the hardware limiting issues (i.e. screen display). In other cases, such as the overall product and customer experience with HTC,  it is almost like a carbon copy of the previous one when I had HD2.

It is a déjà vu again.

I have been asked a number of times which phone is better, Samsung Galaxy S, or HTC Desire, both of which I had done some review on in the previous blog posts.

Here’s my thought.

At the end of the day, the choice is very personal, there’s no good or bad device, it’s more like if its right choice for you, based on your requirements.

For me, Samsung triumphs in the hardware department (except for maybe the lack of camera flash), whereas Desire wins hand down in the software aspect.

For me, you can address software gap with workaround (sometimes better, sometimes not as good, but its a good workaround), but you can’t say the same for hardware.

For e.g. I was blown away by Samsung camera capability, whereas HTC Sense mesmerized me without a shadow of doubt. I can emulate HTC sense in Samsung Galaxy S via Launcherpro (much better than Sense imho!) and widgets like fancy widget (not as functionally complete but its a good bridge), but I can’t emulate the video taking capability *anywhere near* Samsung Galaxy S in HTC Desire.

I have always have the desire to learn about (mobile) life beyond Windows Mobile,  after having owned numerous Windows Mobile devices for the past 5 years. Then came iPhone, in 2008. But despite its edge cutting user experience and its hundreds of thousands of (useless) applications, it didn’t wow me over. I admit I’m not a big fan of Apple, but that has nothing to do with me not joining the fruity camp. I think it’s a great mobile product to start with, and had redefined the usability of mobile devices. It forces telco to sell data plan as a mainstream service. There’s many good things about the consumer focused phone, but just not enough to replace the likes of my trusty Xperia, Touch HD and subsequently HD2 as a productivity phone.

Then few months ago, I had a taste of Android on my Touch HD, albeit booted from Windows Mobile using haret (just think of it as a PC that can dual boot between Windows and Linux). I thought Android was an unpolished product then, with a great potential to woo over die hard Windows Mobile users.

In the past 6 months, many Android based phones had launched, but they were either too small for my fat fingers, or did not look appealing to me. Most importantly, until Android 2.1 (or Eclair) was released, there was no good way to integrate Android with Exchange Server backend.

Last month, a couple of new Android Eclair phones were launched, and one of them caught my attention. The phone “Desire” is so aptly named. Sporting a screen of 3.7″ size, running HTC sense and most importantly has support for Exchange Server integration,  it looks like a good phone to replace my HD2, which had been on steriod for the past few months.

So when Yeez decides to renew her telco contract, I shamelessly offer her my professional service to set up her HTC Desire, and in the process, for her to experience the steroid boosted HD2 and for me to test-play her HTC Desire for the next few weeks. 

But it took me 2 weeks before I could lay my hands on the desirable phone, as the phone was out of stock island-wide since day 1 due to its overwhelming demand and conservative supplies from HTC (as I understood HTC allocated only 100 units to each telco on day one of its release). Fast forward to yesterday, upon first powered up,  I was first greeted by the familiar shell interface, HTC Sense, which has been around in other HTC Android and Windows Mobile phones. The Android version of the HTC Sense supports a wide variety of widgets, and I believed it is based on Android App Widgets framework. This is a big contrast to the Windows Mobile version of HTC Sense, which has been developed from ground up, based on Lua scripting language. Ok, it sounds little too techie here, but bottomline, you should be able to customise the Android version of HTC sense with other non HTC-sense widgets easily. In the Windows Mobile camp, you would need skilled developers to custom build additional “home tabs” which will only run on HTC-sense powered Windows Mobile devices. That said, I am alittle annoyed with the fact that I can only have 7 “widget screens”, even though I could work around that “limitation” by choosing different “Scene” (each scene has its own set of home widget screens configured).

