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HTC TyTN II Driver Issues
Taiwanese PDA giant HTC released their latest flagship PDA phone called HTC TyTN II (also known as Kaiser, Tilt and MDA Vario III) but recent discoveries show that maybe it's not so much a powerhouse after all. Due to lack of proper driver support for the video part, based on ATi Imageon technology, of the Qualcomm MSM7200 chipset users are left with a seriously handicapped unit with very poor support for gaming, video and photo. Granted, the phone is mostly intended for business users who will rarely see the effects of these issues but it's still leaving thousands of customers who want to fully utilize the phone with a slightly bitter taste in their mouths.
Edit: I have been notified that the Touch Dual, Wings, Titan, Vogue, Libra, Iris and Touch Cruise built upon the same chipset-family suffers from the exact same problems.
UPDATE: This issue is finally starting to get some traction in the news thanks to www.htcclassaction.org. Check out some of the articles written by major players in the IT news field:
The Inquirer (UK, also on FR), The Register (UK), Tweakers (NL), Gizmodo (FR), Newz (DK), CNET (TW, article in English)
Mobility Today (US), Pocket Info (NL), Mobile Cowboys (NL), MS Mobiles (US), Cool SMartphone (US), Mobile Gadget News (US)
Wireless and Mobile News (US), Wireless Week (US), Engadget Mobile (US) - and many more
UPDATE2:Not so much an update as a resignation. Many months have passed, HTC has done nothing to resolve the issues except promised a patch (not driver) that would improve general performance. Such a patch has not been released yet.
A petition for driver support has been posted and over 13000 people have signed it. It has been sent to HTC on numerous occasions yet no official statement or fix has been produced as of yet.
You can check out the petition here:
http://www.petitiononline.com/tytn2vid/
To be more specific the issue stems from the fact that HTC doesn't supply any generic driver for the video part of the chipset that the phone is based on. The chip in itself has all the support needed problem is that in order to access it you need to use esoteric and closed source platforms instead of the widely used APIs such as GDI (for drawing up the phone interface), DirectDraw (for video playback), Open GL ES/Direct3D Mobile (for 3D gaming) and GAPI (gaming).
Acceleration can, supposedly, still be achieved through applications which are programmed for the specific Qualcomm software platforms.
This means that all your favourite applications that work on pretty much all other Windows Mobile phones, that in some way need video performance, will perform worse on the TyTN II than on pretty much any other recent (and even older) devices. Even the older TyTN ("I") shows superior performance when it comes to video.
This also translates to problems with games. Open GL ES games for Windows Mobile such as Call Of Duty 2 needs to be rendered in "software" mode on the TyTN II even though its hardware supports Open GL ES. And just as in the case with video playback even this software rendering is slower than on older devices in many cases.
Even simple things like sliding out the keyboard and going to landscape mode, scrolling through lists or in your browser etc. suffers from a delay compared to many Windows Mobile 6 based devices. So it's not just a question of people wanting to use their phone as an entertainment device, this also effects "normal" (business/office) every day use.
Below you find two perfect examples of this poor TyTN II performance in an every day application:
The first video shows poor scrolling performance in IE and the next shows poor scrolling performance in the "explorer". Both issues or most likely related to the GDI driver not being hardware accelerated. Even on older hard (as seen in the first video) this operation should be much smoother.
Edit: I have been notified that the Touch Dual, Wings, Titan, Vogue, Libra, Iris and Touch Cruise built upon the same chipset-family suffers from the exact same problems.
UPDATE: This issue is finally starting to get some traction in the news thanks to www.htcclassaction.org. Check out some of the articles written by major players in the IT news field:
The Inquirer (UK, also on FR), The Register (UK), Tweakers (NL), Gizmodo (FR), Newz (DK), CNET (TW, article in English)
Mobility Today (US), Pocket Info (NL), Mobile Cowboys (NL), MS Mobiles (US), Cool SMartphone (US), Mobile Gadget News (US)
Wireless and Mobile News (US), Wireless Week (US), Engadget Mobile (US) - and many more
UPDATE2:Not so much an update as a resignation. Many months have passed, HTC has done nothing to resolve the issues except promised a patch (not driver) that would improve general performance. Such a patch has not been released yet.
