The HTC HD2 (O2 variant)

Over recent years O2 announced and brought to the world the renowned Xda range of machines. Unfortunately the Windows Mobile devices offered by O2 seemed to be released less often with the dark days of the iPhone and O2's singular UK market of that...

Oh Neil, now you've used to the device are we going to see your ratings in the thread?

sounds like you made the right choice ditching the tosh then

Various Samsung Omnia phones have a digital sound processor....they also have a FM record function.....the capacitive screen is all very good but you lose the touch screen functionality of handwriting recognition!

the easiest example to see for white balance is to take a picture under flourescent light. an auto white balance even on higher end consumer (non-dslr) cameras often misinterprets the light and it turns a horrible purple-ish or green-ish tinge.

the white balance effects between sunny, cloudy, and shade are more subtle, but the in-camera lightmeter doesn't always guess right. that's where being able to manually change the white balance can be valuable. so the settings to choose from are usually that - sunny, cloudy, shade, flourescent, incandescent.

RAW format makes this much more flexible since it saves the actual image as captured by the camera rather than with the default generic image processing that then converts the RAW image to jpg format.

The ExpoDisc (http://www.expoimaging.net/) is designed for exact white balance matches, mostly used by dSLR pros. it could be just as easily used over any consumer-level camera as well. then you could use image processing software such as Lightroom to get the correct white balance reading from a picture taken with the ExpoDisc covering the lens and then apply it to the rest of your photos from that location/time. I already have the ExpoDisc for my dSLR, so it would be an easy thing for me to do. Otherwise it's an investment of time and money for the ExpoDisc and software, and it's undoubtedly the best thing I've done with my dSLR to improve my camera results.

The default saturation settings sound off to me, maybe a mistake in the defaults. I'd zero-out all the settings and then adjust if needed.

Spot metering mode is a great thing for people/animals, but more tricky for landscapes. Spot means that the exposure reading is taken from the focus point of the camera. if the spot reads a dark area, it brightens the whole photo to compensate, and vice versa. That's probably why there's no detail in the sky in that photo. If you use the on-camera review you'll be able to tell at capture time. Not to mention that the review screen is bigger/better than ANY camera on the market today!

While I hope for a decent phone camera since it's so convenient to always have with me, I recognize that it might not provide the same results as a dedicated camera. If the HD2 has a short shutter lag, then I'm impressed just with that. My wife uses a top-consumer-tier Canon G9 and it still has quite a bit of lag.

5 Megapixels is plenty for most needs - generally speaking the more megapixels the lower the image quality. Consider that for prints 3 megapixels is enough for a 4x6 unless you crop a lot. 5 megapixels gives enough breathing room for cropping, and still offers a good performance/storage balance. I would *hate* it if the HD2 had more megapixels - it's just not practical. My wife's G9 has 12 megapixels - a complete waste of storage space, and is an absolute pain to try to share pictures by email or uploading. I'd rather 5 megapixels any day.

For my use, the HD2 camera would be used most often to take reference photos - like something to remember while shopping, or like a quick and easy document scan in close-up mode. If it performs well with that I'm happy. If it actually takes pictures of my kids in focus, without shutter lag, and without motion blur -- I would be happily take that too.

Two basic questions: is a reflow option is available, and how readable is a standard portrait page in phone landscape mode.

In Touch HD there wasn't reflow available, but in Touch Diamond it was (http://forum.xda-developers.com/show...36#post3109636).

Naturally I can't provide work/office pdf examples. But if you want to try a few different scenarios (and have the time), here are a few examples to demonstrate the challenges in viewing a pdf on small phone screen:

full-page chart (just looking for how readable it might be for large charts like the performance charts in your review as an example):
http://nutrition.mcdonalds.com/nutri...itionfacts.pdf

mixed graphics/text (reflow?):
http://download.microsoft.com/downlo...lityWP_v9a.pdf

textbook/magazine-style columns/sidebars (reflow?):
http://ptgmedia.pearsoncmg.com/impri..._OD_FINAL2.pdf

slide decks:
http://www.crt.realtors.org/cms/file...comparison.pdf

text-only (reflow?):
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/19967/19967-pdf.pdf

Thanks again for all the efforts you guys have put into answering everyone's questions!

I was hoping to take some more photos with the camera today while out visiting my Mum in hospital, but the weather has been so very dire with gale force winds, lashing rain and roads partially flooded that the HD2 stayed nice and dry in the belt holster all day.

Will try to get some photos later if the weather improves, if not it will be tomorrow.

Ref the PDF's find attached a number of full size screen shots taken from various elements of the files you linked to. From what I can see there looks not to be any reflow facility in there alas

Attached Thumbnails

         

       

Saying that though the files are pretty readable on the large screen.

So, are there any questions we've left unanswered guys?

There you are

This beastie is continuing to impress me

I've spent most of today doing some essential plumbing work in the kitchen so decided to let the HD2 handle the music.

Connected the 3.5mm jack to a 3.5mm to RCA cable and plugged it into the HiFi. Fired up Pocket Tunes and set it to play all songs in random order! Started at 10am and still going, as the separate charging socket allows charging and playback together! Sound quality is very good indeed

Don't get me wrong- the TG01 is a very good device and it predated the HD2 by 4 months, so was bound to have teething problems. However, the HD2 is better in almost every way. Probably not as quick overall but I suspect the overhead of HTC Sense does have an impact.

As I said above, the ability to play music and charge at the same time allows it to be used as a good jukebox. Generally, sounds on the TG01 were poor, especially the phone speaker.

Contrary to the TG01, the microUSB plug is a breeze to insert- I thought the design was universal, but the Tosh could be exceedingly tricky to insert.

Another interesting contrast to some of the review opinions is that I can easily use Drawing Mode in Notes- my fingernail does seem to register OK for drawing intricate lines.