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HTC’s official response to a “drivers issue”

HTC’s official response to a “drivers issue”
From PhoneMag
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.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=1841785#post1841785
LET THE WAR BEGIN !!

It is interesting to hear that the Tytn II does not use ati imageon. When Tcpmp was loaded onto my hermes it would have a ati imageon option under options > video.
Now on the Kaiser there is no option at all for ati imageon.
Im not the most knowledgeable on this board regarding software, but does tcpmp "search" for the hardware on the device when it is installed?

Martinhdk said:
HTC’s official response to a “drivers issue”
From PhoneMag
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.
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=1841785#post1841785
LET THE WAR BEGIN !!
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Now isn't that interesting...

So there is no ATI chip in it? Or is the driver not included??

xmoo said:
So there is no ATI chip in it? Or is the driver not included??
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The chip is there, just no drivers.

Looks like that bounty is about to get higher...

Theres no driver and we wont get any either. "HTC plans to include video acceleration hardware in future video-centric devices that will enable high resolution video support. "
I think that it means that maby in the next device. Do they really think I will buy another device when they screw us like that?

stinger32 said:
Theres no driver and we wont get any either. "HTC plans to include video acceleration hardware in future video-centric devices that will enable high resolution video support. "
I think that it means that maby in the next device. Do they really think I will buy another device when they screw us like that?
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Yes you will. Already you owned two devices.....lol nah..just kidding

thanks htc. i bought your phone, and to show your appreciation you shove some bull**** words down my throat and make me realize that I've been ****ed over with your gimmicky under-powered device.
I agree with the other guy, why should i bother with you arse's again after being burned.
suck a big one htc

jsd2 said:
thanks htc. i bought your phone, and to show your appreciation you shove some bull**** words down my throat and make me realize that I've been ****ed over with your gimmicky under-powered device.
I agree with the other guy, why should i bother with you arse's again after being burned.
suck a big one htc
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You're lucky.
I bought 2 devices with this problem.

i have a question!
Is a rom from any Qualcomm 7200 Device online? Like LG KS20?

staulkor said:
The chip is there, just no drivers.
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Not according to that quote from HTC:
"its Qualcomm MSM7xxx-based devices DOT NOT use ATI’s Imageon video acceleration HARDWARE"

They don't say it's not THERE, they just say they don't USE it.
And, it IS there, it is an integral part of the Qualcomm MSM7200 chip, who licenced the technology from ATI. You can't rip out part of a chip, and neither can HTC

dan13l said:
Not according to that quote from HTC:
"its Qualcomm MSM7xxx-based devices DO NOT use ATI’s Imageon video acceleration HARDWARE"
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OR.... "its Qualcomm MSM7xxx-based devices do not use ATI’s Imageon video acceleration hardware"
Depends how you read it really. Doesn't say the acceleration hardware isn't there though.
Bottom line is still that HTC are currently doing sod all, and apparently aren't intending to do anything, either.

HTC actually believes that a bunch of morons are buying their products, might as well address this message to those users that want a keypad just to make phone calls.

Can't wait for 3g iPhone now...

CRY HAVOC! And let loose the dogs of war... who's our lawyer for the class action

Any programmers arround
Phase 1: Start the spam
Mailbomb to @htc.com @htc.europe.com adresses with complaints.
Phase 2: DDOS Attack
DDOS All htc sites looking for drivers.
Phase 3: Burry them in paperwork
------*********THIS IS ONLY AN COMMENT NO INTENTIONS MEANT******----------------

i think htc is finally realizing that its users are getting ahead of em

Dibs on the spam bomb!
Ill start right away, along with a brute force on my Cray to shut them down...permanently.

Is there a true Open Source Android phone? (drivers)

The current situation with the Dream and missing drivers have made me think about the importance of open drivers also for embedded devices like phones. Anyone using the combo Ati card + a distro that upgrades Xorg or kernel more often than Debian stable (whics is most of them) have felt the urge to curse closed source drivers to the deepest levels of hell. Now the same **** hits the fans for G1 owners.
Even though tis post is not about Ati, I must say in their defense that they have released specs, which is great.
Qualomm however, has not released anything whatsoever when it comes to source or specs, as far as I can understand. I have been stalking enough development efforts on embedded devices to know that this is common practise from hardware vendors - and extremely annoying for any geek wanting to do some heavy development for them.
And now i finally reach the question, which has already been mentioned in the title: Is there any device, released or upcoming, that features a SoC with opensourced drivers and firmware for all components? If not (and guess it is so, unfortunately), is anyone better than the others?

