Well I said when I had the time I would write a review comparing the HTC Touch HD and Toshiba TG01. I got the TG01 as an insurance replacement for the HD, so was not a purchasing choice, but I liked the sound of the spec and agreed to the swap (they had no HDs in stock!). Sorry the review's not exactly comprehensive and is a bit all over the place, but is an immediate reaction having owned the TG01 for a couple of weeks and just a list of things which spring to mind!
The Toshiba is big. If you're used to bigger smartphones (Which I was with the HD) then it will still feel big. It's not thick though, it's decidedly thinner than the HD (slim enough to slip through the gaps in my decking it seems... but I caught it in time!), and does slip into an average trouser pocket without poking too much from the top. However, its sheer size makes it hard to use with one hand. The screen is a great size though, and is lovely and clear. It has a built in light sensor also to help with battery life so you may think the screen's a bit dull to start with - go outside and try again or switch the option off and you'll see how vibrant it is.
The hard buttons are laid out slightly differently and aren't too bad - with the HD I did suffer from turning on the phone by accident in my pocket quite often as that button is located on the top of the phone. On the Toshiba, it's on the side and it hasn't activated itself yet. The HD had touch sensitive buttons (as does the TG01) on the screen side at the bottom for 'Home' and 'Back', which are useful... though they don't give the reassuring 'mini vibration' feedback that you got with the HD - I'm guessing that could be rectified in software though.
Battery life - the TG01, quite frankly, sucks in this department. It goes down 3 bars during an average day of a few texts and small amount of calls, maybe a bit of data and needs charging each night. I also think when the charge cycle finishes, it fails to provide power to the phone through the adapter. I could be wrong, but when I charged it at 10pm one night, by 11am the next day it decided it had run out of battery already. The HD could go at least two days with the same amount of use.
The camera on the TG01, although only 3MP (compared to the HD's 5MP) feels less jerky, and it appears better quality than the HD, despite the max resolution. The autofocus works well, though there is a considerable gap between the shutter press and the picture being taken - I'd say almost a full second. The HD was quicker, but not considerably so. Video on the TG01 can be taken at 640x480 and at 30fps - something the HD would really struggle with. And it plays back well, I'm actually impressed with that! I can imagine the next generation will all be 720p, which is exciting.
The software makes all the difference between the phones. I shudder to think how awful the TG01 would have been with the original Windows Mobile 6.1 OS running. Thankfully the one I have is running 6.5 and makes things a little nicer. However, HTC really have trumped this phone with their Touchflow system which is so intuitive and nice to use... in comparison to the basic MS offerings. The keyboard on the TG01 (though made 'better' by Toshiba) is hard to use... easier than the built in Windows one, but still makes producing texts and emails a slow arduous chore. Somehow the HTC one was just better - probably to do with the differences in the type of touchscreen they use (I believe this one is resistive and the HD was capacitive... correct me if I'm wrong). I'm not a fan of predictive text but the TG01 does have it and it seems pretty good.
My TG01 is Orange branded, but it's just a case of switching the Today screen theme to Windows Default to get rid of their horrible attempt... then you get the usual WM6.5 options, which scroll smoothly up and down, and left and right... putting all that processor power to good use. The start menu is better than before - treating everything like 'Apps'... so you can move your most used ones to the top and have everything you want within a couple of clicks, which is good.
The TG01 feels faster and indeed it should, given the 1GHz processor which is a step up from the HD's older, slower one. Running Slingplayer is nice and zippy, though still a little choppy but you can't have everything. It's certainly more responsive flicking through channels and suchlike.
I'd say use Opera for your web browser, not IE because it's definitely suited to this phone - lovely to use with a great start screen for 9 of your favourite websites... and runs so quickly and smoothly, I don't think the HD could cope as well.
The Gyroscope is a little funky on the TG01. Many times I have to shake it up and down to get it to go into portrait mode having picked it up. Although I have calibrated it to try and fix it, quite often it thinks I want to see things sideways when I don't. A gentle twist 90 degrees and back normally fixes it but I can't help shake it when it doesn't! Never had that problem with the HD - but I'm not sure if this is WM6.5 creating problems that didn't exist in the Touchflow environment on top of 6.1.
