Surprise! HTC Doesn't Agree With Apple Regarding Suit

HTC has finally spoken out regarding the pending lawsuit Apple (s aapl) launched against the smartphone maker regarding its use of multi-touch as an interface navigation mechanism, and around 20 other technologies. It should surprise absolutely no one that the Taiwanese company doesn’t see eye-to-eye with the iPhone maker regarding the appropriateness of its use of the tech.

HTC CEO Peter Chou released a statement Wednesday addressing the recently filed suit directly. According to Chou, as quoted by InformationWeek, “HTC disagrees with Apple’s actions and will fully defend itself.” HTC’s stance, like that of Apple, is that it respects and values healthy competition and innovation. Of course, that shared premise leads both companies to quite different conclusions.

Chou elaborates HTC’s position further in the official statement:

HTC strongly advocates intellectual property protection and will continue to respect other innovators and their technologies as we have always done, but we will continue to embrace competition through our own innovation as a healthy way for consumers to get the best mobile experience possible.

Apple is no stranger to suits from other companies, and it certainly hasn’t shied away from pursuing legal action itself in the past. A suit against Nokia (s nok) along similar lines is still ongoing. HTC shouldn’t be surprised about the move, either, considering the fact that multi-touch wasn’t officially introduced as a launch feature on the Nexus One, even though the hardware supported it. It was added later by Google (s goog) to the device via a software update. Sure seems like an attempt to dodge the ire of multi-touch’s proclaimed originator to me.

The Nexus One is almost certainly the catalyst for this suit, and with good reason. Despite the fact that the device itself isn’t selling anywhere near at the level of the iPhone, recent evidence suggests that the phone has raised the profile of Android, which seems to be positioning itself to make a serious bid on Apple’s smartphone market dominance. If Apple is ever to strip Google of some of that momentum, the time to do so is now.

But are the claims Apple is making valid, or is it just an attempt to strike down any and all competition before the consumer gets a chance to choose? I’m no legal expert, but it seems to me that Apple is going after some very basic concepts in its legal claims, ones without which the concept of a modern smartphone would be untenable. I’m all for giving credit where credit is due, but if we’re to see cell tech progress, it has to be at the behest of the free market, and that means not unduly placing restrictions on Apple’s competitors.

[Via http://theappleblog.com]

HTC Desire vs Apple iPhone 3GS vs Nokia N900

This infallibly has to be the battle of the titans in the phone globe? FoneHome.co.uk have posted an article where one of their stay has compared all three phones.

Most articles I’ve seen like this are normally biased towards a strict manufacturer or phone but I’d say that this is perfectly a fair comparison.

Read on for a few snippets:

In interface provisions
The iPhone famously has the easiest smartphone interface in the real estate, but we’re often left hankering after more customisation, which is offered by Maemo and Android.

Both give you control over a handful of home screens, what one. you can populate with all sorts of neat little shortcuts and widgets. The sheer flexibility of Android wins out for us though, with so a great deal of additional potential offered in app form.

Desktop replacement apps let you completely make some ~ in. the way your phone works – you can even design your acknowledge interface with Sweeter Home. We’re not quite that ambitious, except it wins the HTC Desire lots of points.
Winner – HTC Desire

For suffusion browsing
There’s fierce sword clashing going on here. The Apple iPhone offers a imaginary control interface, with pinch zooming still feeling better than anywhere otherwise here. Gliding around web sites is a dream, and the practical keyboard gets pretty close to a full Qwerty for typing in those textile fabric addresses. There’s one major boo-boo though – no flash favor.

The Nokia N900 boasts full flash, which is still a scarcity on mobile devices, but because of its resistive touchscreen, browsing is quite a different experience. No multitouch features and a less casual be perceived , thanks to the pressure you have to apply with your handle, start swaying the balance back in the Apple iPhone’s favour.

Enter the HTC Desire, oblation the best of both worlds – sort of. It doesn’t require full flash, but its mobile version of Flash 10.1 is a dutiful compromise. The superb capacitive touchscreen and multitouch functionality make casual browsing a ravishment too.
Winner – HTC Desire

I must say, coming from a consummate lover of Nokia I can see that the writer does be assured of what he’s talking about in the terms of things that Nokia devices endeavor their users. This is why I find the article quite a honest “test” when comparing all three phones.

Now I’d allude to reading the rest of the article to see how the Desire fared in other ways…

[Via http://prresblog.wordpress.com]

HTC Releases Statement About Apple Lawsuit

The Boy Genius Report has received word from HTC regarding the very public lawsuit filed by Apple. Here is what HTC had to say or not say about the situation:

Seattle – March 17, 2010 – HTC Corporation today outlined its disagreement with Apple’s legal actions and reiterated its commitment to creating a portfolio of innovative smartphones that gives consumers a variety of choices. Founded in 1997 with a passion for innovation and a vision for how smartphones would change people’s lives, HTC has continually driven this vision by consistently introducing award-winning smartphones with U.S. mobile operators.

