My HTC HD2 Windows Phone

Wow, first time I get to know about this phone was from the internet, still not available in the market yet, many were talking about it, its specification really attracts many attentions. 4.3” capacitive touch screen; 1GHz Snapdragon™ processor; WM 6.5 Professional OS; Slim at 11mm thick, with GPS, FM Radio, Camera with flash... seems like perfect for those like to use Windows Phone, at least it is for me.

Can’t resist after seeing, touched and played with it, it has all and more function than my ASUS P320, much better of course, so I bought it the next day and had been using it for more than a month.

Detail information of HTC HD2 at:
http://www.htc.com/sea/product/hd2/overview.html
http://www.gsmarena.com/htc_hd2-2957.php

Initially there are few bugs then HTC release its update fixes, available at HTC HD2 Support:
http://www.htc.com/sea/supportdownloadlist.aspx?p_id=297&act=sd&cat=all

Mine had upgraded to the latest ROM version 1.66 a week ago, the phone functioning very good so far, I like this phone everyday and here are my find out about this Windows Phone:

Exterior:
Its built quality is very good with solid material used, special rubber coating from the edges to top and bottom portion of the back; battery cover is made of metal, it aligns properly and quite easy to open and close. It feels quite solid and good to hold in your hand.

There is a very small caving at upper right portion from the edge at screen, the metal button bar at the bottom also a bit shaky.

Screen:
The first time Windows Phone uses a capacitive touch screen, use finger input like in iPhone, the WM 6.5 still not polished well enough, many buttons in its usual applications still too tiny for selection.

The screen seems a bit too sensitive, at first I have difficulties in input and selection, after a while and days of using with XT9, my input improved with less error.

The photo looks gorgeous in HD2, same to all other user interface graphics as well; it produces detail, bright and clear images.

Screen is made of hardened glass, so I didn’t use any screen protector, it reflects like mirror, leave many finger prints and marks easily, have to clean it with tissues quite often if you can’t bear with it.

WM 6.5 and HTC Sense:
This is the first time I bought a HTC phone, first thing I do is charging the battery for 8 hours, after charging, I slowly explore the HTC Sense and found out the way to set it back to the WM 6.1 Today menu:
Settings/ Menu/ All Settings/ Today, this will bring you to the old WM6.1 Today settings…

I use the HTC Sense as Today menu; it is HTC Today UI which integrated very well in the HD2 WM 6.5. When switch to non HTC Sense and non Windows Default Today, with choice of Items, the Messaging only shows emails, it does not include SMS messages, no Profile selection as well, and it can’t show battery status together with time at the top for every program..., I wish the next WM 6.5.3 has this included…

Personally, I wish HTC Sense could also reduce the space taken by the clock at Today, so as to increase the font size for other info and show more Calendar info, like upcoming appointments, allow more Quick Links (4x4 or 4x5) and more Home Screen Tabs for us…

Internet:
Mobile IE and Opera Mobile 9.7 web browser are both included, I prefer to use Opera Mobile than IE, as in Opera you can zoom in and zoom out to explore website much easier by finger pinch, just like in iPhone….

With so many applications that need internet data connection, mobile broadband internet subscription from telecom operator really a necessity, especially when you surf internet, use YouTube, Facebook, Google Map etc… with 3G or HSPA high speed internet connection.

Multimedia:
With this 1 GHz processor speed, watching higher quality video is not a problem, I usually watch my favorite mpg videos that transferred from my old devices by free Pocket TV player. The video quality taken from camera in mp4 are good enough and pleasant to watch by Windows Media player.

5 MP Camera with dual LED flash produces good enough picture quality, the LED lights is dazzlingly bright, sure will get complain from the one facing the camera. Another thing is the camera surrounding got sharp edges and it is really sharp.

Sound from speaker quite good and clear enough, if not there is 3.5mm headphone jack for music lover with their preferable headphone. I hardly listen to music in phone, not very used to the inbuilt Music interface…

FM Radio quite clear enough, can preset many stations, need to plug in the headphone as antenna, quite a letdown, because even my S$189 Sony ICD-UX200F/P Voice recorder has a choice between system speaker or headphone as sound output, so it should use the phone antenna instead.
Sony ICD-UX200F/P Voice Recorder:
http://www.sony.com.sg/product/icd-ux200f

Streaming Media, still do not know how this works…

Battery:
The capacity of the battery pack is 1230 mAh, it will not last for a day if you use it heavily. Will buy another battery next time, now use original car charger, every morning I charge the phone during my journey to work, it takes about 20 over minutes to charge the battery for another 20 + %. Just recently, HTC has its extended battery pack for those need longer hour’s usage…

GPS:
Install Agis NAVFone (2009 Version: 2.2.9217) in it for my navigation use (with car charger of course), it works well, just that this version is design for use in resistive touch screen, most of the selection buttons are small, but still manageable. The GPS connection is faster than my ASUS P320, sometime it connects instantly like my Garmin nuvi 265W. There is a QuickGPS to update the latest satellite data to speed up the time for determining the GPS position.

SAR Information:
The values of SAR are 0.631 w/kg @ 10g (Head) 0.725 w/kg @ 10g (Body), nearly the same as my ASUS P320, I’ll feel uncomfortable to use any phone with higher SAR value.

The antenna of this phone is located at the back bottom rubber coating portion, the manual recommended that no part of the human body be allowed to come too close to the antenna during operation of the equipment….

Pleasant Surprises:
The speaker volume for system and phone ring can adjust together or separately, much conveniently now by pressing the volume button, very good for me as I sometime forgot to adjust back the ring volume and miss incoming calls.

Handwriting in Chinese input, very useful to write Chinese words and it works very well, thus I do not need to install my CE-Star.

