Guest chilledatthebottom Posted January 17, 2008 Report Share Posted January 17, 2008 Can't see the wood for the trees here (not logged in in weeks) to see if anyone else has posted about this subject, but having read the report on The Reg, I'm surprised this isn't a sticky (Paul, fancy stickyfying this?) Basically there's a proposed class action against HTC in their failure to provide the necessary drivers to fully exploit the LCD driver on the TyTN II. You can read the article here: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/01/17/htc_chipset_anger/ and the class action site is here: http://www.htcclassaction.org/ While I've been away from this site for a lil while, I'm feeling grossly robbed that the performance of the Kaiser is in a word, crap, when it comes to the display. Flipping open the handset to reveal the keyboard, the LCD takes on average about 3-5 seconds to think about re-drawing in landscape mode, then the same amount of time redrawing portrait upon closing the keyboard up. I've complained in the past concerning the abysmal camera app... I've signed the petition, I've emailed HTC... Let's see what happens...eh? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tsutton Posted January 17, 2008 Report Share Posted January 17, 2008 I've submitted this as news about an hour ago, but I don't think Paul has seen it yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest jimbouk Posted January 17, 2008 Report Share Posted January 17, 2008 What a waste of time and effort and maybe even money. The Kaiser is as per its specs. A test drive would have proven it to any prospective purchaser. You wouldnt put a class action against Mercedes for selling cars that can't jump over speed ramps. They just drive over them! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chilledatthebottom Posted January 17, 2008 Report Share Posted January 17, 2008 Hardly a compelling argument Jimbo about cars and speed ramps! This is more akin to buying a Mercedes and them not supplying you the know how to engage 6th gear. The knob doesn't tell you and the Merc engineers couldn't be bothered to write the instructions in the manual. There are proper drivers available for the LCD, HTC in their infinite wisdom simply aren't using them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest WearTheFoxHat Posted January 17, 2008 Report Share Posted January 17, 2008 Out of interest .... Everyone is running around with their hands in the air saying "we are using software mode, not hardware acceleration for our graphics" ... but in real terms how much of an improvement will there be in the performance of this device if we went to hardware acceleration? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chilledatthebottom Posted January 17, 2008 Report Share Posted January 17, 2008 Think of buying an all singing all dancing accelerated graphics card for your pc, then running it in ye olde 640x480 VGA mode !!! That's how much! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest WearTheFoxHat Posted January 17, 2008 Report Share Posted January 17, 2008 Think of buying an all singing all dancing accelerated graphics card for your pc, then running it in ye olde 640x480 VGA mode !!! That's how much! LOL ... ask a silly question eh! Saw your post on El Reg ... nice one for getting it out there! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Boinng Posted January 17, 2008 Report Share Posted January 17, 2008 What a waste of time and effort and maybe even money. The Kaiser is as per its specs. A test drive would have proven it to any prospective purchaser. You wouldnt put a class action against Mercedes for selling cars that can't jump over speed ramps. They just drive over them! What a crap analogy! The "you wouldn't buy a car..." stuff is getting old anyway, but WTH do speed ramps have to do with anything? Put simply, a phone (or a PDA, or indeed any kind of CE) is not a car. There are many subtle and unsubtle differences, the most obvious being that if a car goes wrong, it can kill people. A Kaiser with sub-par video drivers isn't lethal, but that doesn't make it okay either. If you really insist on making the comparison, then let's compare the typical mobile phone "test drive" you might get if you're lucky to that of a car - ie, you go to the Mercedes showroom, argue with the pushy salesman, and then you get your "test drive" - which consists of getting in the car and revving the engine. You can't go anywhere until you buy the car. You can hear the engine running, you can play with the stereo, you can try the sun-roof, but that's it. It's only after you've stumped up the money, bought the car, and driven a hundred miles down the road, that you realise that the braking - although functional - takes five minutes to stop the car. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Swampie Posted January 17, 2008 Report Share Posted January 17, 2008 (edited) Hardly a compelling argument Jimbo about cars and speed ramps! This is more akin to buying a Mercedes and them not supplying you the know how to engage 6th gear. The knob doesn't tell you and the Merc engineers couldn't be bothered to write the instructions in the manual. There are proper drivers available for the LCD, HTC in their infinite wisdom simply aren't using them. I think that analogy is also a bit off. It's like buying a Merc, which you happen to know has an AMG spec engine in it (so should be fast!) - but when you try it out after purchase, you find it badly rev limited. The dealer's brochure doesn't mention the limitation, but the car does meet all the specifications that brochure and manufacturers advertised. You feel peeved as it's got an AMG in there, and you know it