“HTC disagrees with Apple’s actions and will fully defend itself. HTC strongly advocates intellectual property protection and will continue to respect other innovators and their technologies as we have always done, but we will continue to embrace competition through our own innovation as a healthy way for consumers to get the best mobile experience possible,” said Peter Chou, chief executive officer, HTC Corporation. “From day one, HTC has focused on creating cutting-edge innovations that deliver unique value for people looking for a smartphone. In 1999 we started designing the XDA

The O2 XDA by HTC was the first 3.5-inch color touch screen smartphone in the world in 2002. and T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition The T-Mobile Pocket PC Phone Edition by HTC was the first 3.5-inch color touch screen smartphone in the United States in 2002., our first touch-screen smartphones, and they both shipped in 2002 with more than 50 additional HTC smartphone models shipping since then.”

The industry has recognized HTC’s contributions through a variety of awards including Fast Company’s 2010 Top 50 Most Innovative Companies and MIT Technology Review’s 2010 50 Most Innovative Companies. The GSMA also recently awarded the HTC Hero as the “Best Phone of 2009.” Some of HTC’s technology firsts include:

• First Windows PDA (1998)
• First Windows Phone (June 2002)
• First 3G CDMA EVDO smartphone (October 2005)
• First gesture-based smartphone (June 2007)

• First Google Android smartphone (October 2008)
• First 4G WIMAX smartphone (November 2008)

In 2009, HTC launched its branded user experience, HTC Sense. HTC Sense is focused on putting people at the center by making phones work in a more simple and natural way. This experience was fundamentally based on listening and observing how people live and communicate.

“HTC has always taken a partnership-oriented, collaborative approach to business. This has led to long-standing strategic partnerships with the top software, Internet and wireless technology companies in the industry as well as the top U.S., European and Asian mobile operators,” said Jason Mackenzie, vice president of HTC America. “It is through these relationships that we have been able to deliver the world’s most diverse series of smartphones to an even more diverse group of people around the world, recognizing that customers have very different needs.”

For more information on HTC’s history of innovation, please visit: www.htc.com/history.

Via [BGR]

[Via http://thegadgetgurus.net]

Bye bye Blackberry, hello HTC

Blackberry Bold - a very popular model

People have been Blackberry picking.  In this, the age of the iPhone, everyone wants to get their hands on their very own cleverphone.  Sorry, I mean smartphone.  But why the Blackberry?

I, for one, have no idea.  Yes, they are a bit different and yes, they are good in the email department.  But there’s a lot more you can get from other devices without having to sacrifice any more money.

For me, the best bet has to be the wonderful HTC HD2.  I have been wondering about what phone to get when my contract comes to and end, and this one is a surefire contender.  This is a true smartphone.

HTC HD2 - like the iPhone, but not

I’m sure you’ll agree its a wonderful looking piece of equipment.  The HD2 runs on Windows Mobile’s operating system, which is still very much up-and-coming and constantly improving.  But don’t be put off, for there are new ‘apps’, or applications being developed and added every single day.  Not only does it do emails (and it does them very well), but it does a heck of a lot more.  It can be a sat nav, it can be a Twittering device, it can take you to any webpage on the internet, it can be used as a device to watch YouTube videos.  Many see this as a big threat to the iPhone and some see it as an alternative to the iPhone.  However, I think that it is a great phone in its own right and should be recognised as such.  And the best thing of all is that you can even use it if you have fat fingers. (Something you can’t do with those miniscule buttons on most Blackberry phones!)

You can see a full review of this phone here on Tracy and Matt’s technology blog.

[Via http://jonnyharvell.wordpress.com]

HTC Touch Pro3 to touchdown this summer?

An unsubstantiated rumor out of XDA-Developers suggests that HTC is continuing its Touch Pro series of handsets with the third iteration expected to arrive this summer. According to the forum post, the rumored Touch Pro3 will be smaller and thinner than the current Touch Pro2 and will launch in Europe in Q2. With Windows Phone 7 Series smartphones expected to debut during this holiday season, the Touch Pro3, if it indeed launches, may be one of the last Windows Mobile 6.5 handsets to hit the market. Anyone interested?

[Via http://itsoluti0ns.wordpress.com]

Podcast: Talking with tnkgrl #23

It’s time for another podcast (28 min):
- Audio version
- Video version

Matthew Bennett (Nokia Daily News, US Mobile Industry) joined me while Tony Peric (fone frenzy) edited the video

This week we discussed Mobile World Congress (Windows Phone 7 Series & Meego), the Apple iPad, the Motorola Devour, and the LG BL40!

