I havent been keeping up with the HTC Touch Pro lately, but I have been monitering it from the day it was announced until ATT released it as the Att Fuze.
I hated how terrible the graphics quality on my Tilt was, especially over the 8525 I had. I read this was because of missing video drivers.
IIRC, HTC practically had a lawsuit on their hands over this, and promised that the Touch Pro will have drivers. I think I even asked about it here and was assured that it would come with drivers.
However, I was reading reviews and some people commented about how angry they were that the phone yet again has no video drivers or Direct3D hardare support.
Is this true? Was HTC seriously stupid enough to not include drivers yet AGAIN? Or is this just AT&T's ATT Fuze version? (The guy mentioned something about possibly fixing this with a custom rom, but I am nervious about using unofficial roms on my phone that may brick it or make it incompatible with some of ATT's services).
From what I recall, no drivers exsist for the Att Tilt, they aren't just not installed, so its impossible for me to install video drivers for it. If the Att Fuze also has no video drivers, is there any way I can install those at least or do these too not exsist?
It does come with drivers, and I personally have not had any issues (at least with YouTube videos). I have not tried movies. There are some updated 3D drivers to improve frame rate that were initially developed for the Diamond. See here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=2892184&postcount=357
It has drivers for 3D (OpenGL hardware acceleration) but IMO the GPU (or drivers) is poor. You get low FPS, tears (vsync), etc etc..
It seems that 2D graphics lacks hardware acceleration , so apps/tasks that are using DirectDraw (for eg.) are below per performance in comparison to Marvell CPUs devices
emesbe that's an OpenGL wrapper for Direct3D apps (applications such as diamond vhologram)
Please see these topics:
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=463407
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=449391
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=442712
Cyber Akuma said:
IIRC, HTC practically had a lawsuit on their hands over this...
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Careful, I'll just butt-in to limit continued misinformation. Such a sourcing for a 'lawsuit' were from very vocal but horribly ill-informed users who ended up being incapable of finding a legal counsel to represent their desire for a frivolous case. Whining erupted due to some wrongly assuming that because a device may have the hardware capable of certain performance that it was the responsibility of the OEM to provide the full software capabilities to make use of that hardware. The issues were not of misrepresentation of the software/hardware by HTC but of HTC choosing to develop products without the extra expense for licensing drivers for all of its hardware capabilities and some tech-curious end-users who determined that they were not receiving all that the physical hardware was capable of. IMO, greed came in and some very vocal end-users demanded what they were not necessarily entitled to.
...little different than you having to pay extra to license available features in an app such Nero Burning ROM, or some carriers (often Verizon...) releasing models of HTC devices which do have the same GPSOne capabilities of other carriers' models but Verizon choosing not to fully open up such features to a GPS app of choice. Another analogy may be the early ROMs for the HTC Touch/Vogue and Titan/Mogul/6800/P4000 where the GPS drivers were not available at all.
As far as Direct 3D/Show/Draw drivers of the Raphael derivatives -- toss out the FUD that some have spread because THE VIDEO DRIVERS ARE THERE. As it stands, they're relatively new devices where the software may get updated and performance improved.
Keystone said:
Careful, I'll just butt-in to limit continued misinformation. Such a sourcing for a 'lawsuit' were from very vocal but horribly ill-informed users who ended up being incapable of finding a legal counsel to represent their desire for a frivolous case. Whining erupted due to some wrongly assuming that because a device may have the hardware capable of certain performance that it was the responsibility of the OEM to provide the full software capabilities to make use of that hardware. The issues were not of misrepresentation of the software/hardware by HTC but of HTC choosing to develop products without the extra expense for licensing drivers for all of its hardware capabilities and some tech-curious end-users who determined that they were not receiving all that the physical hardware was capable of. IMO, greed came in and some very vocal end-users demanded what they were not necessarily entitled to.
...little different than you having to pay extra to license available features in an app such Nero Burning ROM, or some carriers (often Verizon...) releasing models of HTC devices which do have the same GPSOne capabilities of other carriers' models but Verizon choosing not to fully open up such features to a GPS app of choice. Another analogy may be the early ROMs for the HTC Touch/Vogue and Titan/Mogul/6800/P4000 where the GPS drivers were not available at all.
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I understand.
First of all, I was talking about the Tilt's problem, not the Fuze.
And I was wondering how a lawsuit like that would hold, though I have seen weirder things get accepted, and sometimes the threat of a class action lawsuit is enough to push a company to fix something. (worked for Sony and Microsoft).
The hardware was ADVERTISED after all, its like buying a laptop that advertises having a fairly decent range mobile GPU but not progiving any drivers anywhere for it, forcing you to run it in standard VGA mode.
Keystone said:
As far as Direct 3D/Show/Draw drivers of the Raphael derivatives -- toss out the FUD that some have spread because THE VIDEO DRIVERS ARE THERE. As it stands, they're relatively new devices where the software may get updated and performance improved.
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I was asking if it was true that the Fuze dosen't have drivers, I didn't flat out say it does not.
Cyber Akuma said:
The hardware was ADVERTISED after all
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...I challenge you to quote that of HTC in regards to the questioned Direct 3D/show/draw drivers. Proclaiming generalities in a device's abilities is absolutely not on par to advertising to the end user specific metrics of performance and/or features sets. That is the founding flaw for the over-zealous lot who failed in gaining legal counsel for their whine.
