New Hero owner here... using it 3 weeks. LOVE the phone, love the 7 pages, love the widgets, love the screen, love SenseUI, HATE the capacitive screen.
Coming form windows mobile for past 5 years, i am expending at least 5x more time and energy to navigate or browse due to this "feature".
I am certain this has been hashed out here before, but I will settle for a short answer, even one that has a laundry list if you like.
All I ask is that you please tell me it has something to add other than MULTI-TOUCH. I could care less about pinch-zoom. Initially when seen on first i-phones it had a wow factor. But very soon on WM, with OperaMini, Netfront, Skyfire, Iris and other browsers, pinch-to-zoom was rendered irrelevant, as all of these browsers provided way more efficient way to zoom in, out, and frame the area of the screen you want to look at. One tap, or two taps, or grab a square positioner (netfront) and tap.
Regardless of marketing, not only were these solutions fantastic, I alos didn't feel any sense of loss.
Now that I HAVE multi-touch on Hero, it's way beyond "yawn". It's more like, "what in the world is the advantage here. all I see is that a capacitive screen is far inferior to a resistive screen for easily 25 reasons. I listed them elsewhere on an XDA "general" forum. Typing: worse. accurate hitting a target: worse, but not just worse, horrible. Tap-hold context menus, require twice as long to press in order to instruct the OS you're indeed pressing for the purpose of holding, vs pressing just to try to make contact. Takes twice the tap impact to activate GO and other action buttons.
So I am dying to hear what is the advantage I have been given on this fantastic $500 USD phone I bought?
2nd question: I am currently using the device straight out the box, with just maybe 25-50 aps or widgets form android marketplace -- which has been fantastically smooth user experience, with perfect degrees of feedback on what access each app will give to the phone etc... very reassuring.
Has the truly amazing world of XDA-devs made some of my major usability complaints above go away, or lessen (after rooting the phone and using a custom ROM)?
Sign me: Baffled and Dismayed in San Francisco
Are there no replies here because this has been previously beaten to death? If so, wold someone please point me to the best thread discussion on this subject matter?
Thank you.
personally, i love a capacitive screen for typing.. as long as you can hit the buttons. For me i have no problem in the horizontal view, but they shouldnt have used a "qwerty" keyboard in the horizontal view, i despise it aha.
for the browsers multi touch, personally i just think its kinda cool, but as you say not very productive.
so really to me, i just love the feeling of capacitive touch screens...when they work of course!
and i know that companies "try" to put capacitive screens on as much as possible (because the iphone and ipod touch are so popular) but you can only really have it on bigger screens. The hero has pretty much the "bare minimum" screen size, and thats why we have some problems!
sorry i didnt really answer your question, just my thoughts but i guess the advantage is (was ment to be) that iphone touch screen experience, but capacitive screens work much better when the buttons have space between them (on bigger screens!)
THis was very helpful thank you. I know what you mean that the glassy smoothness is elegant and competes, I guess, with the look & feel of the Apple handheld devices. But also you seem to be answering my question, which is really the essentiual thing wanted to know:
Apparently there is ZERO added-value that capacitive brings over resistive screen than pinch-zoom... and that glossy glass feeling.
Is this correct, though? Can it really be that the primary reason for running Android on a capacitive screen is its sexiness factor in comparing to glossy look of the iphone?
I know there MUST be threads galore at XDA regarding the value of stylus for rapid composing, and more rapidly scrolling thru a long list on contacts, going into something like 2x or 5x speed flashing through the letters of the alphabet, then slowing down to land on desired contact...
The HTC Leo thread addressed this quite a bit, with both groans and raves for that WM device...
xsirhc6x said:
personally, i love a capacitive screen for typing.. as long as you can hit the buttons. For me i have no problem in the horizontal view, but they shouldnt have used a "qwerty" keyboard in the horizontal view, i despise it aha.
for the browsers multi touch, personally i just think its kinda cool, but as you say not very productive.
so really to me, i just love the feeling of capacitive touch screens...when they work of course!
and i know that companies "try" to put capacitive screens on as much as possible (because the iphone and ipod touch are so popular) but you can only really have it on bigger screens. The hero has pretty much the "bare minimum" screen size, and thats why we have some problems!
sorry i didnt really answer your question, just my thoughts but i guess the advantage is (was ment to be) that iphone touch screen experience, but capacitive screens work much better when the buttons have space between them (on bigger screens!)
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well i used apple as more of an example but i dont think i was very clear before sorry!