Other topics include the Google Nexus One software update, the Nokia N86 camera, Qik Premium & Skype for Symbian, and the BeagleBoard…

Click here to subscribe to this podcast.

[Via http://tnkgrl.wordpress.com]

HTC Legend Review

Wow! Just, wow! That was pretty much the crux of our first impressions of HTC’s latest Android-based smartphone, the Legend. With a chassis carved from a single piece of aluminium, with a beautiful sandblasted finish, this is one stunning looking device. As Gordon rightly pointed out at the World Mobile Congress, the Legend looks and feels somewhere between the first generation iPhone and the new unibody aluminium Macbooks, and we mean that in every possible good way.

However, there are a few immediate problems. First, contrary to what you might expect, matt aluminium like this still scratches fairly easily (though less so than plastic) and over time can be polished to a shine on exposed edges and corners. As such we’d be inclined to keep the Legend in some sort of case – I’m a big fan of the leather slip, like this one I use with my iPhone – that protects the phone when in transit but doesn’t hide its design or inhibit its functionality when in use. However, due to the Legend’s jutting jaw profile such cases can’t be used. Aesthetically, we don’t mind it and we appreciate it’s a design feature that harks back to the first Android phone, the G1, and this phone’s direct predecessor, the HTC Hero, but on a practical level we think it’s something that needs to go.

On a more positive note, the power button on the top, volume rocker on the left edge, and central circular select button all feel very solid in terms of fit and have a superbly light yet defined action. The new optical trackball (the sensor for which sits in the middle of the central button) also looks great and works well. However, we still think that such things are largely unneeded on touchscreen phones – pin-pointing a cursor in text is about the only task we regularly used it for. Sadly it isn’t a clean sweep when it comes to button quality, with the four black ones under the screen being a little wobbly, and sometimes leaving you unsure if you’ve pressed them properly. We also maintain that Android phones simply have too many buttons – all three of the Menu, Back, and Search buttons can easily be replicated in software without any loss of functionality.

There are no alarm bells when it comes to connectivity, though, as the Legend sports a conventional 3.5mm headphone jack on its top and a micro-USB socket on the bottom for connecting to a PC and charging the phone. There’s also a microSD slot hidden under the bottom, black-coloured section on the back of the phone, so getting files on and off the phone is a cinch. This plastic section also pulls away to reveal the battery (Apple take note) and SIM slot. It’s a beautiful mechanism, but it’s a bit of a pain to power down the Legend to remove the microSD card.

Aesthetically, you might want the battery/memory cover to be hewn from aluminium too, but it needs to be plastic to enable proper transmission of the various wireless signals used in the phone – a solid metal chassis would severely hamper these signals. Indeed, this was one of the reasons the original iPhone apparently had bad reception and why the iPhone 3G changed to an all plastic back. However, we had no such problems with the Legend, even in our office that has particularly poor reception. Call quality was also excellent, though the loudspeaker is a little weedy.

Another area where HTC has created an immediate wow factor is the screen. It’s sadly not glass so isn’t quite as scratch resistant as some rivals, but it’s still a very smooth, glossy, and flat surface. At 3.2in diagonally, with a resolution of 320 x 480 pixels, it’s not the biggest or highest resolution screen either, but it is superbly sharp. It’s also an AMOLED screen rather than an LCD one, so is completely unaffected by viewing angles and is incredibly vibrant. In fact, it’s so vibrant that photos can sometimes look unnatural with reds and oranges looking particularly radioactive – the TrustedReviews logo, for instance, looks completely wrong. For the most part, this won’t be a problem as you’re unlikely to need the Legend for colour critical work. Another plus point is the pure black that results from the lack of any backlight bleed, which means video and games look superb. Previous OLED screens we’ve looked at can struggle in direct sunlight but this one seemed to cope very well. All told, this is an exceptional screen for viewing.

The screen is pretty good when it comes to touch-sensitivity, too, thanks to its capacitive touch-sensing as opposed to the less responsive resistive type. This does mean it can’t be used with gloves or a stylus but for everyday phone use it’s the best choice. It also supports multi-touch so you can pinch-to-zoom on photos and in webpages and you can theoretically type super fast. However, while the touch-sensing works quite well, we did have a couple of issues.

The first is that the screen is rather narrow when held in portrait and this can make typing uncomfortable. Even though it’s only 5mm narrower than the iPhone screen, and the icons for each key are almost exactly the same width, the Legend feels more cramped resulting in more mistakes. Obviously, if you’ve got smaller fingers and hands this may be less of a concern but certainly none of us in the office have particularly large fingers and we all noticed a difference. Furthermore, HTC has modified the keyboard to constantly show the secondary function of each key and we think it makes them more difficult to read.