No, it is not on par to purchasing most laptop or desktop PCs with their individually assembled components. These PDA/phones are implemented as the OEM and purchasing carriers see fit and that often includes a cross-device, pre-manufactured all-in-one chipset that do not necessitate that the customer license every component and feature of them -- though the same extra software licensing purchases to activate included hardware capabilities sometimes on PCs and laptops also exists.
The point that you seem to miss is that one is not automatically entitled to access every feature in hardware of your possession. Property rights of software is often required to legally drive such hardware. The world is not a free for all and it is often up to the manufacturer's of core components and the OEMs to work out what will be purchases/licensed and what will not. I understand that as an efficient business model to only manufacture a single product and to sell it as a base and then sell optional licenses for its separate features. This is not equal to video cards from ATI or nVidia where the drivers are released for public access and installation or SDKs for open source OS' such as Linux.
Cyber Akuma said:
First of all, I was talking about the Tilt's problem, not the Fuze.
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Click to collapse
No, this topic of yours in the Raphael forum was quite clear upon your concerns of the Fuze/Raphael repeating your perceived errors of the Tilt.
Cyber Akuma said:
I was asking if it was true that the Fuze dosen't have drivers, I didn't flat out say it does not.
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Click to collapse
I'll remind you of what you presented:
Cyber Akuma said:
However, I was reading reviews and some people commented about how angry they were that the phone yet again has no video drivers or Direct3D hardare support.
Is this true? Was HTC seriously stupid enough to not include drivers yet AGAIN? Or is this just AT&T's ATT Fuze version?
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You made a comments upon your perception of "missing drivers" and then asked for conformation. I saw it as a question looking for accurate information and answered it as such. As I also contributed, that there is the spreading of FUD (post #4)) out there that is confusing people. That thread concerned the Fuze and was it along with erring reviewers sources for your misinformation?
The certain answer again is that the Raphael derivatives do have the afformentioned drivers. That is confirmed with inclusion of the associated *.dll's and OS registry entries. Some previous HTC devices did not include all of those entries.
Related
just dont buy their Vista! that should teach them something! never piss off thoses that supporting u!
netnerd said:
just dont buy their Vista! that should teach them something! never piss off thoses that supporting u!
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I never planned on it, what a rip off! XP will last another 3-5 years, then I am sure the next PC/MAC will have something better.
netnerd said:
just dont buy their Vista! that should teach them something! never piss off thoses that supporting u!
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OK....you got me....what does this have to do with upgrading your hermes.
maybe that you can not run upgrade software under vista
tco said:
OK....you got me....what does this have to do with upgrading your hermes.
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The pukes in Micro$oft's compliance and licensing department have demanded take down of all ROMs- source of the only stable, up-to-date WM versions of their piece-o-crap OS.
Palm did this to Shadowmite about a year ago after Cingular and Verizon started to complain to Palm. Basically MS is admiting that Gates is the carriers' *****- its a shame that sanctimonious prick elected to breed: conquers the computer world then surrenders it to Ma Bell, her children and their content providers.
Guess it's time to spread some pirated Office 2003 love....
I betcha what bothered them was the progress being made by the XDA Linux project- after seeing what Access released earlier this week M$ ought to be running scared.
I'm running SuSE Linux and have no problem upgrading my roms on my HTC TyTN.
and by the way.... all the little pretty pictures and how VISTA does multi windows with content.. Linux does too! XGL!!!!
This got me thinking.... can we load Linux on our phones?
This is annoying that M$ has to do this. They just cant leave anything alone.
Oh if Linux can do a ROM load then surely OSX can too then.
Yeah spread the good word on the process. In another topic of course(dont wanna de-rail)
This thread needs more LOLZOR1111!!!!
Seriously, wtf?
Don't buy Vista to show them what exactly?
Yeah, let's use a 5 year old OS with easily exploited security issues to teach them what?
The term cutting off your nose to spite your face comes to mind.
Also, they are protecting their legal intellectual property, and they are in the wrong?
What we do here has always been of dubious legal standing. We carry on as long as we are allowed, but we stop when we are told to stop, and that way nobody gets into trouble.
Get a grip on reality people.
Exactly well said. The trouble is instead of a nice comprehensive source of good ROMs made by people who know what they're doing. There'll be a proliferation of hacked-up images with random hacked version numbers scattered across the internet.
Will this result in fewer bricked phones and support calls?
AlanJC said:
Get a grip on reality people.
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I couldn't agree more.
Apparently a lot of people have problems with "reality" nowadays.
Yes, it sucks that the ROMs have to be pulled from the ftp servers.
Yes, Microsoft could do better and show a firmer stand regarding the carriers.
Yes, this online community is very valuable to Microsoft AND the carriers, if they realize it or not.
BUT: there are laws and if Microsoft demands the removal of the ROMs, it is their right to do so, like it or not. They could have used a more "aggressive" approach with their law department but they chose to use a more "soft" approach and this is a very wise decision.
However, Microsoft must realize that such unpopular decisions won't be forgotten and such actions will definetely not make their already bad reputation much better.