Although the screen is glossy and well glass, but i ment that alot of people like having that "touch" not "tap" feel. like how with capacitive you can barely touch the screen and it responds whereas resistive you have to push on the screen. so this makes companies want to use capacitive so there putting it on alot of the bigger touch screen phones
quicksite said:
Coming form windows mobile for past 5 years, i am expending at least 5x more time and energy to navigate or browse due to this "feature"
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well here is your problem. and I know exactly how you feel, having some PDA and SE P1 also with resistive touch. you'll have to get used to it, there is no other way. it looks similar, like, it's a touchscreen! but difference in technology makes it hard to shift your way of using it
same thing as forgetting clickable keyboards where you can feel edge of each key and you KNOW exactly what you have pressed... and believe me, when you get that feeling with almost microscopic P1 keyboard, first few weeks of brand new high tech on-screen typing makes you smash that phone into wall next to you... but it gets better with time
This is the correct answer. Most people prefer the touch feel of capacitive compared to the press needed for resistive screens.
xsirhc6x said:
well i used apple as more of an example but i dont think i was very clear before sorry!
Although the screen is glossy and well glass, but i ment that alot of people like having that "touch" not "tap" feel. like how with capacitive you can barely touch the screen and it responds whereas resistive you have to push on the screen. so this makes companies want to use capacitive so there putting it on alot of the bigger touch screen phones
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I moved from an Omnia i900 (WM, resistive screen) to the HTC Hero (Android, capacitive screen) and I am really enjoying the sensitivity of the Hero's screen. Everything is activated with a feather-light touch which really adds to the experience of using a touchscreen device.
On the Omnia, when I tried to halt a scrolling list with my finger, more often than not, I would end up choosing an item instead of stopping the scolling. This got irritating enough that I ended up using the scroll bars most of the time. On the Hero, the scrolling list amazingly stops when my finger makes contact without any unintended item selection. This probably has to do with the sensitivity of the capacitive screen but whatever it is, it works brilliantly.
The only time when I miss the resistive screen is if I need to accurately touch points on the screen due to poorly designed software but this can generally be avoided. Copy and paste could potentially have been a pain with a capacitive screen but the Hero has a trackball which gets the job done quite well.
I agree that multi-touch is nice to have but not critical. It is the sensitivity of the capacitive screen that really makes my day !
IMHO the capacitive screen is one of the best parts of my Hero (the other is not having to use clunky Windows Mobile anymore). It makes it so much more user friendly - and that attribute is what has made the iphone the best seller it is.
It is so much easier to scroll through my emails, texts, contacts, apps etc without accidently clicking on one and opening. And the same applies when scrolling between screens. In my last phone (HTC Touch Diamond) I was forever opening apps and windows I did not mean to when trying to scroll up down or sideways.
And scrolling long lists (I have over 200 contacts) is so easy. Just flick and let it run and then stop it with a finger. Try that on a non-capacitive screen and you are likely to open something you did not mean to open.
And, admittedly after a bit of practice, I have found the QERTY keyboard is no problem at all. It is almost as easy to use with my finger as my TD was with a stylus. And it is even easier when you are in landscape mode.
Still, each to his/her own. If, after giving it some time to get used to, you still don't like it I am sure there are plenty of alternatives out there - it always amazes me the number of different high-end phones HTC makes.
Resistive touch screen: You have to press harder to make it work better (Rinzai school)
Capacitive touch screen: You have to touch lighter to make it work better (Soto school)
Volker1 said:
Resistive touch screen: You have to press harder to make it work better (Rinzai school)
Capacitive touch screen: You have to touch lighter to make it work better (Soto school)
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Well somehow you faked me out with your zen-like branch differentiations. I clicked on Soto school first --- and I thought, therefore, that when I clicked on Rinzai, it would communicate more aggressive, harder. But it didn't!
Thus, i don't understand your analogy other than making it up in my head, with the meaning being:
Expend less energy and force, grasshopper, and all will be revealed.
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Since the day of my posting this topic, I am starting to feel a shift by gentler tapping. In some cases, yes, I am seeing a difference in better responsiveness.
But I have to admit that this is not always the case. Leading to:
Dac0908:
well here is your problem. and I know exactly how you feel, having some PDA and SE P1 also with resistive touch. you'll have to get used to it, there is no other way.
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I am starting to get it. Quick illustration: My sim card (my old one from t-mobile wing) happens to be going bad, I just discovered. So I had to swap it out from my HERO back to my WING just to see if I could make a phone call. I had not used the WING (resistive) for a while.