WorldCard Mobile for you to take name card photo and translate the info into your Contact, very good way to add your contacts with name card and it is accurate enough.

RSS Hub is user friendly with search function for RSS Channels. I use this to read zaobao 即时报道 (http://realtime.zaobao.com/news.xml) and when you need further detail, just click the headline, it will then link to web browser and load that webpage.

In the phone dialer slide down sub menu, there is a Note for you to records voice and write or sketch down notes, I have not actually try whether it can record the conversation or not…

Digital Compass, should be quite useful when the need arise. Whenever it shows interference, just need to move your phone in figure 8 to start it.

Very nice animated Weather info and the next four days weather forecast, you can select many cities, I set my location and Singapore only to cut down update time.

Windows Marketplace, a place to add application programs, some are free, some need to buy. I have not bought any software thru its VISA payment, not much interesting stuff there. I down loaded a few free one before, but didn’t do it after I upgraded to the new ROM, will monitor what it have in future…

Google Map, very great and useful to surf global maps, no worry anymore if you can’t find your way in any area of the world where there is internet connection. It would be very interesting to see Google Navigator releases the Windows Mobile version, which I hope so. Google Navigator only available for Google Phone (Android platform) currently. http://www.google.com/mobile/navigation/#p=default

Facebook, besides posting your thoughts, one thing interesting is you can take pictures and upload them instantly from your phone albums; I tried uploaded 50 pictures at one time after taken the pictures from the phone camera.

YouTube, I enjoy watching many videos with 3G or higher (HSPA) speed internet connection.

MP3 Trimmer, useful to trim your mp3 file.

Footprints, I’m quite new to this, haven’t try out yet, guess it will link to GPS for you to relocate the place from the photo taken; Stocks, is the stock share monitoring app software I guess, haven’t try this, but could be quite useful for playing share in the stock market; Twitter, haven’t tried before…

Will post more the next time, there are more talk about this Windows Phone at the following websites:
Singapore Mobinauts:
http://www.mobinauts.com/forum/16-windows-mobile-professional/
Taiwan Mobile01:
http://www.mobile01.com/topiclist.php?f=224

08/02/2010:
The user guide is availale at:
http://www.htc.com/sea/userguide.aspx?p_id=297

Tested the phone dialer slide down sub menu’s Note, able to record phone conversation, should be meant for recoding important messages a short period of time only…

Internet Sharing and WiFi Router, I can’t get the WiFi Router set up for my Notebook PC and haven’t tried for others device as well…; but connect the phone to PC by Micro USB, the Internet Sharing works well.

Found a wonderful free software to watch TV stations around the world, TVUMobile, info from Taiwan Mobile01: http://www.mobile01.com/topicdetail.php?f=224&t=1379257&last=17440692

TVUMobile: http://pages.tvunetworks.com/cn/labs/mobile.html
It comes with TCPMP and TVUMobile after unzip, this TCPMP seems can not open AVI, DiVX, mpg files by itself, it hangs, I need to soft reset a few times.

To watch TV, switch on data connection first, then press the TVUMobile, must wait for a while for it to launch, there will be a list of channels come out, either you key in the TV channel number or select from the list, then press the little Play button, it will buffering for 50% then launch the TCPMP player for the channel. It is delayed about 1 minute from the real TV program; it is, because I compared the Channel Newsasia at the same time from my home TV.

Here are some channels:
Singapore TV:
150 Channel Newsasia
Can’t find Channel U, 5 and 8 from the list….
Others:
10023 HuNan TV
10039 Zhejiang TV
10093 CCTV News
10095 中天新闻
10097 tvbs 新闻
10098 tvbs
10100 中天综合
10102 星空
10105 中天娛乐
10106 中天新闻
10109 tvb8
10112 Hollywood Movie
10103 Phoenix 凤凰
10110 GuangDong TV
10113 East TV 东方卫视
10117 CTV 中视
69181 BBC NEWS
82149 香港翡翠台
82151 高清翡翠台
82152 香港明珠台
82153 翡翠新闻台

09/02/2010:
Called AAAs Com Solution Pte Ltd at Funan DigitaLife Mall this afternoon, they have the stock for the HTC HD2 PO S511 Flip Case, so I went down and bought it. Now with this one at least the phone can be accessed easily by just flip down the front cover, I don’t need to worry my HD2 will drop when I took it out from the come with HTC HD2 PO S510 Pouch Case.

This leather flip case let the HD2 slides in and holds it firmly; the quality of it makes the HD2 looks more elegance. I just hope that the two leather straps that hold the front flip down cover and the phone holder base would not torn due to frequent open and close operation.

17/02/2010:
Found a small scratch on the screen, near the slide to unlock button, although it disappeared after some effort of rubbing with microfiber cloth, I decided to put screen protector for it. Called doml to check the stock and went down to get it done. It has a small piece of SP for camera lens as well, the staff does it quite well, and screens are properly aligned.
When I slide the phone in to the flip case, the left grip causes the screen edge deformed; there is a trace of screen peeling at that portion. Smoothen the peel portion and tried a few times, it still the same, so decided to wait a few days for the screen to settle down then try again…
Here are the Martin Fields Overlay Plus Screen Protectors specifications:
http://www.doml.com.sg/productdec.asp?pid=5177&model=HTC_HD2&modeln=HD2

16/03/2010:
After two days without the S511 flip case, I believe the SP had settled down, so put in the phone, the left grip didn’t cause the screen edge to peel off anymore, use the HD2 with flip case happily every day since then.
Bought one original battery for spare in case battery runs low during the day.
Finally had a chance to test the Skype (Version 3.0), called to Malaysia successfully, quite clear enough with very little distortion.