Calling for a boycott doesn't help much, I'm pretty sure myself that the carriers are behind the ROM removal, not necessarily Microsoft.
Maybe we should write a letter to the carriers, asking them if they're behind the pressure on Microsoft to have the ROMs removed. If the carriers are blamed instead and their decisions are out in the open, maybe they re-consider because trust me, I would NOT want to be a customer of a carrier who asked Microsoft to remove the ROMs. Definetely not.
personaly i'm not planning on getting vista untill maybe sp4
anyway
xp with 3th party software and no IE is safe enough
vista is mostly 3th party software functionality now as a std. ms thing
and fancy eye candy which linux and macos had for ages
but if ms see that vista is not selling as well as it should
and they connect the dots and form a picture that show that
their pull unoffical roms off sites
there is something wrong with their heads
Vista already not selling as well as it should - it started to show when it was released for volume (corporate) clients, and now its well clear that ordinary users dont rush to buy it despite all PR tsunami unleashed - maybe its "good, advanced, beautiful" and all the buzz, but even thick Joe User sees thats its somewhat lot of problems and complaints floating around.
The whole Vista thing was a reckless scheme - MS spent millions on development, but they lost the clear understanding of why exactly people will want it - on the latest stages it was more of make beleief.
Now they will have to transfer money from other branches, that is more profitable (namely being their Office branch, XBox being not profitable on their own). I think thats why they made it "WM6" (when it was clearly 5.2 originally and still 5.2 in matter of features and internal versioning) - for WM6 they can charge license fees from ODMs as for entirely new OS.
@All
Forget about roms, we will find alternative way to store them, so this is just empty talk. There are free filehosting sites, and other p2p distributing variants, so what's the problem? Microsoft has the rights to ask for deleting the roms, everyone know that. We will continiue what we doing but with difrend way of distributing rom images, thats all. About vista is sucks, you have to confirm every action you do about hunderd times, it works slow even with effects shutted down, and on high end configuration PC, it randomly loose settings, cookies, passwords, favorites, software and other stuff, overall it is unreliable fo usage.
I love to hate MS as much as the rest of you, but everybody needs to step back and take a breath on this one. The reason MS is doing this has nothing to do with piracy, Vista, progress, Linux, taking over the world, Bill Gates, them being money-grubbing pigs, or your grandmother.
The reasoning is simple...under US intellectual property laws, if they are made aware that someone is distributing their intellectual property (like a ROM that contains MS software) and they make no attempt to stop it, they forfeit their rights to that intellectual property. I don't think I need to explain why giving up their rights would be a bad idea for them.
In my experience, companies try to ignore sites like this for as long as they possibly can, because nobody wants to attract the kind of bad press a takedown notice causes. Inevitably, however, things get too big...a site gets a mention in the news, or it becomes the defacto source for ROMs, or it gets frequent mentions in other forums like cingular.com, and the attorneys finally have to face the fact that they can't possibly claim in court that they weren't aware that their IP was being distributed.
All companies do things like this every day to a lot of great sites and forums, not because they are jerks, but because the US legal system requires them to.
In the meantime, we just have to move on and do what everyone else does--find somewhere else to keep the bits
The reasoning is simple...under US intellectual property laws, if they are made aware that someone is distributing their intellectual property (like a ROM that contains MS software) and they make no attempt to stop it, they forfeit their rights to that intellectual property. I don't think I need to explain why giving up their rights would be a bad idea for them.
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Actually that's completely untrue. I think you're thinking of trademarks which do behave in that way. That was the reason for the necessary recent legal cases by Linus over the Linux trademark. There's no such requirement for copyrights or patents.
Not being on the inside it's hard to know the reason for the action: Whether it's the OEM's complaining. I think their logic is that if they only provide updates with new hardware then you'll have no choice but to buy their new hardware. and that people making updates for their older devices are harming their sales figures. they really are that dumb.
The alternative is that MS are annoyed/worried about all the information leaking about WM6 before launch and they simply want to control the release situation.
ivorh said:
Actually that's completely untrue. I think you're thinking of trademarks which do behave in that way. That was the reason for the necessary recent legal cases by Linus over the Linux trademark. There's no such requirement for copyrights or patents.
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Not quite...the nature in which you forfeit rights is different between copyrights and trademarks, but due diligence is required for both. If a known copyright infringement is not pursued within the statute of limitations, implied license is granted, meaning the infringer can essentially distribute at will.
ivorh said:
Actually that's completely untrue. I think you're thinking of trademarks which do behave in that way. That was the reason for the necessary recent legal cases by Linus over the Linux trademark. There's no such requirement for copyrights or patents.
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Not quite...the nature in which you forfeit rights is different between copyrights and trademarks, but due diligence is required for both. If a known copyright infringement is not pursued within the statute of limitations, implied license is granted.
No offence guys but Microsoft or the Vendors wouldn't have given crap about the roms here if it wasn't for the idiots (yes you know who you are) pestering the vendors and Microsoft about support for yet to be released roms. Either bugging them with questions on why something doesn't work anymore, how to use something in the new rom (GPS....), or warrenty repair for f'ing up one's device. Not to mention how pissed they must be for the even bigger idiots who contact Vender A and tell them they installed Vendor A rom on Vender B device
Really what it comes down to is if it costs them money they are going to make a stink and handling service calls for hacked/unsupported roms costs them money. Not to mention how much it would piss off Vendor A to spend money enhancing their rom only to have news sites promoting the rom to other Vendor B devices and have people installing it on Vendor B's device.