I immediately started making mistakes in the opposite direction. I wasn't pushing hard enough now, and was not activating my selection. So, young grasshopper may be getting the Zen of Capacitive Touch!
it looks similar, like, it's a touchscreen! but difference in technology makes it hard to shift your way of using it. same thing as forgetting clickable keyboards where you can feel edge of each key and you KNOW exactly what you have pressed... and believe me, when you get that feeling with almost microscopic P1 keyboard, first few weeks of brand new high tech on-screen typing makes you smash that phone into wall next to you... but it gets better with time
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I get your point exactly... So, sounds like the people in this forum who have had their HEROs for longer time... must think I am just whining! ha hah
Here are my conclusions thus far:
(a) lighter touch IS helping select more easily.
(b) I began to do as others have said on the soft keyboard-- aim your finger just a nudge above the keys. (because the point of tangency between finger and screen is quite a bit below the tip of the fingernail) (** me thinks they should provide a settings option called "Offset finger touch?" -- and I could select that to in fact shift all the target zones of the on-screen keys slightly below the way they display on-screen, thereby improving accuracy dramatically.)
(c) even with "getting used to" adjustments, the accuracy on the portrait-layout keyboard is still lower on those left edge and right edge keys... And thus I am finding that landscape keyboard is almost becoming required for me (and i have thin fingers!)
(d) On the WM resistive screen, I found that, when using handwriting via stylus, the system really did LEARN to compensate for the style of handwriting of an individual by going thru the alphabet to select the path of drawing each letter that best matches how I write... it absolutely improved handwriting recognition) (AND MAY AS WELL SAY: I miss that the most of all things: I loved being able to jot notes down with stylus and handwriting. I used that daily... SO I miss it)
Similarly, there is an OFFSET ANGLE adjustment on the WM input screen controls, which absolutely made a huge difference: I the natural positioning of a hand and fingers in resting mode on a flat object (a screen) has one's index finger aiming on an angle inward. Thus, the angle adjustment was a smart user interface setting, that I would guess WM came up with over time, as better recognition of this issue surfaced.
(e) I can't expect to use my capacitive screen phone in the lazy ways I used my WM phone with resistive: ie, laying down in bed and tapping out a message to send. When I try to do that with Hero, the angles of finger-contact with the screen are "off" from a standing or sitting alignment of where you hold the device and how you strike the keys. Trying to tap out a note using portrait mode, while laying in bed, and holding phone to its side (or any other awkward position) = probably 10% success rate of hitting the correct keys... Mostly due to that distance-factor between the tip of the finger -- the sight-targeting cross-hairs used for decades in pressing most things that need pressing -- and the underside of the finger, which makes the contact point lower than the tip by a somewhat predictable distance.
I still think there are some ways to go where various compensation settings could nail those issues and bring touch accuracy to much higher percentage, especially in those situations of at what angle you're holding the device in one hand, and tapping with the other hand, is "off", like laying in bed.
(f) Accelerometer: again, when laying in bed (lazy mode), the auto portrait-landscape shifting almost never occurs and i have to hold the phone parallel to the ground and flick it in order to get the layout adjustment, then continue at whatever angle it is I am holding the phone.
(g) WISHLIST #2: (after handwriting/ capacitive stylus is brought to market by HTC, etc) .. is: COntext-sensitive accelerometer.. such that it works in almost any hand-held 3d location, and a 90 degree shift = a shift layout command.
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Okay, these are my responses from a Human Factors Interface Design professional background.
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Maybe I will have to talk to "Charles", the guy in my nieghborhood in San Francisco, who just happens to be the designer of the original G1 for Google, both in form factor and user interface of android...
San Francisco can be pretty interesting in that way.. you never know who you'll bump into, just like in L.A. with movie stars!
kenkaw said:
I am really enjoying the sensitivity of the Hero's screen. Everything is activated with a feather-light touch which really adds to the experience of using a touchscreen device....On the Hero, the scrolling list amazingly stops when my finger makes contact without any unintended item selection. This probably has to do with the sensitivity of the capacitive screen but whatever it is, it works brilliantly.
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I am starting to feel this now, too. So I am shifting mental gears in my head.
Copy and paste could potentially have been a pain with a capacitive screen but the Hero has a trackball which gets the job done quite well.
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This is actually where I have the most problems.... way more than touching the screen, which I am becoming accustomed to, and now seeing what p[eople are saying about feathertouch responsiveness.
I have not been able to find any settings for trackball responsiveness, the kind you'd find on any laptop for the touchpad or mouse rate of movement -- from super fast to super slow. IS there such an adjustment?