A petition for driver support has been posted and over 13000 people have signed it. It has been sent to HTC on numerous occasions yet no official statement or fix has been produced as of yet.
You can check out the petition here:
http://www.petitiononline.com/tytn2vid/
To be more specific the issue stems from the fact that HTC doesn't supply any generic driver for the video part of the chipset that the phone is based on. The chip in itself has all the support needed problem is that in order to access it you need to use esoteric and closed source platforms instead of the widely used APIs such as GDI (for drawing up the phone interface), DirectDraw (for video playback), Open GL ES/Direct3D Mobile (for 3D gaming) and GAPI (gaming).
Acceleration can, supposedly, still be achieved through applications which are programmed for the specific Qualcomm software platforms.
This means that all your favourite applications that work on pretty much all other Windows Mobile phones, that in some way need video performance, will perform worse on the TyTN II than on pretty much any other recent (and even older) devices. Even the older TyTN ("I") shows superior performance when it comes to video.
This also translates to problems with games. Open GL ES games for Windows Mobile such as Call Of Duty 2 needs to be rendered in "software" mode on the TyTN II even though its hardware supports Open GL ES. And just as in the case with video playback even this software rendering is slower than on older devices in many cases.
Even simple things like sliding out the keyboard and going to landscape mode, scrolling through lists or in your browser etc. suffers from a delay compared to many Windows Mobile 6 based devices. So it's not just a question of people wanting to use their phone as an entertainment device, this also effects "normal" (business/office) every day use.
Below you find two perfect examples of this poor TyTN II performance in an every day application:
The first video shows poor scrolling performance in IE and the next shows poor scrolling performance in the "explorer". Both issues or most likely related to the GDI driver not being hardware accelerated. Even on older hard (as seen in the first video) this operation should be much smoother.
rabidraccoon |
Latest page update: made by rabidraccoon
, May 3 2009, 4:39 PM EDT
(about this update
About This Update
Moved from: HTC AT&T Tilt (TYTN II)
- rabidraccoon
No content added or deleted. - complete history) |
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Keyword tags:
8920
8925
AT&T Tilt
ATi
ATT Tilt
Cruise
Direct3D
DirectDraw
driver
ES
HTC
imageon
issue
Kaiser
msm7200
Open GL
P4550
problem
qualcomm
T Mobile MDA Vario III
Touch
TyTN
TyTN II
video
More Info: links to this page
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| Started By | Thread Subject | Replies | Last Post | ||
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| Anonymous | Is this still an issue? | 0 | Dec 6 2008, 10:33 PM EST by Anonymous | ||
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Thread started: Dec 6 2008, 10:33 PM EST
Watch
I *just* bought a WinMo 6.1 Tilt ... I dont have the gps demo to comapre to your video and it kinda looks like driver became available on the class action site.
Thanks |
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| Anonymous | videos | 3 | Jul 22 2008, 6:47 AM EDT by Anonymous | ||
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Thread started: Jan 23 2008, 1:43 PM EST
Watch
The device does not support this and does not having any graphics acceleration/ chip.
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| jhowhelle | Video and Cam function of HTC Tytn ii | 7 | Jun 7 2008, 1:17 PM EDT by Anonymous | ||
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Thread started: Jan 18 2008, 9:54 AM EST
Watch
hi, me again. just like to comment on the camera performance of the tytn ii... i just noticed that though it has a 3megapix cam, the camera function is not that good. i believe my old Sony Ericsson k750 has a better cam and video functions (auto focus, flash, etc). the video in the mms is quite short also. thats all.... my 10 cents on the tytn cam. hope to hear your insights. thanks
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