I still can't get a 'Comm Manager' which rivals that on the HD, on the TG01. All I want to do is momentarily turn off the data connection - not disable it permanently or anything, and the HD had that really easily accessible. The TG01, as mentioned previously, just has 'Phone', 'Bluetooth' and 'Wifi'... turning off 'Phone' is the only way to stop the data connection. This I want to do in the situation where I'm on Wifi but for some reason the phone continues to use the 3G connection... so is annoying!
Next, until I found an option in the TG01 to disable the screen from coming on whenever it was touched, I was having a nightmare in phone calls with blips and beeps in my ear... presumably my cheek trying to go through my calendar etc. That really should have been off by default. It still happens too, even with the option off, when I cradle the phone between my neck and ear... so now I have to hold it, and be careful not to press the side button with my hand too!
The sound quality of phone calls on the TG01 is pretty bad in my ear compared to the HD - anything 'loud' - even with the speaker turned down - gets distorted. But it's useable.
Now to my current bugbear. The TG01 can't travel at speed and do anything useful. I'm writing this on a train, in Notepad. I have taken this particular train journey (Sheffield to London St Pancras and back) several times with the HD and enjoyed being able to use the internet throughout most of the journey. The TG01 can't even hold onto a network at speed for more than a few seconds at best, so tethering is out of the question and, yesterday, trying to call my bank took 18 attempts to get to the bit where I could hear my balance, I'm not joking. It is bluntly speaking, rubbish.
Unless Orange have moved every mast along the way so they're hardly ever in range, I'm putting this one down to the phone. I mean, we were still in North London at the start of this journey when it lost the signal and it hasn't regained it yet. I'm hoping to upload this review when we're stood still in Leicester, but even then it takes forever for the phone to find the network...
So... yes, you can imagine I'm overall less than impressed with the TG01.
But then it is a cheaper phone, and it is definitely a case of "If you never had an HD, you'd never know". Because overall, it's a good, and fairly amazing piece of technology. But I'd take back an HD tomorrow if offered I'm afraid.
I've decided now I'm going to the dark side anyway and waiting for the launch of the iPhone 4/HD, sorry to say!
Hope this was useful anyway. Any questions, I'll be pleased to answer!
patc said:
Well I said when I had the time I would write a review comparing the HTC Touch HD and Toshiba TG01. I got the TG01 as an insurance replacement for the HD, so was not a purchasing choice, but I liked the sound of the spec and agreed to the swap (they had no HDs in stock!). Sorry the review's not exactly comprehensive and is a bit all over the place, but is an immediate reaction having owned the TG01 for a couple of weeks and just a list of things which spring to mind!
The Toshiba is big. If you're used to bigger smartphones (Which I was with the HD) then it will still feel big. It's not thick though, it's decidedly thinner than the HD (slim enough to slip through the gaps in my decking it seems... but I caught it in time!), and does slip into an average trouser pocket without poking too much from the top. However, its sheer size makes it hard to use with one hand. The screen is a great size though, and is lovely and clear. It has a built in light sensor also to help with battery life so you may think the screen's a bit dull to start with - go outside and try again or switch the option off and you'll see how vibrant it is.
The hard buttons are laid out slightly differently and aren't too bad - with the HD I did suffer from turning on the phone by accident in my pocket quite often as that button is located on the top of the phone. On the Toshiba, it's on the side and it hasn't activated itself yet. The HD had touch sensitive buttons (as does the TG01) on the screen side at the bottom for 'Home' and 'Back', which are useful... though they don't give the reassuring 'mini vibration' feedback that you got with the HD - I'm guessing that could be rectified in software though.
Battery life - the TG01, quite frankly, sucks in this department. It goes down 3 bars during an average day of a few texts and small amount of calls, maybe a bit of data and needs charging each night. I also think when the charge cycle finishes, it fails to provide power to the phone through the adapter. I could be wrong, but when I charged it at 10pm one night, by 11am the next day it decided it had run out of battery already. The HD could go at least two days with the same amount of use.