could go faster - if it wasn't for the limitation. Nothing ever stated that you'd be able to get the full power out of it, and it would have been obvious if you test drove it before purchase. Edited January 17, 2008 by Swampie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Webreaper Posted January 18, 2008 Report Share Posted January 18, 2008 LOL. What a bunch of crap analogies. :) If you want an analogy that works, consider this. You go and buy a BMW M5. It's capable of ~200mph, but the first time you take it down an autobahn, it won't go over 155mph. Turns out BMW have limited the top speed to 155mph, despite the engine being capable of significantly more than this. Now, the interesting thing here is that the above is fact, but I don't see anyone taking out a class action to force BMW to remove the speed limiter. Likewise, this petition/class action rubbish will have little or no effect on HTC. You can bet your bottom dollar that if it was trivial and cost-effective for HTC to get the drivers out there within the time-frame of the device, they'd have done so (or will do so). However, everyone expects the devices to come to market (working flawlessly) in 4 months, and then 6 months later they're talking about the device being 'obsolete'. So, as a software developer myself, I can see why they might not have been able to get a hardware-accelerated driver to market straight away. This doesn't mean I agree with it, but I can see the practicalities. Of course it's in HTC's interest to get this out there, as it'll show the device (and others built on the same hardware) to much better effect, and thus lead to better sales (particularly in light of the iPhone's graphical prowess). But I'll personally believe it when I see it. Wouldn't surprise me if we don't see full gfx acceleration on this hardware until HTC bring out the first retail Android handsets. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Boinng Posted January 18, 2008 Report Share Posted January 18, 2008 LOL. What a bunch of crap analogies. :) If you want an analogy that works, consider this. You go and buy a BMW M5. It's capable of ~200mph, but the first time you take it down an autobahn, it won't go over 155mph. Turns out BMW have limited the top speed to 155mph, despite the engine being capable of significantly more than this. Gee, thanks for yet another crap analogy that doesn't work in the slightest! Possibly even the worst so far! Let's just go through point by point: 1. BMW are required to fit the limiter by law, I believe. Certainly it's encouraged of any responsible car manufacturer. Does that apply to HTC? 2. The limiter is something that BMW actively install. Just like the drivers which HTC passively omit, eh? 3. If they didn't make some attempt to limit the speed, they'd probably be in line for lots of other lawsuits by the grieving families of RTA victims. Still seeing the similarity? 4. The limiter is covered in all the reviews, it's expected, it's mentioned in the brochures etc (albeit in the fine print), BMW are perfectly open about it. Gosh, it's like holding a mirror up to the Tytn II, isn't it?? Now, the interesting thing here is that the above is fact, No, the interesting thing is that you took the time to post something so completely irrelevant to the discussion, even after criticising everyone else for doing the same. but I don't see anyone taking out a class action to force BMW to remove the speed limiter. No. Then again, you knew it was on the car when you bought it, it's an advertised "feature", it's a legal requirement in most markets, and it's potentially going to decrease the risk of horribly maiming or killing yourself and/or innocent road users. This is like the missing drivers on a CE device how? Likewise, this petition/class action rubbish will have little or no effect on HTC. The HTC customer service responses on the issue have already changed markedly in the last couple of days, after six months of virtually no recognition that there's even an issue. There will be a fix for this, and it will be coming sooner as a result of all this publicity (which was the only aim of the "class action rubbish" in the first place). You can bet your bottom dollar that if it was trivial and cost-effective for HTC to get the drivers out there within the time-frame of the device, they'd have done so (or will do so). Qualcomm have long since confirmed the drivers exist (and are being used in other non-HTC devices) it's just up to HTC to implement them. They will, and then you can cough up that dollar. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chilledatthebottom Posted January 18, 2008 Report Share Posted January 18, 2008 Hear here! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest FloatingFatMan Posted January 18, 2008 Report Share Posted January 18, 2008 What's with the car analogies? If you MUST use an analogy, use something more appriopriate! The video problems with the TyTn II are exactly the same as you buying the latest £350 video card from nVidia, and finding out they forgot to write the drivers; leaving you with VGA @ 640x480. And to see exactly what I mean, here's the comparison video I made; showing how it matches up against a HTC Magician in a business orientated function. You really just CAN'T deny that that's pathetic for "the most powerful portable device to date"... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest deadphill Posted January 18, 2008 Report Share Posted January 18, 2008 hmm how about having windows but no one ever mentioned that they should contain glass, only that they were see thru? That would p*ss me right off! As an owner of the kaiser (vario 3) I know this is something that my hermes did and my wizard before that. Its annoying to know they could fix it, but as yet have not been bothered to do so. Another annoyance and I don't know if this is related but because I can type pretty fast, I find that the kaiser cant keep up. It simply puts all my spaces and letters half way into an email or text all out of spacing. So when writing a long message it becomes quite frustrating. if anyone wants to see what I mean I can always type a message and copy and paste exactly how it comes out. Phill Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Metoo Posted January 18, 2008 Report Share Posted January 18, 2008 (edited) What's with the car analogies? If you MUST use an analogy, use something more appriopriate! The video problems with the TyTn II are exactly the same as you buying the latest £350 video card from nVidia, and finding out they forgot to write the drivers; leaving you with VGA @ 640x480. And to see exactly what I mean, here's the comparison video I made; showing how it matches up against a HTC Magician in a business orientated function. You really just CAN'T deny that that's pathetic for "the most powerful portable device to date"... Your comparison is totally misleading. The main reason the Magician is faster than the Kaiser is because it is pre-WM5 and loads all program data from fast SDRAM. The TyTN has to load its data from much slower Flash ROM, and in a real time mapping program, that's bound to be a killer. All my WM5/6 devices, including a P3600, exhibit slower screen updates and menu responses than I had on my Ipaq 2210 and Magician. I don't deny that the Kaiser performance may be below par, but if you're going to compare to prove the point, at least do it like with like. You're running the comparison on two completely different hardware and OS environments, so IMO your video isnt worth a bean, other than to show the difference between those two platforms! Edited January 18, 2008 by Metoo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Webreaper Posted January 18, 2008 Report Share Posted January 18, 2008 Gee, thanks for yet another crap analogy that doesn't work in the slightest! <snip> Qualcomm have long since confirmed the drivers exist (and are being used in other non-HTC devices) it's just up to HTC to implement them. They will, and then you can cough up that dollar. Gee, thanks for the rant. Lighten up, dude. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tsutton Posted January 18, 2008 Report Share Posted January 18, 2008 And to see exactly what I mean, here's the comparison video I made; showing how it matches up against a HTC Magician in a business orientated function. And here's me thinking it was an issue with Tomtom and its jerking! Good comparison video... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest benzo Posted January 18, 2008 Report Share Posted January 18, 2008 This is so crappy! I was going to upgrade to this ppc phone today- glad I came across this thread. It looks like I will have to keep using my Vario II with screen alignment problems until HTC come out with a device that passes quality control. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest AndyO Posted January 18, 2008 Report Share Posted January 18, 2008 (edited) Don't understand why people keep bashing this initiative? Whilst I agree that suing HTC was never a viable option - they've done nothing 'legally' wrong whatsoever, apart perhaps from a few overzealous advertising claims that might be a bridge too far - the point here was that they were a very difficult organisation to get to sit up and take notice of a growing body of users complaining about the display performance of their kit. Personally I'm a regular reader of XDA-Developers and have followed this for a long time, and huge kudos to Chainfire and the others leading the charge who've first tried to code their own drivers and then sorted the petition and website to crank the pressure up on HTC when that proved fruitless. It's fantastic that its getting a lot of web coverage, and indeed as cited above HTC seems to have already changed its tune regarding prior 'dunno what you're talking about' responses....now it is looking at the problem! Who isn't going to want a faster display for these devices? I'm not that bothered about video playback or games, but if it shaves milliseconds off the response time on simple redraw - even just from flipping portrait to landscape, I'll be a very happy camper indeed :) Edited January 18, 2008 by AndyO Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Metoo Posted January 18, 2008 Report Share Posted January 18, 2008 (edited) And here's me thinking it was an issue with Tomtom and its jerking! Good comparison video... No it's not. TomTom has jerked like that on all the WM 5 and 6 devices I've owned (although sometimes to a lesser extent). It's only ever been smooth as the Magician on WM2003SE devices. That's why I'm saying the video comparison is fatally flawed. It does nothing to prove the case that the Kaiser has worse performance than other HTC WM5/6 devices, because it's not comparing it against other WM5/6 devices. All it's doing is showing that a 400MHz PocketPC using WM2003SE+SDRAM is more responsive than one using WM5/6+FlashROM, which is well known to anybody that's used both. Edited January 18, 2008 by Metoo Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Swampie Posted January 18, 2008 Report Share Posted January 18, 2008 (edited) Gee, thanks for yet another crap analogy that doesn't work in the slightest! Possibly even the worst so far! Let's just go through point by point: 1. BMW are required to fit the limiter by law, I believe. Certainly it's encouraged of any responsible car manufacturer. Does that apply to HTC? Nope, not required by law. There is a "gentleman's agreement" between German manufacturers that non-sports cars are limited to 155mph, but you can legally remove that limit if you wish and there is no legal requirement to. Also, apparently Porsche do not abide by that agreement and there was at least a discussion back in 2005 that the agreement was going to be dropped. 