I want to love the trackball, and I am getting better at it. But to me, this is almost just the opposite of featherweight touch on screen. My finger "wants" a more "sticky" or locked-on connection to the trackball, so i can control it better with micro-movements. For me, right now, it is so slippery as to super-slide way out of range, and shifting fields on form data entry, and , when I am using it on a slider bar such as for volume control or color mixing (chnaging color of a background), it's sensitivity is way too wild for even a light touch attempt to control it
QUESTION: I am not yet using any rooted rom from XDA... I am still experiencing the Hero out of the box. So, are there any added control settings that people at XDA have figured out and added to the custom ROMS?
thank you
I agree that multi-touch is nice to have but not critical. It is the sensitivity of the capacitive screen that really makes my day ![/QUOTE]
peterc10 said:
And scrolling long lists (I have over 200 contacts) is so easy. Just flick and let it run and then stop it with a finger.
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I a starting to feel this now. I was flicking too hard initially -- as part of my learning curve. I am now getting the hang of it and am getting the kind of control you speak of. nice!
it always amazes me the number of different high-end phones HTC makes.
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No ****. what an amazing company... and why I like how XDA-developers built up around HTC... This is a serious question: Is HTC a good stock buy? They seem like moreso than ever, with their new branding and direct-to-consumer marketing campaigns (at least in the USA, big time), ready to leap out as a huge brand in the way Samsung shot up from obscurity many years ago, into a top-5 leading brand of electrionics.
Hello.
Flyer's pen is great, but it is working only in two applications - Notes and Scribe.
I want to use it in Autodesk Sketachpad and Mapple paint.
Is there any way to make it work as usual stylus in other applications?
sadly there's no way at the moment.
htc has released the sdk for it, we can only hope that developers are willing to cater for this.
It actually can be used to select UI elements, but it seems HTC wants to restrict it to writing and drawing. In the "kid mode" app, when painting tab is selected, you can use the pen to select other tabs and tool icons. However, after clicking on a tab, pen no longer works on UI elements.
By the way, pen also works in PDF viewer, Polaris Office, Reader, Picture gallery and kid mode app. I hope more developers will discover its potential.
gibson7 said:
sadly there's no way at the moment.
htc has released the sdk for it, we can only hope that developers are willing to cater for this.
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I believe they've merely announced that they plan to.
I am not sure if I have misunderstood what the thread is about... But the pen can be used as a stylus if you turn it around and use the blunt end - it will scroll the screen and register taps/clicks etc.
Be careful though as the finish on the pen is not smooth and if used to scroll and drag it can scratch the screen and/or the screen protector.
If I have got the meaning behind the OP's thread wrong apologies, it is late (here) and I'll get me coat
Sent from my HTC Flyer P510e using XDA Premium App
Yes, the other end of the pen can be a stylus, Get a screen protector, and wrap the other side of the pen with a film protector likeinvisishield or bodyguardz.
wow ! thanks for enlighten me !!!
gibson7 said:
sadly there's no way at the moment.
htc has released the sdk for it, we can only hope that developers are willing to cater for this.
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It has not been released.
It has only been anounced. There is no telling when it will actually be released. The longer they take though the more it will hurt HTC.
I've heard of someone getting the conductive rubber tip from a capacitive stylus and fitting it over the end of the pen. That would work to protect the screen.
Maybe it's just me, but the inking in the tutorial window is very smooth and the te,t is nearly perfect and readBle. In the Notes app it is much rougher, jagged, and hard to read. Anyone else experience this?
dstrauss said:
Maybe it's just me, but the inking in the tutorial window is very smooth and the te,t is nearly perfect and readBle. In the Notes app it is much rougher, jagged, and hard to read. Anyone else experience this?
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Same comment, but for the resolution of the scribble compared to the Notes app. The second smallest calligraphy pen on black in the Notes app has some really bad fringe near the edges. These (among other reasons) is why I'm unhappy with HTC's work in designing the pen integration.
Also: try the free Quill app, which renders the pen's stroke using vector graphics so the resolution is scale independent.
TSGM said:
Same comment, ...Also: try the free Quill app, which renders the pen's stroke using vector graphics so the resolution is scale independent.
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I just tried Quill and the ink quality is much better. Sharing notes is not as transparent, but its the quality of the inking that makes this superior.