Installation of third party applications into HTC Desire, like any other Android phones (and iPhone if I’ve to be politically correct), is seamless through Android Market.  I installed a few applications, including big installation packages such as NDrive.  There are some installed applications such as SMS widget counter, File explorer,  Bluetooth transfer app, etc which I deemed basic and should be part of the Android base system. Or maybe I have been spoilt by Windows Mobile for the last few years. On the otherhand,  there are good applications such as Tapatalk which I had been hoping for during  the Windows Mobile  days, and I reckon the lack of “easy to use” UI SDK as the main reason why developers are slow in porting their applications to Windows Mobile.

Applications aside, setting up HTC Desire was a breeze, in particular setting up Exchange Server account for my push mail needs. In a few minutes, all my company mails, calendars and contacts were downloaded to the phone. While the PIM features in Desire (or Android phones for that matter) is not as extensive as that in Windows Mobile, it’s  more than adequate for one to connect to workplace, e.g. scheduling a meeting with a list of  invitees,  setting out of office,looking up company’s global address book, etc. And because I had setup my HD2 favorite people previously, the Desire’s favorite widget screen shows the same list of favorite contacts after synchronising with the exchange server. Neat!

Now here comes my biggest gripe(s),  to date. I always pin-secured my phones, and its no different for HTC desire. The problem with HTC Desire, and possibly for any other Android phones, is that if I choose to have numeric pin, I would still face a full qwerty keyboard to enter the pin when I try to slide unlock the phone. It may sounds like nitpicking, but just imagine you have to tap 8 key codes quickly every time you turn on the phone to make a call or do a quick read of new messages. It didn’t help that Android phones (or at least for HTC Desire) seem to have only one single power management mode; regardless of whether the phone is on external power source or battery, or whether the phone is idle or running some active services.

Apart from these gripes, there are other small nags such as occasional screen lags, inability to have full access to application configurations (probably require rooting). Still, I think it has been a refreshing experience, and is the smart phone that is capable of replacing my HD2. This is even more so with the next version of Android, Froyo,  rumoured to be available for HTC Desire in a couple of weeks time, and reportedly to be 5 times as fast as Eclair. Of course, since its made by HTC, one can easily head over to xda-developers to satisfy ones desire for the dark side.

So I did some investigation, and found out a way to disable HTC messaging app, and revert back to the original Windows messaging application, i.e. pocket outlook, for text messaging. Technically speaking, it’s a combination of registry tweak and a small patch utility I wrote to overcome a bug/problem as a result of disabling HTC messaging application.

Installation process will automatically apply the hack and install the patch utility

You need to restart your device to have the changes effect

Uninstallation will undo the hack automatically

You can download from here

“Back FavPeople Up!” is the latest software I have created for Windows Mobile devices that sport HTC’s touchflo 3d user interface. Basically it is a backup utility tool to manage the  favorite contacts found in the touchflo’s “People” tab. The challenge here is not so much about building the application itself (as I have found out building using managed code speed up the development cycle tremendously). It is really the effort to find out how and where HTC embeds its favorite contact information. After scanning through the entire windows registry and hundreds of manila files (HTC’s custom xml files), I figured out that it must be in the PIM database, where all the contacts, appointments, etc are stored.

The hack requires some understanding of the POOM (Pocket Outlook Object Model), and contact is one of the objects in the model. After some trial and error, I finally found out that the information are saved under the property set in the contact object

For download of the utility, you can go to xda-develoeprs to download

Unfortunately, the procedure to flash a custom ROM can be a nervy experience, even for an IT-trained individual. While  the actual flashing process will take no more than 10 minutes, one might get lost just by reading through the documentation of the procedure.

So here’s an attempt to do a video blog of the flashing process, to compliment  the detailed documentation created by the developers in xda-developers forum. In this video blog, I’ll be flashing custom ROM using USPL, instead of Hard-SPL method. Read here to know more about USPL versus Hard-SPL. For me, USPL is the least intrusive method, and I can flash stock ROM to my device anytime straight away without any additional procedure.