That's really what this is all about so if there is anyone to blame in all this, don't blame Microsoft or the Vendors, blame those people because if it wasn't for them, the vendors and Microsoft would have given a sh*t and probably just let things be the way they should be.
Maybe an appropriate response would be to overwhelm MS and the Carriers support systems with complaints about slow, non functioning, unstable software and devices.
The Carriers who actually sell most of us our phones should be ashamed of offering such substandard products. The diference between an "XDA-Developers sourced ROM" and the stock ROM on my device at least is enormous. Yet it was achieved by unpaid amateurs, I mean no disrespect to ROM chefs with this statement.
With the Windows update features built in to WM6 maybe there is a mechanism for MS to offer timely updates/fixes direct to the user. These updates could have incorporated "XDA-Developers" inspired enhancements and bug fixes. Sadly I feel this will not now be the case.
Yes, I can understand the global motives of MS in protecting its intelectual property but I cannot perceive any benefit to MS by exerting its right/might in this case.
</RANT>
Just read another post where it was mentioned that technically the different ROM versions floating around on the site are illegal.
And WM6 for free? I'd say that's piracy. You do pay for at least to upgrade from Windows XP to Vista?
When you buy a new computer that comes with an OS, you can't assume that you are entitled for a free upgrade
to OS when ever one is released.
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In some sense I can see that this might be true! after all, its well known that this site won't tolerate warez... but its fine for beta/non-beta ROMS to be cooked and made freely available to anyone with compatible devices...
Don't get me wrong... I'm all for it and envy all of our cooks - if I could understand how to do it I would!!! I'm just wondering what the true legalities are?
Please don't shoot me
lots of views on the matter here
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=294142&highlight=legal
"And WM6 for free? I'd say that's piracy. You do pay for at least to upgrade from Windows XP to Vista?"
this statement is not really true because ms sell vista and vista upgrades
nor ms or htc or any of the OEM's of the htc devices have ever sold upgrades ms stay out of it 100% htc (pre them selling themselfs) always just made basis roms and given them to the operators to customize and give users free
If it is being sold and we used it without buying, that's illegal, just like the computer situation.
In PPC situation, how can it be legal or illegal when it is not sold in the first place?
"True" legalities are simple: M$ has copyright on this material so though I am not a legal expert of any kind I am sure they will have no trouble proving in court that even simple redistribution of ROMs without any alteration by a non authorized party such as this site is illegal.
Then again, since neither M$ nor the OEMs (not jut HTC) don't bother with updates unless a given device is really unstable so they need to fix some bugs and you can never by a newer OS even if your device supports it I thinks this is basically "fare use".
After all it is a dirty commercial trick to force people to by new hardware at ridiculous prices just to keep the software up to date.
CWKJ said:
In PPC situation, how can it be legal or illegal when it is not sold in the first place?
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Violating patents is illegal,while they are not sold. Violating GPL is illegal, while the product covered by GPL is free. So "not sold" means nothing.
You might know that in modern world nobody sells software itself. They sell or give away licenses on its use. When you buy such a software, it is written on the envelope: "By opening blah-blah-blah" and you accept the license this way. It is not a case with my TyTN! I didn't have to accept a license before starting to use the software. Same with firmware of several devices on the market.
If there are no any contractual relationships between me and the owner of the rights on this software, I violate nothing by using it on a way of my choice.
Well, stolen betas is of different kind: the person who first started to distributed it violated NDA or something like. It is known. So I can't disagree it's illegal.
When you download a firmware update from the vendor, you amy have to accept a license. If you have done, then cooking from it may be illegal.
But I see nothing illegal when no an agreement was accepted.
I think the answer is not quite as simple. Is it legal? Well, technically it is not.
A lot of copyright law could and would defend this point.
However in this world of ours, not everything is about the law. Especially when money is involved.
Having MS and HTC simply say that if you want to taste WM6 that you have to buy a new gadget is not illegal. In fact as the owners and the licenser this is completely their right to do. Sh!tty? Sure! But why not? It is their right, and for us to use WM6 because we don't want to pay does NOT make it right.
The fact of the matter is the number of users who will be upgrading to WM6 through cooked ROMs is rather small and honestly not worth their trouble.
They know most people will buy the software legally. They know that most of their serious buyers will be corporations who will buy it legally. AND ultimately, they WANT people to work and spread their software as much as possible.
Sure they are loosing money doing that --very little in the large scheme of things-- but ultimately, they win because they (US) spread knowledge and we create future customers. Since eventually most of us will upgrade hardware and if when we do, we will most likely stick with WM rather than lets say go to Nokia's Symbian.
They are not stupid and this is why they have not tried to shut down XDA Developers outright for even hosting ROM cookers who are obviously working on leaked versions of their software.
the only skin of htc and ms's nose is that people may not replace their phones as fast
but then same would be true for pc's if they too were made not to have os upgraded
operators like orange and tmobile and the likes could not care less
sim unlocking a phone harm them much much more since that imply that you will stop using the service that they make money on
An interesting historical fact: back when home computer was a new concept and Apple and IBM just began their competition Apple made a tactical mistake: They prevented others from duplicating the BIOS of their machines (I don't remember if this was a legal or technical issue, it's been a while since I saw the documentary). They still do it afaik.