The camera on the TG01, although only 3MP (compared to the HD's 5MP) feels less jerky, and it appears better quality than the HD, despite the max resolution. The autofocus works well, though there is a considerable gap between the shutter press and the picture being taken - I'd say almost a full second. The HD was quicker, but not considerably so. Video on the TG01 can be taken at 640x480 and at 30fps - something the HD would really struggle with. And it plays back well, I'm actually impressed with that! I can imagine the next generation will all be 720p, which is exciting.
The software makes all the difference between the phones. I shudder to think how awful the TG01 would have been with the original Windows Mobile 6.1 OS running. Thankfully the one I have is running 6.5 and makes things a little nicer. However, HTC really have trumped this phone with their Touchflow system which is so intuitive and nice to use... in comparison to the basic MS offerings. The keyboard on the TG01 (though made 'better' by Toshiba) is hard to use... easier than the built in Windows one, but still makes producing texts and emails a slow arduous chore. Somehow the HTC one was just better - probably to do with the differences in the type of touchscreen they use (I believe this one is resistive and the HD was capacitive... correct me if I'm wrong). I'm not a fan of predictive text but the TG01 does have it and it seems pretty good.
My TG01 is Orange branded, but it's just a case of switching the Today screen theme to Windows Default to get rid of their horrible attempt... then you get the usual WM6.5 options, which scroll smoothly up and down, and left and right... putting all that processor power to good use. The start menu is better than before - treating everything like 'Apps'... so you can move your most used ones to the top and have everything you want within a couple of clicks, which is good.
The TG01 feels faster and indeed it should, given the 1GHz processor which is a step up from the HD's older, slower one. Running Slingplayer is nice and zippy, though still a little choppy but you can't have everything. It's certainly more responsive flicking through channels and suchlike.
I'd say use Opera for your web browser, not IE because it's definitely suited to this phone - lovely to use with a great start screen for 9 of your favourite websites... and runs so quickly and smoothly, I don't think the HD could cope as well.
The Gyroscope is a little funky on the TG01. Many times I have to shake it up and down to get it to go into portrait mode having picked it up. Although I have calibrated it to try and fix it, quite often it thinks I want to see things sideways when I don't. A gentle twist 90 degrees and back normally fixes it but I can't help shake it when it doesn't! Never had that problem with the HD - but I'm not sure if this is WM6.5 creating problems that didn't exist in the Touchflow environment on top of 6.1.
I still can't get a 'Comm Manager' which rivals that on the HD, on the TG01. All I want to do is momentarily turn off the data connection - not disable it permanently or anything, and the HD had that really easily accessible. The TG01, as mentioned previously, just has 'Phone', 'Bluetooth' and 'Wifi'... turning off 'Phone' is the only way to stop the data connection. This I want to do in the situation where I'm on Wifi but for some reason the phone continues to use the 3G connection... so is annoying!
Next, until I found an option in the TG01 to disable the screen from coming on whenever it was touched, I was having a nightmare in phone calls with blips and beeps in my ear... presumably my cheek trying to go through my calendar etc. That really should have been off by default. It still happens too, even with the option off, when I cradle the phone between my neck and ear... so now I have to hold it, and be careful not to press the side button with my hand too!
The sound quality of phone calls on the TG01 is pretty bad in my ear compared to the HD - anything 'loud' - even with the speaker turned down - gets distorted. But it's useable.
Now to my current bugbear. The TG01 can't travel at speed and do anything useful. I'm writing this on a train, in Notepad. I have taken this particular train journey (Sheffield to London St Pancras and back) several times with the HD and enjoyed being able to use the internet throughout most of the journey. The TG01 can't even hold onto a network at speed for more than a few seconds at best, so tethering is out of the question and, yesterday, trying to call my bank took 18 attempts to get to the bit where I could hear my balance, I'm not joking. It is bluntly speaking, rubbish.
Unless Orange have moved every mast along the way so they're hardly ever in range, I'm putting this one down to the phone. I mean, we were still in North London at the start of this journey when it lost the signal and it hasn't regained it yet. I'm hoping to upload this review when we're stood still in Leicester, but even then it takes forever for the phone to find the network...
So... yes, you can imagine I'm overall less than impressed with the TG01.
But then it is a cheaper phone, and it is definitely a case of "If you never had an HD, you'd never know". Because overall, it's a good, and fairly amazing piece of technology. But I'd take back an HD tomorrow if offered I'm afraid.