Files you need to download

First thing first, you need to ensure you have the following files downloaded;

1. Stock SPL for Blackstone (version 1.54)
2. HSPL Wrapper for Blackstone (version 1.56)
3. USPL (version 2.5)
4. A 1.56+ based ROM (I use Dutty’s XT 3.9 ROM)
5. RUU Wrapper for Blackstone (if you download Dutty’s XT ROM, this RUU wrapper is provided in the zip file)

Unzip each of the downloaded files, and organised them under a central folder, e.g. “Touch-HD-Rom-Stuff”, for easy access.

Key Steps required to flash the custom ROM

1. Back up your phone. I strongly recommend that you just back up your data instead of backing up your programs and their settings. Going with the latter might introduce system conflicts when you restore everything back to the new ROM. If you just need to back up your PIM data (i.e. your appointments, text message, contacts, etc), my personal preference would be PIM Backup.

2. Put your phone into bootloader mode. With your phone in power off mode, depressed the volume-down button and power button simultaneously, and you should see the device boot up with a tri-colour screen like the one shown below.  (note: if for some reason you want to exit this step without any further flashing, just take out the battery and put it back to restart)

Touch HD at Bootloader mode

3. Update your phone’s SPL to stock SPL version 1.54. You can skip this step if your bootloader screen shows that you are already on version 1.54 (or above). The video below shows how you can upgrade your phone’s stock SPL to version 1.54. In the video, you would see that I will put my phone in USPL mode first. According to xda-developers, there is not need to put your phone in USPL mode first and you can upgrade the SPL directly (i.e. skip step 3a).  In some circumstances (e.g. if you have accidentally carried out step 4 before step 3) you may need to perform step 3a first prior to flashing stock spl. If you are not sure, just carry out step 3a since it is a very straight forward step;

(a) With your phone connected to your PC via USB cable, open up a command window and run the command “blac_uspl.exe“. This will put your phone in USPL mode. If you are not successful in getting your phone into USPL mode, please refer to this link to update your USB driver.

(b) Run the HSPL Wrapper by double-clicking the program HSPLWrapper_Blackstone_1560OliNex.exe. Do not click on anything when the window pops up

(c) Copy the stock SPL image RUU_Signed.nbh to the folder where HSPL Wrapper resides. Choose to overwrite the file if you are prompted.

(d) Continue the steps as advised by HSPL Wrapper Window, to complete the flashing of stock SPL version 1.54 into your phone.

4. Upgrade your phone with a 1.56+ based custom ROM. In this example, I use Dutty’s XT version 3.9, which is also based on stock ROM 1.56. You need to put your phone back in bootloader mode again, as the SPL upgrade you have carried out in step 3 would reboot your phone into Windows Mobile operating environment. Repeat step 3a to put your phone into USPL mode. Once your phone is in USPL mode, then run the executable BlackstoneRUUWrapper.exe. Follow the steps as advised by the RUU (Rom Update Utility) window, and in less than 10 minutes you should see a successful flash of the custom ROM image into your phone! The video below illustrates the entire flashing procedure.

Note: If you are not successful in getting your phone into USPL mode, please refer to this link to update your USB driver.

So  4 weeks ago when I sent in my X1 to the service center to have the keyboard and some parts repaired,  never would I had expected that would be my last Xperia experience.  It has to do with the infamous crack plastic housing that I requested to be replaced, but I shall not digress further. Fast forward to now,  I ended up selling my X1 back to the service center, and gotten a black stone, a code name for HTC Touch HD.