Of the many phones/MIDs/ARM gadgets I evaluated before I got my Vogue, the only ones I saw that had even remotely open OpenGL drivers were based on TI's OMAP3 SoC or had a PowerVR SGX GPU. Unfortunately, none of the OMAP3/PowerVR devices I saw were cheap (OpenPandora, AI Touchbook, BeagleBoard, Nokia N900, etc.) enough for me. That, and I saw what happened with the TouchBook's OpenGL ES library, which apparently wasn't allowed to be distributed outside of TI's SDK - but I haven't been following that. I also saw that the Samsung S3C6410, used in the cheap made-in-China SmartQ5 and Q7 MIDs, has open enough specs for writing a driver, but no one has stepped up to write one yet. Aside from OpenGL, though, an OMAP3/4 based phone would be perfectly open... except there aren't many consumer OMAP3 phones I really wish reverse-engineering or converting the Qualcomm/ATI libhgl.so for "real" Linux wasn't next to impossible/illegal - if doing it was easy, you'd have an OpenGL ES library for Debian on the Dream by now. I would reverse engineer it if I had the resources, unfortunately I'm unsure how legal it would be to do that.
EDIT: as far as phones (as opposed to the non-phones I was talking about), the most open right now seems to be Qualcomm - not counting Marvell PXA or other feature-poor (opposite of feature-rich ) SoCs - as contradictory as that may seem. If you haven't guessed by now, I'm basing everything on OpenGL drivers, since as far as other hardware goes, I don't have much expertise. Also, I haven't looked hard enough to find any Freescale- or other ARM SoC-based phones, and I don't know of any Android phones (shipped with android, not ported by third-party developers) that DON'T use Qualcomm chips. For the moment, it seems you must pay a premium for openness.

Well, thank for an insightfull reply anyway.
The N900 is definitely on my watch-list, but yeah, it sure is a bit expensive. Then again, it IS cheaper than the N1, So it isn't that bad.
As for the legality, it really shouldn't be legal NOT to give out open drivers for hardware when you sell it to consumers. They should have a legal right to have it!
But seriously, these outdated qualcomm chips in most HTC phones is no competitor to Snapdragon or Tegra, so who do they think they are fooling when they keep the drivers closed for "competitive reasons". Thats pretty much what they all us as an excuse.
Sad to hear about the "free" Touchbook fate though. I had high hopes for it, but if that is the stance they're taking now, I'm glad i didn't buy it myself.
Soooomewheeereee over the rainbooooow, coooode iiiiiiiiis freeeeeee (likeinfreespeechnotfreebeer) Soooomewheeeeree over...
In paradise there is no binary blobs in any code running on any of my devices.

Acer has just released the "Acer Liquid kernel source code". http://www.acer.co.uk/acer/service....tx1g.c2att92=122&ctx1.att21k=1&CRC=2980211862 Liquid support under Document tab.
Hope that everything is there.

The GeeksPhone One is an open source Android device running on the MSM7225 processor, and worth checking out.
http://www.geeksphone.com/en/

The samsung moment uses the Samsung S3C6410 processor .... whitch is used in otehr windows mobile devices and i do belive samsung has a sdk advable but im not sure

I don´t know it exactly but shouldn´t be the OpenMoko a true opensource phone?

