What is this all about?

The latest SmartPhone and PocketPC devices from HTC (High Tech Computing) are supposed to be the most powerful devices on the market. And in theory, they are indeed real powerhouses of mobile technology.

There's a catch though: HTC has neglected to include the necessary drivers needed for the devices to come to their full potential.

What does this mean?

This means our really expensive HTC phones (the TyTN II is about $700) are grossly underperforming. In fact, in many things, these devices operate even slower than HTC's (and competitors') two years older models - see the videos under navigation for demonstrations, especially the TomTom video (TyTN II vs Magician) is a terrific example.

The drivers (small pieces of software that govern your device's hardware) in question are responsible for all drawing operations. This means absolutely everything having anything to do with putting something on your screen is affected. This includes normal programs, video playback, games, taking pictures, etcetera. If it's on your screen, it's affected. This makes the devices feel really slow and unresponsive. For more details about this, see the Drivers in detail page.

There is also a problem with the touchscreen driver, which predates the driver issues mentioned above. This issue comes down to your device slowing down to a crawl whenever you touch the screen. This is really apparent when you are playing a video and use an onscreen slider to adjust the volume, for example. When doing this, the video will as good as halt.

Which devices are effected by this?

At the time of this writing, to the best of our knowledge, all HTC devices based on the MSM7200 and MSM7500 chipsets from Qualcomm are affected. None of these devices seem to use the hardware acceleration provided by it's ATi Imageon technology. These devices include, but are not necessarily limited to:

HTC TyTN II (MSM7200), also known as:

• HTC Kaiser
• T-Mobile MDA Vario III
• AT&T Tilt
• Vodafone v1615

HTC Touch Dual (MSM7200), also known as:

• HTC Nike

HTC Touch Cruise (MSM7200), also known as:

• HTC Polaris

HTC Wings (MSM7200), also known as:

• HTC S730

HTC Titan (MSM7500), also known as:

Sprint Mogul PPC-6800
Verizon XV6800

HTC Vogue (MSM7500), also known as:

HTC Touch P3050 (this is not the normal HTC Touch)
Sprint Touch
Verizon Touch XV6900

HTC Libra (MSM7500), also known as:

• HTC S720

HTC Iris (MSM7500), also known as:

• HTC S640

HTC is committed to delivering a portfolio of devices that offer a wide variety of communication, connectivity and entertainment functionality. HTC does not offer dedicated or optimized multimedia devices and can confirm that its Qualcomm MSM7xxx-based devices do not use ATI’s Imageon video acceleration hardware.

HTC believes the overall value of its devices based on their combination of functionality and connectivity exceeds their ability to play or render high-resolution video. These devices do still provide a rich multimedia experience comparable to that of most smartphones and enable a variety of audio and video file formats.

HTC values its customers and the overall online community of mobile device enthusiasts and fans. HTC plans to include video acceleration hardware in future video-centric devices that will enable high-resolution video support.

Er, that sounds like a "P*** off" from HTC, doesn't it?

I don't have an affected device, so can't really comment, but my impression was that it was relatively simple to produce a driver to enable functionality that is already there. On that basis it seems like an odd reaction - why not do it? Maybe I'm just too ignorant on these things.

I got slated over at xda when I suggested that any attempt at a class action would only make some money for lawyers and waste HTC's time...

One bloke suggested that if he had bought a car and discovered that it was really slow he would sue - I pointed out that a test drive would have illustrated the issue. The response was that you couldnt realistically test a Wm device properly in the store. But my point is if you really want a device to do something for you (like play 3d games) then you test it.

I use my Kaiser as an email client/sat nav/web browser/calendar/phone/occasional camera/IT support tool. I do have some dvd's encoded for my daughters ipod touch that I have saved on the storage card and they are just about watchable (but if I really wanted to watch a movie at home I would use the 42 inch panasonic plasma and away from home I would use my Vaio laptop) and I have some music on the storage card too but I very rarely listen to it. If I wanted to play a proper video game, I would use a console/laptop or even my dauhgters nintendo ds lite.

Seems to me that half of the complainers are only complaining because the chip in the device could do things better if HTC wanted it to and the other half are sad geeks who really want to play their 3d video games instead of actually interacting with the rest of the world.
I love my Kaiser (and wouldnt swap it for an iphone even though the video on iphone is 5 times better)

WELL, sounds like this will be my first and LAST HTC device since HTC just gave a Palm, Inc. response.

As soon as E-TEN unbugs their devices, I'm going there.

What's a Palm Inc response?

So would you rather have a device with time spent on the radio layer so GPRS works (HTC) or a device with time spent on video drivers and GPRS doesn't work (Eten)? OK, so i'm over-simplifying, but development of a device to a release date has finite timescales, and clearly Imageon support was deemed non-critical.

This post to me seems like a crazy response (IMHO, YMMV etc. etc.)

HTC DID promote these products based on the Qualcomm chips and their video acceleration, and this really is leading into an area of legaleeze.

Here's an OFFICIAL press release from HTC:
http://www.htc.com/press_room/03-press-070905.htm

"HTC is the first company to introduce cutting-edge devices based on Qualcomm's latest dual-core chipsets, the Mobile Station Modem™ (MSM™) MSM7500™ and MSM7200™ solutions.....by the end of 2007, HTC will have launched more than 10 devices based on these two dual-core solutions from the Company’s MSM7xxx-series platform. Some of the devices already available include the Mogul by HTC, HTC 6800, HTC 5800 and HTC TyTN II....
The MSM7500 for CDMA2000® 1xEV-DO Rev. A and MSM7200 for HSPA also feature rich multimedia capabilities – such as VGA video encode/decode, 8 megapixel camera, and 3D graphics – as well as advanced data functionality with unsurpassed levels of integration. "

So this really is becoming an issue.

Beermaker

They're saying what the CHIP can handle. It doesn't have an 8MP camera either, but I dodn't see people launching a class action about that?

It's about par. 8 is nice, but the 3MP camera is already pretty good and better than most camera phones out there;