First unboxing impression

HTC always does a great job in marketing their products, including their product packaging. Touch HD is not an exception. Upon opening up the box, the phone is sitting tightly on the velvet case, radiating a class of sparkles as if it is really a black gem stone. The phone itself is very well built, with a glass finishing on the front, and plastic with rubber texture finishing on its back. The 3.8″ screen size is a big welcome for me after enduring the small 2.8″ (or 3.0″ for X1) screen for the last few years. It was the same feeling I got when I upgraded my 29″ CRT with a 42″ plasma TV few years ago. No kidding! With a bigger screen, something has to give in, as it becomes wider to hold and may not be one-hand-friendly especially for ladies. Luckily the overall form factor is not at all compromised, as HTC designs the phone as a gemstone, not a brick. Perhaps I had my own taste of iPAQ 6300/6500/6900, I find it comfortable holding HD despite its wider screen.

Setup experience

The setup experience was somehow less desirable though. After going through the usual screen calibration and time setting, my first task was to set up Activesync Exchange connectivity, so that I can restore my contacts, email and appointments as I would always do when I get a new Windows Mobile phone. This is where my patience was seriously tested. For some reason, the sync download was slow (ok, blame it on the 3G connection I have), and at the half way mark, the device reported that service.exe has crashed and the sync got into a limbo stage. It took me a soft reset, to complete the sync, even then, the sync was painfully slow. It appears as if there is something running in the background, that slows down the whole sync process.

Stock Performance

Unlike what the HTC sales manager had claimed 6 months ago during a Touch HD product introduction, the phone does not feel like it has been optimized for its performance. In fact, if there’s any indication that HTC has partnered with StarHub (Singapore telco that has exclusivity in Touch HD launch) to customize the ROM, it’s probably the StarHub logo display on the home page of TouchFlo interface.

Comparing to my previous X1, the Touch HD performance is just decent, and that’s after some tweaking using Schap’s Advanced Config Tool. The battery performance is far from what was promised. Sure, battery performance is subjective and depends on individual’s usage pattern. HTC had however, quite bullishly, claimed that watching TV (via StarHub TV mobile) on Touch HD would be much better than doing the same on other devices, as Touch HD would “intelligently turn off some services” to save battery power when one watches the TV online. It sounded like a complete sales “waste of male cow” (i.e. BS) but I gave the sales manager a benefit of doubt since I was not able to play with the phone until now. And my skeptic is finally backed by my own finding; after 1 hour of watching live soccer match on HD, the battery depleted by 25%. Hey I think my X1 can do a better job than this.

Second Life with Turbo-charging

So at the verge of selling the phone, and get something else (with Touch Pro 2 looming around), I decided to give HD a second chance by flashing a custom ROM (thanks to a mate’s suggestion). The steps to flash a custom ROM can be quite taunting. The last time I touched a custom ROM was when I had my iPAQ 6515, where we manipulated the ROM image with hex editor just to “hack” the storage management. With Touch HD and xda developers, the flashing process has been simplified dramatically. Within 15 minutes, I had turbo-charged my Touch HD, and I was wowed by the speed and memory management performance this time round. Set up was a breeze, the interface was even more refreshing (leveraging from Rhodium’s platform) and the screen was sensitive as usual without any trace of lag. If anybody were to ask for my advice, I would say custom ROM is the way to go, at least for Touch HD, if you really want to maximise your experience with the black stone.

to see if the gadget lives up to its name as a truly convergent device, a device that simply allows you to do more than the usual telephony and PIM (Personal Information Management) stuffs you normally find on a typical phone and pda separately and respectively. So the golden questions are …

• Can it replace my notebook so that I can use it to write a blog post, surf the net extensively without feeling frustrated by the browser limitation that usually comes with a mobile phone.

• Can I use it to snap photos while I travel and yet does not need to resort to downsizing the photo into a 200×150 so as to hide the poor resolution quality?

• Can I rely on it as my life savior by guiding me through a city that I had never spent my life in?

• How about responding to email and sms on the road, on demand? (This should be a no brainer, since I am already impressed with the combination of exchanger server and Windows mobile device in delivering the push mail utility.)

• Lastly, can I use it to wow my friends and colleagues, a rather important feature for an egoist man like me

And the answers to all the above are pretty encouraging, and here’s why.