Isn't the Droid pretty decent? Doesn't Motorola even release the drivers for the hardware as open source here: https://opensource.motorola.com/sf/sfmain/do/home

The Moment has the same problem the SmartQ 5/7 have, unless Samsung released source code for the Android OpenGL drivers behind my back. That still wouldn't cover running Debian, sadly - I was hoping I could run Debian if I got one, but I know it won't be 3D-accelerated even if Debian does run. The Motorola Droid has pretty much the same SoC as the N900 and friends, hence the same PowerVR driver problems. IIRC, the SGX drivers are only partially open - I think most of the source code is available, but I remember hearing somewhere that there were redistribution problems. The infamous Intel GMA500 IGP (which was actually designed - and manufactured I think - by PowerVR) still suffers from poor-quality closed drivers, and Intel still hasn't done anything about it, pointing fingers at PowerVR for who knows what reason. I've come to a conclusion: hardware companies don't care about the consumer anymore

What's the status of this these days?
- how open are the n900 drivers?
The Nexus and i9000 both have a thing where the modem reads the CPU so that's as far as the reliant project goes.
Geeks phone is pretty cool but has binary blobs.
I remember reading about another project to make a phone like the Geeksphone but being prepared for compromise to achieve full openness. But I forget the name of the project. Anyone know what its called?
I'm really hoping there's a cheap Chinese phone out there that one can really own from driver level up now.

Dual core CPU devices coming?When?

Hi guys!
We've all been hearing all this stuff about dual-core CPUs like Qualcomm's QSD8672 @1,5GHz,or the single-core OMAP 4xxx @2GHz etc,right?The question is,will we see those devices soon enough?I mean,if they come out some time around christmas it's worth waiting(although they may cost something too much).However all the new devices that we see coming out,like HTC Ace or Schubert,have the well-known Snapdragon QSD8250/8650 @1GHz,with its crappy GPU and its not so powerful CPU(compared to Samsung's Hummingbird).Any clues yet on when we'll see those devices that will change what high-end means?

My guess (which is based solely on a hunch) is that that such devices would be announced together with Android 3.0, so that companies can advertise it as 'the next generation'.

Well,although not based on facts,your hunch gives a pretty possible image of how things will work...

[Q] Why our generation cant support WP8?

I dont understand much about the architecture of software, im asking this because i dont get it, why the processors of our devices cant understand the new kernel and the instructions of WP8. in my head, its exacly the same saying that our pc desktops processors couldnt run the new Windows 8. i would like to know what are the barriers in this case. So guys, what they would be in your opinion?

This was posted by a dude on Reddit.
Disclaimer: I work at Microsoft. But not on Windows Phone.
Windows Phone 7 was built on top of Windows CE kernel (the same as Windows Mobile, and for those who are young enough to remember, Pocket PC and Windows CE Handhelds - this was in 1997).
Windows Phone 8 is moving to NT kernel, the same one as your desktop operating system is using. NT kernel requires radically different hardware - specificaly, TLB mappings in pre-v7 ARM CPU contained logical addresses and this does not work very well on symmetric multiprocessor OS.
So older ARM CPUs did not work with NT kernel, and move to the different OS kernel required radical redesign of the OS. Also, of course the desktop/server OS kernel requires significantly more RAM.
With the large generational shifts it is not uncommon for OS to lose compatibility with old software. These shifts do not happen very often, but they do happen.
For example, Windows NT did not support PCs with 286 CPUs (which were rather common when it shipped), or with less than 12MB RAM (something that is easily upgradeable on a PC, but much more difficult with the phone). Similarly, Windows NT 3.5 dropped support for 386 family entirely.
For Microsoft to have, as you call it, "foresight", it would probably have to drop Windows Phone 7 altogether and go to NT-kernel based solution. It would not have made Phone 8 to appear any faster, however - it would just have lost 2 years.
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http://www.reddit.com/r/gadgets/comments/vdjwe/designed_to_fail_all_windows_phone_7_handsets/c53rh01
I think that answers your question.

Beautifuly!!! Thanks!!

m125 said:
This was posted by a dude on Reddit.
I think that answers your question.
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This answer is a complete bull****! MS already run NT kernel on the arm cpus for a years! This guy is referred to the "desktop" kernel but of course Apollo/WinRT/ (whatever the MS ****heads will call it in the future) has a different (from the desktop OS-es) kernel.
What the "older arm cpu" he's mentioned about??? Nokia Lumia 900 has Qualcomm APQ8055 Snapdragon cpu (google or wiki for that). What the hell "pre-arm"???
Sorry, it's not an explanation, just a stupid bull**** from ignoramus. He definitely needs a "radical redesign" of his brain

Oh c'mon, if our CPUs were the same old Qualcomms from Android 1.6 days I would believe it, but they are last-gen Snapdragons, goddamit!
I'm pretty sure Microsoft could support it as easy as adding two drivers, but it won't. Specially since all phones are the exact same hardware, with WP7.