The result: "IBM compatible" clones popped up all over the place at a much cheaper prices then the original (in fact who owns "real" IBM today anyway?) which caused the PC architecture to spread and made MACs an endangered species.
It is the same with (desktop) windows: because there are so many cracked versions floating around ever since 3.11 (maybe even before) it gained so much popularity it became almost standard.
So basically M$ owns their success to piracy. After all some people will not by their crap - if they can't get it for free they will use something else, while the major customers (namely corporations, public facilities etc.) would still purchase it legally even if there were no protection measures.
P.S.
agovinoveritas: if you check the 'About' icon in your control panel you will find a nice fat copyright statement. And as copyrights are something you agree to automatically by using a software product (no need to sing / click or even have a warning on the box) MS still has a way of telling you what you can and can not do with the ROM of your device.
MS don't even need that copyright statement. Copyright isn't something that needs to be asserted, it exists regardless.
levenum said:
agovinoveritas: if you check the 'About' icon in your control panel you will find a nice fat copyright statement. And as copyrights are something you agree to automatically by using a software product (no need to sing / click or even have a warning on the box) MS still has a way of telling you what you can and can not do with the ROM of your device.
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Yes, old news. Everybody who is a tech-head in here knows this. But how is that relevant to my statements?
For those savvy people, you know that by the mere fact that you created something, technically you are protected by intellectual copyright law.
However we are drifting from the main point.
Hi
i was just reading a thread entitled 'are we all running a pirated version of WM6 on our wizards'
and it got me thinking.
theres a legal grey area surrounding xda-devs, namely, the roms that have been placed onto the ftp/forums that are the 'intellectual property' or whatever of microsoft as they were initially intended to be run as 'beta' builds despite being HEAVILY modified by the great members of this community.
so, i thought......
Why doesnt www.xda-developers.com sit down with someone from HTC and similar to how Orange or Cingular are re-branding HTC devices, why don't Xda-Devs setup their OWN OEM company.
HTC *could* (in an ideal world) sell the devices onto xda-devs or an affiliate with the devices set-up as having Super-CID, sim-unlock and being able to run unofficial code on them.
the biggest problem i think HTC have with releasing builds of OS's to the masses is the simple fact that a lot 'joe bloggs'' will ring up MS moaning about how their phone doesnt work...
but, what if the xda-devs company's contract states that the devices are sold with NO support, apart from any support provided from the forums/community at large. this way, nobody would be ringing up HTC as presumably you would have to have found this site, have a little know-how and know what you would be buying from the xda-devs company.
that way, HTC could itself release builds of the OS's to xda-devs for xda-devs to then modify, patch and optimise. this build can then be released to the masses by HTC as a stable build. HTC could as a result of this collaboration sell the devices to xda-devs at a lower cost.
i admit, it sounds a little far-fetched, but im bored and looking for a point of discussion! it could be done though i think, all you'd have to do is find some investors to buy the initial devices to sell- and of course some way to clear this with HTC!
discuss!lol\
While in concept it isn't a bad idea, I've got to point out one major flaw of humanity... our need to place blame.
Selling an unsupported device, be it new or old takes away the ability to blame someone when things go wrong.
However, some sort of support could be offered in the form of:
1. If flashing your device to the original ROM it came with doesn't fix the problem then the issue is 99% of the time hardware related. Call HTC for warranty service, within 1 year of course.
2. I bricked my phone, bootloader doesn't work thus I can't flash it. Same warranty applies.
Anything else is customer's fault, you're on your own.
Of course this could only work with GSM or rather SIM enabled devices. ESN based devices couldn't be part of this venture. Don't know about other CDMA countries out there, but at least in the US Sprint will CATEGORICALLY REFUSE to register an ESN that is not in their database, whereas Verizon will, but you've got to sweet talk the store manager.
Still, even with these little clauses this whole thing is a huge class action lawsuit just waiting to happen.
Although this would be grate for us, as far as the commercial parties are concerned there is a ton of problems with this idea:
a) HTC pays M$ for every copy of WM based on the components they include.
So you still can't legally cook your own ROM.
b) This would get HTC in trouble with every brand and telco they deal with.
c) This will significantly prolong the life of the devices and reduce profits for HTC.
d) xda-dev is not a commercial body and is in no position (I am stating this from what I know of the site, official comment is left to the management) to make any official order for HTC to even consider.
But the project you describe already exists, it just does not run M$ crap:
www.openmoko.com
http://www.theinquirer.net/gb/inquirer/news/2008/01/17/htc-owners-arms-graphics
Class Action wants software fix from HTC
By Tony Dennis: Thursday, 17 January 2008, 2:00 AM
A BIT of a spat has arisen amongst owners of certain recent HTC mobile PDAs and the manufacturer over an alleged lack of a decent driver. The complainers have formed the HTC Class Action organisation.
Given the tone of the site, the group appears to be mainly US based. Their main gripe is that a number of HTC devices based on Qualcomm MSM7200 and MSM7500 chipsets fail to properly use the hardware acceleration provided by the ATI Imageon hardware inside the devices.