First off, starting from the last question, the built in Touch Flo 3D user experience simply change my impression 180°, that a “Winmo” device can be so cool. HTC has gone a long way in developing their Touch Flo capability; I remembered writing off their first version as no more than an empty shell cover on top of the rather dated Windows Mobile interface. Boy, I was proven wrong big time now with their latest 3D version of Touch Flo, and I can understand why now it had created a strong following when HTC launched Diamond a while back.  Its flagship model sported the same interface. Well the Iphone critics might say this is really elementary when compared to their multi-touch interface. But when you put an intuitive interface, never mind it is not any further radical or innovative than that of an iPhone, on a Windows mobile platform that offers the richness in its functional offering, it is a perfect match made by heaven. It is like a nerdy man that had just went through a major makeover in his appearance and social skills. Thumbs up, for the brilliant interface, and bigger thumbs up, for giving me the “show off” chance.

Then, I recalled three weeks ago when I was at Houston. After 27 hours of long flight,  the last thing I would want to do is to remember the route details to the hotel. I was concerned that it will take eons while to get acquisition fix, as the whole process (the process where GPS device receives signal from various satellites to compute its location) can get trickier when you travel to the other side of the hemisphere. Once I stepped out of Hertz car rental site, within a minute, I got a fix! Ok I did cheat, I downloaded the almanac and ephemeris via the Q-GPS function. The Garmin Mobile XT that was installed in my Touch Pro, gracefully and accurately guided me to the hotel. No more worries about getting lost in a totally unfamiliar city. That said, it was a case of meeting, rather than exceeding, my expectation. I was pleased, but not wowed, so thumbs stay down for this.

Despite being a frequent business traveler, I hardly take any photos while on business trip.  I find it inconvenient to lug my digital SLR camera or even my compact camera around. After all, I travelled for a business purpose, not holidaying. Furthermore, I never bothered to take photos using my phone’s camera. The quality of the photos taken are usually washed out, or at best average. However, with my Touch Pro’s 3M pixel camera, I find myself taking quite a few photos in the last Houston and Bangalore trips. One advantage of holding a good phone camera, as I found out in the last two trips, you are always holding it, or keeping it in your trouser pocket, so the camera is always at your disposure to take instant candid photos. But camera phones still have their short comings. Case in point; While I was in Bangalore city on the way back to hotel, I chanced upon a cattle walking by the road. I quickly took out my phone, and was in position to snap this interesting moment. However, by the time the camera was ready to shoot, the cattle was already far behind me… So there’s still a value in investing in SLR or compact camera, but for business trips travel and daily usage, a camera like the one in Touch Pro, serves its purpose. Another thumbs up for this.

Last but not least, how did HTC Touch Pro fare as I used it to pen down this blog post? With Touch Pro’s vibrant display, Opera’s pan and zoom feature, blazing 3G speed, I thought I could do the job with ease just as I had been surfing the web without any glitches. In all honesty, I did not complete the blog entry as I got stumbled at the 5th paragraph. I was happily blogging away, but I decided I should save my work just in case something cropped up unexpectedly. And something did crop up  ironically. The wordpress editing tool did not allow me to continue, due to some javascript compatibility issues with the Opera browser. Luckily for me, the earlier effort was intact, just that I couldn’t continue my blogging. But not to be fooled by this negative example. The experience of navigating through most desktop-targetted web sites remains to be a seamless and positive one. In fact, I probably surf more using my Touch Pro, as compared to the total time I had spent online using all my previous mobile gadgets. Two big thumbs up for this!

My final verdict? The phone itself is more impressive than its already impressive paper spec. I am probably not exaggerating if I call Touch Pro the king of qwerty phone. Well at least for now. Until the likes of Sony Ericsson X1 Xperia starts showing up in our shore, it is hard not to be linked with this “pro” phone. As my little nephew will always exclaimed when he sees something extraordinary… this is Pro …