The point about TLB mappings might be valid... if it weren't for the fact that these are all single-CPU, single-core processors (in WP7 devices). There's no need for a kernel to support SMP. In fact, you don't *want* a SMP kernel on such a processor; there are performance optimizations you can make for single-hardware-thead systems.
Historically, Microsoft has actually shipped two copies (per architecture) of the NT kernel on their desktop OS install media, one for SMP and one for single-core. The installer would use the correct one for the hardware. There is no technical reason that they couldn't do similar with WP8, shipping one NT kernel for single-core phones (which would be able to run on ARM v6) and one for multi-core (which would require ARM v7).
As for the RAM issue, that's a red herring. The RAM requirements of a basic MinWin system are far below the half-gig of WP7 devices. Even adding the phone's extra libraries and user interface, it should still be possible to implement msot if not all of the software features of WP8 while leaving a comfortable overhead for running and app or two at a time (that being all that WP7 officially allows anyhow).
@sensboston: The first that I'd heard of Microsoft running NT on ARM was 2010, when multi-core ARM v7 was already available.
Actually, I agree that the guy doesn't seem to know what he's talking about; according to Wikipedia (unreliable but in this case I see no reason to expect incorrectness), the Snapdragon processors use the ARM v7 instruction set anyhow.

@GoodDayToDie, last two days I've heard a lot of very different (but all BS and incompetent) explanations from MS employees... Seems like guys in marketing department don't have enough engineering knowledge, and can't announce any realistic-looking reason. But may be they don't have to: for general public some unknown "martian" words like "TLB mapping", "GDT and IDT" etc. sounds very "reasonable"

guilhermedsx said:
Oh c'mon, if our CPUs were the same old Qualcomms from Android 1.6 days I would believe it, but they are last-gen Snapdragons, goddamit!
I'm pretty sure Microsoft could support it as easy as adding two drivers, but it won't. Specially since all phones are the exact same hardware, with WP7.
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I really agree with that!! how loudly do we have to yell? But in my point of view nothing about it will be done, microsoft need money and need for yesterday, and yes they will sacrificate the poor white sheeps (that would be us) and watch them bleed just to launch "a completely new OS" that our phones "doesnt support".

Windows RT

Will we ever get a Windows RT Port? Is the transformer drivers as easy and clear to the developers here so that something like this can one day be possible?
http://wmpoweruser.com/htc-hd2-wp8-port-leads-to-windows-rt-on-the-htc-hd2/

Asus provide the kernel source so it's probably doable. Will someone have big enough balls to start development? That's another question...

Microsoft themselves has said that Windows RT wont be supported on Tegra 2 devices.
Not saying it can't be done, but it wont be something which will be done easily.
And given how little the TF101 dev-community is these days, coupled with the absolute lacking enthusiasm for Windows RT, I doubt it'll ever happen.
But feel free to prove me wrong

josteink said:
Microsoft themselves has said that Windows RT wont be supported on Tegra 2 devices.
Not saying it can't be done, but it wont be something which will be done easily.
And given how little the TF101 dev-community is these days, coupled with the absolute lacking enthusiasm for Windows RT, I doubt it'll ever happen.
But feel free to prove me wrong
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Wikipedia says it works on Tegra2.
"Microsoft officially announced support for ARM chipsets in the next version of Windows at the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show. An early port of Windows on ARM running on devices with Qualcomm Snapdragon, Texas Instruments OMAP, and Nvidia Tegra 2 chipsets were demonstrated by Steven Sinofsky; showcasing working ports of Internet Explorer 9 (with DirectX support via the Tegra 2's GPU)"
But I guess that's old and could be outdated.

Seems the internets disagree with what was the consensus last time I checked.
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Wind...an-NVIDIA-Tegra-2-chipset-Intel-sighs_id18133
So who knows. Might be possible if you find someone who'll bother to do it.
Personally I run Windows 8 on my laptop and I'm not very eager on getting on my transformer. I much prefer Android for most things.