2. The limiter is something that BMW actively install. Just like the drivers which HTC passively omit, eh? You don't appear to consider that HTC may have actively decided to omit the drivers - maybe there was an issue with using them on the handset it was decided to just go with generic ones, rather than the specific ones. 3. If they didn't make some attempt to limit the speed, they'd probably be in line for lots of other lawsuits by the grieving families of RTA victims. Still seeing the similarity? Are you sure you're not from the USA? :) Never once heard any talk about people suing the manufacturer of a car due to a driver's fault. 155mph is still waaaaay in excess of the majority speed limits around the world - why not limit to 100mph if they were trying to save their legal fees. Edited January 18, 2008 by Swampie Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Boinng Posted January 18, 2008 Report Share Posted January 18, 2008 (edited) Nope, not required by law. There is a "gentleman's agreement" between German manufacturers that non-sports cars are limited to 155mph, but you can legally remove that limit if you wish and there is no legal requirement to. Also, apparently Porsche do not abide by that agreement and there was at least a discussion back in 2005 that the agreement was going to be dropped. As I said, it is at least something that's encouraged in responsible car manufacturers. It's a nod to safety and a general social conscience on a corporate level. It's not - more importantly - in any way comparable to HTC omitting some video drivers on a pocket pc! I mean FFS, it costs BMW money to add the limiter, and they tell the world and its dog that they've done it! Why are we even talking about this?? You don't appear to consider that HTC may have actively decided to omit the drivers - maybe there was an issue with using them on the handset it was decided to just go with generic ones, rather than the specific ones. Or to put it another way, they decided it was too much work to get the drivers right? Of course that's a possiblity - a probability even - but not one that should be excused. Do I accept the possibility that it's impossible for the Tytn II to have proper video support - at least comparable to the Tytn I? Of course not. If that were the case you'd have to accept that the hardware design is just plain faulty, and deserves a recall. Are you sure you're not from the USA? :) Never once heard any talk about people suing the manufacturer of a car due to a driver's fault. 155mph is still waaaaay in excess of the majority speed limits around the world - why not limit to 100mph if they were trying to save their legal fees. And you're still massively missing the point. Just between you and me, I don't care why BMW choose to limit their cars at 155 - unless it's because their cars are actually thinly disguised Windows Mobile phones without the proper drivers, it's got absolutely f-all to do with anything. Edited January 18, 2008 by Boinng Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest chilledatthebottom Posted January 18, 2008 Report Share Posted January 18, 2008 Forget all the stupid bloody analogies.. HTC have omitted a pretty basic necessity to speed the display up. For that, they should be publically flogged! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Rush242 Posted January 18, 2008 Report Share Posted January 18, 2008 I know I would like the latest in graphic cards for my PC, without any drivers whatsoever. You know, because that card will really make an improvement that way. How about some of you naysayers help push the project forward and help improve the phone that a lot of people paid dearly for instead of worrying about creating the perfect analogy? While of course a class action is as about as naive as it comes, they are trying to spread the word and pressure HTC to provide drivers that should have been there in the first place. That can only be a help. So, to reiterate: Basically there's a proposed class action against HTC in their failure to provide the necessary drivers to fully exploit the LCD driver on the TyTN II. You can read the article here: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/01/17/htc_chipset_anger/ and the class action site is here: http://www.htcclassaction.org/ If you have the time, inclination, or access, anyone that can add some resources to pressure HTC would be greatly appreciated. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Swampie Posted January 19, 2008 Report Share Posted January 19, 2008 I'm all for HTC implementing enhanced drivers - but personally, my Vario III is fine. Does what I want, when I want, without any noticeable performance issues. It's faster than my old Wizard/Vario I and that comparison video on the class action website between the Kaiser and the Magician is unfair due to the difference in OS causing a significant performance hit for the Kaiser. It would be great for them to do it - but I cannot see the justification in a class action suit. The device functions fine (for everything I've used it for - camera, videos, TomTom, internet, mail, application development), it doesn't crash, or have any of the issues I used to have with my old Wizard. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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