The other problem is the interface in general. While Android has a very capable touch interface, it doesn’t quite have the finesse of the iPhone OS. Take scrolling through a list. On the iPhone, it feels completely intuitive with the list responding exactly as you would expect if you were physically interacting with it. However, on the Legend, it’s not as slick and you’re made to feel that your movements are being interpreted and then output on-screen. Likewise the pinch-to-zoom gesture doesn’t quite zoom at the rate you expect given what your fingers are doing. Individually it’s small-fry but collectively it results in an interface that is simply less appealing to use everyday.

We also tried the touchscreen accuracy test as pioneered by moto labs whereby you slowly draw angled lines across the surface of the screen. Doing this, we found the Legend has consistently wavy lines whereas the iPhone has much straighter lines, indicating a greater degree of accuracy. This could affect the Legend’s performance in some touch-dependent apps like games.

Something else that might affect games is the Qualcomm 600MHz processor. It’s by no means slow, but it’s not a patch on other premium handsets using the company’s 1GHz Snapdragon processor. These include the Toshiba TG01 and HTC’s own HD2 as well as the upcoming HTC Desire. In everyday use, the Legend is very fast and we have no complaints whatsoever but if you do want the best gaming experience or want to run taxing apps like full-3D sat-nav, then you may want one of the above handsets.

Getting back to the software, the Legend employs the latest 2.1 version of Android, which comes with improvements like integrated Microsoft Exchange and Facebook support, better performance, a unified email inbox for viewing multiple accounts at once, and a faster web browser. Google Maps also now supports layers, though it still doesn’t include pinch-to-zoom so you must press buttons to zoom in and out.

Overall, though, version 2.1 feels much the same as previous Android iterations. You get a multifaceted desktop onto which you can scatter various shortcuts to programs or little apps known as widgets. These can show things like email and calendar entries, giving you a quick way of checking without fully opening the respective app. The Google apps integration is superb, with YouTube, Gmail, and Calendar all on hand, while the lightening fast search function makes it incredibly easy to find contacts, emails, and calendar entries all from one search term. The web browser is also excellent with its speedy operation, slick interface, and even support for Flash so you can watch our video reviews no matter where you are. That said, we did see evidence of the CPU struggling as the framerate of Flash video was pretty poor.

On top of the standard Android setup, HTC has also sprinkled its own HTC Sense interface, which gives the Legend a slightly slicker look and feel and adds a whole plethora of extra widgets. These include ones for checking the weather, viewing your email, seeing live bookmarks, and browsing your calendar.

The major new addition, though, is Friend Stream, which is a bit like Motorola’s MotoBlur service. It combines your social networking apps (Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr) and presents the stream of updates to you in one widget. Click on the widget and you can also view photos and links from the services. As with all the widgets, Friend Stream does suck up resources, so to prolong the Legend’s battery life you might want to avoid it. Another new addition is ‘Leap’, which gives you an overview of your various home screens. You simply pinch inwards to reveal a grid of all the home screens, then tap one to go to it. It’s quite neat but we certainly didn’t find ourselves using it very often.

As for battery life, the 1,300mAh unit is not the largest we’ve seen in a smartphone but was nevertheless good for two days of fairly heavy use. Like many large-screened smartphones, though, we recommend charging the Legend every night to be on the safe side.

Something that will of course drain the battery is the camera, which is a 5-megapixel affair that includes a surprisingly powerful LED flash. The camera app is quick to load and we managed an excellent shot to shot time of three seconds or so. The interface is also very nice with a surprising number of options including exposure control. Results are obviously limited by the tiny lens and sensor but are surprisingly good for a phone, displaying accurate colouration and a decent amount of detail. The flash is also surprisingly powerful with a range of a couple of metres. Video is also available and the light can be used while recording. Results are pretty poor though with an annoying wobbliness to the footage when any motion is on screen.

Verdict

The HTC Legend is undoubtedly our favourite Android phone so far. Its screen looks amazing and is responsive, it’s packed with features, and of course that aluminium chassis is something to behold. So if you’re a fan of Android already and you’re looking for a smaller and potentially cheaper device then it’s an easy recommendation. However, we still think Android has some overarching interface issues that make it feel a little clunky. When combined with our few hardware complaints, like the slightly small screen and protruding chin, we feel there are just too many compromises to outright recommend the Legend to those looking for a premium device – particularly as we’re yet to review the Google Nexus One and HTC Desire, which could be better devices overall.

Buy Low Price @ Amazon.co.uk

Buy Low Price @ Amazon.co.uk

[Via http://flukioh.wordpress.com]