Quill is also great because it does what no other pen app does, and all should - it can ignore hand input, so you can rest your hand comfortably on the tablet surface - which makes it tons more effective than the native app, which keeps sliding out the on-screen keyboard whenever you touch the screen with your skin.
mr_pio said:
Quill is also great because it does what no other pen app does, and all should - it can ignore hand input, so you can rest your hand comfortably on the tablet surface - which makes it tons more effective than the native app, which keeps sliding out the on-screen keyboard whenever you touch the screen with your skin.
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Indeed.
To me, it's absolutely ridiculous that these issues were not considered by HTC.
mr_pio said:
Quill is also great because it does what no other pen app does, and all should - it can ignore hand input, so you can rest your hand comfortably on the tablet surface - which makes it tons more effective than the native app, which keeps sliding out the on-screen keyboard whenever you touch the screen with your skin.
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Actually, it's a function of many active-stylus systems that any touchscreen interactions are turned off when the pen is in close proximity to the screen. The Flyer works in the same way. The awkward bit is that you have to put the stylus close to the screen FIRST, which is unnatural for most people and is probably the source of almost universal confusion about these systems. You can verify the pen turns off the touchscreen by hovering your pen (it doesn't need to actually touch) something less than 1/4" over the screen, and you'll notice you can't do anything with your finger. Lift your pen a little higher and touch turns back on. Palm rejection is really only necessary if you don't have an active stylus system, or perhaps to allay the issue of most people putting their palms on their screens first before the pen has a chance to turn off touch.
bluebear13 said:
...Palm rejection is really only necessary if you don't have an active stylus system, or perhaps to allay the issue of most people putting their palms on their screens first before the pen has a chance to turn off touch.
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I've been using active digitizers for years, and frankly I like having touch turned off while writing. On my HTC, the screen is so sensitive I get a keyboard every time unless using Quill.
dstrauss said:
I've been using active digitizers for years, and frankly I like having touch turned off while writing. On my HTC, the screen is so sensitive I get a keyboard every time unless using Quill.
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That's what bluebear's post was saying. When the pen is near the screen, touch is deactivated.
HTC could improve on this by allowing the user to adjust the time the screen returns to recognizing touch. Since I print, an increased delay would keep the keyboard from popping up. My current workaround is to touch the spiral bound portion of the screen which doesn't activate the keyboard.
Hi, sorry if this has allready been asked but I couldn't find it, so I would like to know what is the best capacitive stylus to be used with this phone, I would like one with a slim tip so I can write more natural with the big tip iphone stylus types, and I am asking what is the best stylus, or at least in your opinion so don't come here just to say things like "you should not use a stylus with your phone" and "there is no need of such a thing" cause I know I need one and I know why I need one, so if you just want to tell me I don't need one just don't even answer, thank you for any good answer and sorry for makeing this post look like I am angry, but now 3 days I made such a thread on an other forum and I only got answers that I don't need one and even after I sayd why I need one I keept geting those kinds of answers so in the end I asked for the thread to be closed because i got over 10 pages of answers and all of them telling me that I don't need one, but no one can know what I need, so really I don't want to get such answers (again).
Unfortunately, there's no thin-tipped stylus that will work on our screens. The way the capacitive screen detects a touch is when a certain area of the screen is touched, so if you're using a thin device to contact, Android won't register it as a touch. That's why all the styluses you see on the market are big, fat, rounded things; they need enough surface area to mimic a finger touch.
Edit: I should clarify, by thin-tipped I mean pen-like. You might be able to find something with a tip around 4-5mm that will work.
o_O said:
Unfortunately, there's no thin-tipped stylus that will work on our screens. The way the capacitive screen detects a touch is when a certain area of the screen is touched, so if you're using a thin device to contact, Android won't register it as a touch. That's why all the styluses you see on the market are big, fat, rounded things; they need enough surface area to mimic a finger touch.
Edit: I should clarify, by thin-tipped I mean pen-like. You might be able to find something with a tip around 4-5mm that will work.
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Thank you, I have allmostly decided what to buy (a-case or wacom bamboo) because I can't find any adonit jot stylus for sale (even second hand) in my country (I would have bought the adonit jot touch one) but now my other question would be: Is there any app I can download that can set gestures and I can put a shortcut to the activate/deactivate service activity in the aokp custom toggle, I would like to use gestures (others than the one I allready use on LMT) only when I use my stylus and as there is no way for the phone to detect if it's a stylus or a hand that touches it I would be satisfied with just having to click a toggle in my statusbar when I start using my stylus and when I stop, also is there any app that can make it so that wehn it's service is running it would make the phone only register one touch point and ignore all other points where the screen is touched and only detecting that one touch, also again thank you to anyone that gives me an answer?