In the group's own words, "Even much older devices from HTC as well as from their competitors perform better."
We're talking about how well these devices' graphics capabilities work here, of course.
While the threat of a class action (involving the US courts) by the group appears to be something of an empty one, HTC Class Action does seem to be genuinely offering a reward of over $3,000 to anybody who comes up with the right software fix. That must be worth a punt.
The group also claims that it has put together a petition which has been signed by over 4,000 HTC mobile PDA owners asking the company to resolve the situation.
Given that one of the HTC models in question - the TyTN II – retails at about $700, the group doesn't think this is a trivial complaint.
However, HTC did respond to the INQ with an official statement on this particular problem. It said: "Based on recent customer feedback with regards to video performance, HTC is in the process of investigating and validating these reports and if necessary identifying solutions to rectify any unusual issues."
So the two sides still seem far apart on whether there is a problem to be fixed or not. Perhaps HTC doesn't want to pay ATI unnecessarily? µ
Im so happy that alot of websites are posting these kind of messages! HTC WILL LISTEN!!
this is definitely a good response. Chainfire's decision to start the website really made a big difference.
We got this also:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/01/17/htc_chipset_anger/
http://mobilitytoday.com/news/HTC_Driver_Problem.html
We also need to Digg this like crazy;
http://digg.com/gadgets/HTC_based_phones_like_the_AT_T_Tilt_plagued_by_driver_issues
A good way to put it is "it's like running your Microsoft Windows OS computer in SAFE mode ALL the time".
hello friends.. I had a tytn, and now I have a tytn2,, runnng Divx in High quality, kaiser is so bad... my motoQ is even better than kaiser...
Coreplayer v1.1 Benchs
Divx > Bit rate 960kbps 360x240 25 fps, mp3 192kbps
TyTN - 205%
MotoQ - 135%
Kaiser - 50% ... its unbelieveble...
I did tytn 1 vs kaiser Sktools benchs,,, Kaiser wins at 5 tests and tytn 1 wins at 3 tests...
HTC driver issue in the news - consolidated
Bronx31 said:
We got this also:
http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/01/17/htc_chipset_anger/
http://mobilitytoday.com/news/HTC_Driver_Problem.html
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and do not forget links to CNET Asia posted on 19/01/2008:
http://asia.cnet.com/blogs/theroc/post.htm?id=63001857
http://asia.cnet.com/crave/2008/01/1...opod-818-pro-/
So, having caught up on my reading about the Kaiser using standard software video drivers instead of hardware I have to ask what to me is an obvious question:
Why can one of our chefs not "acquire" the drivers from a WM6 device with the same chip and bake them into a Kaiser ROM?
Incidentally does the chip vendor have any reference drivers?
Or am I missing something here?
James
No reference drivers are available.
Attempts have been made at making drivers from another device using the same chip work on our HTC products, so far it got us nothing.
We won't see a new HTC device using the same chipset again so "porting" drivers from a newer HTC product is also out of the question.
So.....
Either HTC coughs up the drivers.
Someone with a lot of spare time and intimare knowledge "rips" the drivers from another device such as the LG KS20.
Someone with even more time and knowledge writes new drivers (not very likely to say the least).
undac said:
Someone with a lot of spare time and intimare knowledge "rips" the drivers from another device such as the LG KS20.
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Chainfire already tried this if anybody bothers to read through the OpenGL ES thread, especially, the new people near the end of the thread.
Nobody has tried to cook a rom of it though that I know of, and cooking means all of the linked driver files, not this one file people are passing around like a pot hit.
However, I think Chainfire was pretty thorough and it's not likely cooking would be any more successful.
a KS20 ROM can be ported to Kaiser? (i mean, all generic and hardware drivers) and then make an Hybrid with another kaiser WM6 or WM6.1 rom? it could work..
NuShrike said:
Chainfire already tried this if anybody bothers to read through the OpenGL ES thread, especially, the new people near the end of the thread.
Nobody has tried to cook a rom of it though that I know of, and cooking means all of the linked driver files, not this one file people are passing around like a pot hit.
However, I think Chainfire was pretty thorough and it's not likely cooking would be any more successful.
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Click to collapse
From what I can remember Chainfire did try to cook it (he was refering to constant reflashing in the other thread).
And all due respect to Chainfire but I'm sure he's not the only person in the world who could potentially pull this off.
From my point of view he just proved that it certainly isn't going to be easy, not that it is impossible.
undac said:
From what I can remember Chainfire did try to cook it (he was refering to constant reflashing in the other thread).
And all due respect to Chainfire but I'm sure he's not the only person in the world who could potentially pull this off.
From my point of view he just proved that it certainly isn't going to be easy, not that it is impossible.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Indeed I did do multiple attempts of cooking, with uncountable different versions, hacks, etc. You don't even want to know all the things I've done to get it to work. In the end it was all fruitless and I decided I had spent enough precious time on it without satisfactory results. I don't believe it is impossible at all (just nasty) and there are probably a sizable number of people, some here on XDA, even who could possibly do it, given enough time and access to relevant devices. I am neither a noob nor a novice in these matters, but I will happily admit that this is beyond me and will remain so unless I spend a couple hundred more hours ont it (which I won't - sure I have many more ideas how to fix the remaining issues, but I have a company to run and don't think it's worth it).