I've decided now I'm going to the dark side anyway and waiting for the launch of the iPhone 4/HD, sorry to say!
Hope this was useful anyway. Any questions, I'll be pleased to answer!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nice post!!
Great comparison, however to correct you, they are both resistive touchscreen but somehow the HD is slightly more sensitive.
You seem dissapointed by the device. I highly recommend installing a HTC Sense custom rom. It will really make it superior much better than the HD and almost in the same league as the newer HD2!
Also i have also somehow found the Toshiba Keyboard to be less responsive aswell. If you are still use to the HTC Touch HD keyboard, search for HTC Ezinput 1.5 WVGA on one of XDA developers threads. Or you can try the new HTC Keyboard 2.0/2.1 found on newer HTC devices.
Anyway, i recommend flashing a HTC Sense Debranded custom ROM
Best of luck
Yesterday, I thethered the flyer that was showed in a mall, and sounds great, the screen seems really brightly( but I look forward to see some outdoor review on the tube). So I tryed to surf on the web a little, and I have to say that I am not impressed at all. I tryed to see different pages butif we take as index for instance wikipedia, on the page "bottiglia" in Italian, both on my hd2 and the flyer I did not notice a big difference outside the different scale.. I mean on hd2 I could not read the entire page in landscape mode, but also with flyer I have to struggle a little because (maybe it is banal) the charachter are quite little. So I had to double click as I do usual and text became wrapped reading really well, but.... if I have to wrap the text it look outstanding also on my hd2! I tryed also on the ipad2 and I have to say that despite all I feel some delusion as well, despite the text is definetely more reliable.But I would predict that also on the ipad2 after a couple of hour I will surf I will feel quite tired I am quite sure of this. So I think that maybe there will be soon a new 8 inches generation that eliminating the black frame of the cover of the screen, could have more space..hey Company this could be the killer system!
I would like to recommend to the browsers to put a soft button on the screen so that one can scroll immediately without moving the finger.
despite all I think I will buy flyer if I will do phone call, the battery will last all the day, and the price will go a little down, otherwise I will wait, with htc hd2 and 2 batteries and sony prs650 I can survive as well as rambo in the forest
As for the Flyer/iPad comparison, it really matters if you have the 3" more on a screen. It is definitely something different, so text is more readable. You can't expect hugh size on a small screen .
Apart from that, I noticed that Android Firefox does not feel so gentle alongside links - iPad's Safari seems to put a bit of padding around each link, so you can click on it more easily, while I really need to zoom to 100% to navigate here for example. But this is another story ...
I really missed my tanned browsing so I switched to Dolphin HD. The page regulate when zoomed-in (pinch or double-tapped) looks great. So that may be function of the browser setting of the device in the store.
Zenonia 4 is out with much improved graphics from 1-3
Its free and plays better then previous ones
http://goo.gl/wwJaV
game isnt the cause for the reboot, its thanks to the .14 firmware
idunno, gameplay is kind of annoying for me, ranged attacks mean you have to be lined up with the mob your attacking... items that fall on the ground dissapear too soon IMO, overall i dont think im going to be putting a lot of time into this game.
I played the 2nd one way back when I had a crappy phone with a small screen and I wished I had a better device. I was looking forward to playing this new one on the Prime, so I checked it out. First time I died I saw the screen where you can either lose gold, xp, equipment durability to revive or pay for some cash item...
NOPE.
uninstalled.
Great graphics and the gameplay speed is awesome, but the battle controls are annoying. I keep accidentally hitting the home icon trying to run downwards.
BUYMECAR said:
Great graphics and the gameplay speed is awesome, but the battle controls are annoying. I keep accidentally hitting the home icon trying to run downwards.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
That happens to me on almost any game with fixed controls
zurui said:
I played the 2nd one way back when I had a crappy phone with a small screen and I wished I had a better device. I was looking forward to playing this new one on the Prime, so I checked it out. First time I died I saw the screen where you can either lose gold, xp, equipment durability to revive or pay for some cash item...
NOPE.
uninstalled.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've been playing it on my DX for convenience. The death system is the same as in Zenonia 3, and it isn't a huge problem, although it's a bit annoying. You can get by without paying anything for the game, but I ended up putting a bit down to make my bags bigger. Worthwhile in my mind for a well made game I"ll probably replay at some point.
I have a Z3 Tablet Compact that I preordered. So I have been using it since it was launched.
The tablet is very good in almost every way. The software is very smooth, the design is nice and it's impressively thin.
I also very much appreciate the battery life. With normal usage I get about 7-8 hours of screen on time.
BUT, the digitizer is driving me mad. Too often it just doesn't know when I want to "click" something and when I'm just trying to scroll.
I frequently click something and it just doesn't record it. So I click it again, no big deal. It's the scrolling that's really getting to me.
If I, for instance, try to browse the frontpage of The Guardians mobile site, I find myself accidentally clicking on about four different links before I get to the bottom of the page.
Because of this I have to be extremely careful and try to use the absolute edge of the page for scrolling.
Today I visited a site where I seriously couldn't get past one section of the page. It consisted of large pictures and text covering the full width of the page. These were all links. Every time I tried to scroll it assumed I wanted to click on the picture. I had to give up. That really annoyed me.
Sites or apps with lots of videos grouped together (Youtube for instance) have the same problem.
I have tried changing the value for "Touch & Hold Delay" under Settings>Accessibility as someone suggested on another site. This did not help.
Does your tablets have this issue? Should I demand that they replace it?
Is there maybe an app that you can use to alter the sensitivity of the touch input?
I have or have owned several other android devices and none of them suffer from this problem.
Patte352 said:
I have a Z3 Tablet Compact that I preordered. So I have been using it since it was launched.
The tablet is very good in almost every way. The software is very smooth, the design is nice and it's impressively thin.
I also very much appreciate the battery life. With normal usage I get about 7-8 hours of screen on time.
BUT, the digitizer is driving me mad. Too often it just doesn't know when I want to "click" something and when I'm just trying to scroll.
I frequently click something and it just doesn't record it. So I click it again, no big deal. It's the scrolling that's really getting to me.
If I, for instance, try to browse the frontpage of The Guardians mobile site, I find myself accidentally clicking on about four different links before I get to the bottom of the page.
Because of this I have to be extremely careful and try to use the absolute edge of the page for scrolling.
Today I visited a site where I seriously couldn't get past one section of the page. It consisted of large pictures and text covering the full width of the page. These were all links. Every time I tried to scroll it assumed I wanted to click on the picture. I had to give up. That really annoyed me.
Sites or apps with lots of videos grouped together (Youtube for instance) have the same problem.
I have tried changing the value for "Touch & Hold Delay" under Settings>Accessibility as someone suggested on another site. This did not help.
Does your tablets have this issue? Should I demand that they replace it?
Is there maybe an app that you can use to alter the sensitivity of the touch input?
I have or have owned several other android devices and none of them suffer from this problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
yeah... i used to have it with the Z Ultra. It was much worse than this though, this is just slightly annoying.
Patte352 said:
Does your tablets have this issue? Should I demand that they replace it?
Is there maybe an app that you can use to alter the sensitivity of the touch input?
I have or have owned several other android devices and none of them suffer from this problem.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've got this too. What I ended up doing was going into Settings -> Accessibility -> Touch & Hold delay and setting it to medium. Still happens, but nowhere as frequently as it used to (and yes, the Guardian app was driving me nuts too).
Hi guys,
One question I would like to ask as I haven't seen any report on this I think at least in here.
I would like to install games to play them on the surface duo. Being able to play full screen (so with game spanned on both displays) is really a nice thought.
BUT : if game is developed to be played on a single display device in PORTRAIT mode, it is impossible to play it on the Surface at least here. Because it does not "rotate" rotate the right way. So I am always with the game facing downwards instead of upwards...
Here are 2 games I tried that gave the same result :
- Cody Cross
- Rogue Land
With all other problems (one display randomly deciding to shut down : poor battery life ; weakness around USB-C connector ; lack of launcher to use decently...) makes it really too much.
I know this is not a gaming phone, but still. Not being intended to be and not being able to are 2 different things I think.
Regards.