Furthermore, another reason I stopped trying to do it is because the KS20 drivers have their own issues, so even if it did work, it's still is not a fix-all solution, which eventually makes the whole thing not worth investing hundreds of hours. Not to say it would be impossible to combine the good from Kaiser with the good from KS20 etc. It's a time thing.
It's also possible the WM6.1 releases resolve a couple of compatibility issues - though not very likely - to be honest I haven't even looked at that yet.
As for the D3Dm file that is going around... Complete and utter nonsense, as posted in other threads (with explenation), don't let it get you.
Sorry if I'm thread jacking.
Chainfire,
It seems that the official response from HTC has quieted us down a lot. I'm not seeing very much going on anymore since then. Have we all kinda lost hope and feel it's time to throw in the towel? Or maybe it's just in my head and we are all still fighting hard to get HTC to fix this for us.
Also, I read a lot of replies where HTC said they are working on a fix for mid to late feb but I think those were false reports.
ericc191 said:
Sorry if I'm thread jacking.
Chainfire,
It seems that the official response from HTC has quieted us down a lot. I'm not seeing very much going on anymore since then. Have we all kinda lost hope and feel it's time to throw in the towel? Or maybe it's just in my head and we are all still fighting hard to get HTC to fix this for us.
Also, I read a lot of replies where HTC said they are working on a fix for mid to late feb but I think those were false reports.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Things are still going on, all I can say (just painstakingly slow)
This may help...
I was recently at the "pocket hack master" website (i cant remember the name of the company) and as far as I know, they are trying to work out a solution to the qualcomm chip in our kaisers... I doubt theyll be able to provide the missing drivers, but hopefully will atleast provide a boost in the screen response for our phones.
I think the pocket hack master guys are trying to find a way to overclock the processor, not write new drivers for it. It would help response times to overclock but It won't make up for the lack of drivers. Just imagine if we had those drivers and were able to overclock. I would be pretty sure-footed about bragging that my phone was an Iphone killer. Our phone has the potential to be a bad motherfu$%er, I just wish that HTC gave a ****e about what it's customer base thought, and less about how much money they can milk out of each device. If they released those drivers, in my opinion they would have created the Iphone killer before the damn Iphone even reared it's fruity face. I used to take pride in owning HTC devices, they were the best devices available at one time. Tides have changed, and now HTC's got some competition, and in my opinion, they are failing to stand their ground. I still love my kaiser, but next time I buy a device this whole driver debacle is gonna be whispering over my shoulder telling me to go for the Eten glofiish, or some other windows mobile device, and in the end, may be the deciding factor in leaving behind my high school mobile sweetheart. Dammit I want them drivers lol. Anyways, rant over. Sorry for threadjackin'. Cheers!
sWuRv said:
I think the pocket hack master guys are trying to find a way to overclock the processor, not write new drivers for it. It would help response times to overclock but It won't make up for the lack of drivers. Just imagine if we had those drivers and were able to overclock. I would be pretty sure-footed about bragging that my phone was an Iphone killer. Our phone has the potential to be a bad motherfu$%er, I just wish that HTC gave a ****e about what it's customer base thought, and less about how much money they can milk out of each device. If they released those drivers, in my opinion they would have created the Iphone killer before the damn Iphone even reared it's fruity face. I used to take pride in owning HTC devices, they were the best devices available at one time. Tides have changed, and now HTC's got some competition, and in my opinion, they are failing to stand their ground. I still love my kaiser, but next time I buy a device this whole driver debacle is gonna be whispering over my shoulder telling me to go for the Eten glofiish, or some other windows mobile device, and in the end, may be the deciding factor in leaving behind my high school mobile sweetheart. Dammit I want them drivers lol. Anyways, rant over. Sorry for threadjackin'. Cheers!
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couldnt agree more, well said. im sure we'll find a fix soon enough, there are a lot of talented individuals who dwell on this site... something will rise from the abyss, i can feel the breakthrough coming lol and we'll all shout from the rooftops... "haha apple, victory is mine" like stewey griffin but till that day... we'll just have to wait and wait and wait for htc to tilt some new drivers our way. but yes... rant over
Chainfire said:
Furthermore, another reason I stopped trying to do it is because the KS20 drivers have their own issues, so even if it did work, it's still is not a fix-all solution, which eventually makes the whole thing not worth investing hundreds of hours. Not to say it would be impossible to combine the good from Kaiser with the good from KS20 etc. It's a time thing.
Click to expand...
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I've tried disassembling the drivers from the top down since we know how the API from D3D/OpenGL works, we just don't know how to interface with the Qualcomm crap. But sadly it going to take a lot of time, and the last time I touched ARM-like assembly was on the 65816. x86 experience doesn't apply.
I do appreciate the Kaiser is more powerful cpu and graphics-wise than the PSP and the DS, but oh well.
Thanks Chainfire.
NuShrike said:
I've tried disassembling the drivers from the top down since we know how the API from D3D/OpenGL works, we just don't know how to interface with the Qualcomm crap. But sadly it going to take a lot of time, and the last time I touched ARM-like assembly was on the 65816. x86 experience doesn't apply.
I do appreciate the Kaiser is more powerful cpu and graphics-wise than the PSP and the DS, but oh well.
Thanks Chainfire.
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The MSM7200 is more powerful than what's in the DS and PSP? lol
NuShrike said:
I do appreciate the Kaiser is more powerful cpu and graphics-wise than the PSP and the DS, but oh well.
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Wll not quite as good as the PSP but certainly a bit better than the DS, according to Qualcomms own comparison charts at least.
ericc191 said:
The MSM7200 is more powerful than what's in the DS and PSP? lol
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Unless you'd just agreed with me,
DS: yes (ARM9 + ARM7 + specialized multimedia): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_DS#Technical_specifications
PSP: toss-up (custom mips cores w custom chip support): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PlayStation_Portable#Design_and_specifications
page 4: http://brew.qualcomm.com/bnry_brew/pdf/brew_2007/Tech-303_Ligon.pdf
NuShrike said:
I've tried disassembling the drivers from the top down since we know how the API from D3D/OpenGL works, we just don't know how to interface with the Qualcomm crap. But sadly it going to take a lot of time, and the last time I touched ARM-like assembly was on the 65816. x86 experience doesn't apply.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Everyone thanks for all the responses. Full disclosure: I work on the technical end of High Tech, although at the opposite extreme: Big, bad ass servers and clusters. I too am no ARM assembly guru, but I have messed quite extensively with some ARM based home NAS devices. I'm not dissing anyone, but I guess I should have been more specific in my question and asked for more specific answers:
WinCE like the rest of the Windows family has standard APIs for graphics, with all the nasty, bare-metal stuff abstracted into device drivers (HAL/whatever). Current WinCE (i.e. WM) uses a (somewhat compatible with the Win32/64 systems) DirectX model. The other reason for doing this is so hardware vendors (I'm looking at YOU Qualcomm!) don't have to expose their IP to the world in return THEY have to code the drivers. It's more complicated here since the MSM7200 does more than just drive the display. However the graphics driver portion of the drivers will remain constant across implementations of the chip.
So: Can someone who's actually tried this explain the issues that they ran into when attempting to extract the drivers from another device's ROM and run them on the Kaiser? Is there a list somewhere of systems that use the MSM7200 with WinCE? If we make this a community effort then we can eliminate dead ends very quickly.
Additionally, since HTC seems to be a lost cause: Has anyone approached Qualcomm directly? Something along the lines of: "You're taking a black eye with a very influential group of developers, early adopters and enthusiats. All you have to do to fix this is release the WinCE reference binary graphics drivers for the MSM7200 (no open source required!) to the xda developers forum and let them carry it from there. It doesn't cost you anything, doesn't open up any IP that couldn't be reverse engineered from existing products by a competitor anyway, and it earns you acclimation with an influential group and the type of positive publicity money can't buy. It shouldn't hurt your customer HTC either as they aren't responsible for support for non-official firmware anyway. If the carriers are worried about unlocking, that horse has bolted already, and making the graphics driver issue die down would radically decrease the publicity associated with the device and hence the odds of a carrier user discovering the unlock tools. From a licensing perspective, presumably HTC gets an end-user license with each chip anyway, even if they chose (unwisely) to not integrate and distribute the MSM7200's hardware accelerated graphics drivers."
It's called negotiation. Respect the IP, explain the impact in financial and business terms of future sales, decreased sales risk, and positive publicity. (It helps to try not to look or sound like Eric Raymond too... )
If anyone from Qualcomm is lurking and reading this, feel free to PM me. I'd be only too happy to explain how one "sells" this sort of thing internally to management. Been there, done that, printed my own damn T-shirts.
I don't know SpecG, would someone who does know the organization comment on any applicability here?
James
friends.. Im so sad with the performance in Divx of kaiser.. I had a hermes, and it is great running high quality divx..
I think the driver solution will come with WM7, I hope!!!
and if we make an overclock? L26 wm6.1 comes with an app to overclock kaiser...
jgmdean said:
So: Can someone who's actually tried this explain the issues that they ran into when attempting to extract the drivers from another device's ROM and run them on the Kaiser?
[snip]
Additionally, since HTC seems to be a lost cause: Has anyone approached Qualcomm directly?
[snip]
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Even when all dependencies from grabbing all of the KS20 driver files have been satisfied, booting with the KS20 DDI.dll will cause the Kaiser to hang. There's some hardware specifics either cooked in, or something is misunderstood/missed.
Can't expect a driver blob from Qualcomm because rumor has it they themselves don't have any drivers. They were so closed on IP, they wouldn't even let ATI write some drivers for them, and so Qualcomm did a ****e job trying. So rumor has it that Qualcomm is being more humble now, but it's one of those situations where Qualcomm hardware is nothing more than a poison pill.
i like to thank Chainfire for all the effort he has done
and slowly all experts are goin to collect info and miising pieces
and probably after some time we will have a solution
Anyway another thing is overclocking which might helped a bit and since even that isnt here either think we stuck for a while thanks for your time
satiros
Just a question : Did somebody of skilled cheafs around here take a look into HTC Shift drivers (as far as I now this device have also Qualcom MSM 7200 and Intel Intel Stealey) ?