New VZW HTC TP2 - Disappointed, Need Help, Multiple Areas

[das7771]

If you are having touch problems on the screen you might want to calibrate the screen if you haven't done so. I know mine was off so I would have to tap around the icon before it selected. Once I calibrated the screen it was much better. If you are in touch flo, go to settings, then select all settings at the botton left. Once you get to WinMo settings select the system tab, then select Screen. When it opens you will see a box that says align screen, pull out you stylus and hit the align screen box. then just tap the plus symbol with the stylus as it moves around the screen. Do you rbest to tap it right in the middle each time as this will make it the most accurate. I hope this helps.

Edit:

Sorry for the useless post I just realized that you stated you had already calibrated the screen.

[DLCPhoto]

Actually, I later re-calibrated it using the stylus, to make sure it was as precise as possible. I think this did help to some degree, although I think getting a better feel for it is helping as well.

That said, there are some times when it is particularly unresponsive - when I go to Settings...All Settings... The icons that show there for the different items are sometimes very unresponsive. I don't know if it's the touchscreen or the OS being unresponsive, but I suspect the latter. Most everywhere else it works better, although I do have to zoom in using Opera to click on many small links.

[1up]

This is probably the issue where the Settings window cycles thru all 3 tabs before going back to System, so it's not possible to click an icon until it's finished. I'm seeing this as well. Think there's a fix for that too...

[rbyham]

I was a palm lover for years starting with the 650. COuld do a lot of work witht hat phone. Switched to WM with Samsung i760. Lots of pain in making that transtion. But hung in there and mastered it. Now with TP2 am loving it. I too am VZW. I too did not like the TP2 out of the box. Almost took it back for the Droid But then I installed the cleanup cab found as stickie here. Made all the diff in terms of no more screen lag. Fixed tons of other stuff too. HTC owes goodthings2life for my still carrying this phone. Check it out... cleanup... otherwise I am stock and staying that way...

[gcianc]

Originally Posted by DLCPhoto

1. Opera - this is almost an exercise in futility. Trying to click on a link, access a field to enter data, is almost impossible, with my finger, stylus, and even when zoomed in. And speaking of zooming in, the zoom bar is flakey at best. Sometimes it works, sometimes if I slide it a few mm to the right of the bar it works, and mostly it doesn't work at all.

You need to calibrate the screen and to be honest the TP2 comes setup brutally bad (compared to the Imagio). Install advanced config or a registry editor to set the touch screen to light sensitivity (bypassing the screen configuration which is incomplete)

screen make ligher touch. go way down closer to 0 to start
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Drivers\TouchPanel\PressureThre shold

The lower the number the lighter you have to press on your screen [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\OEM\TFLOSettings]
PressureThreshold
FingerPressure


Opera9.x is quite slow (renders full web and sucks bandwidth) so install Mini5beta2 and first a 2009 version of Esmertec Jbed. Mortscript & jzsmartmort also are a great combo. Mini 5 beta2 should be your default browser. Use Large fonts in Mini (they're still small but clickable). I use Middle of the slider bar font size in windows mobile setup

Originally Posted by DLCPhoto

2. Touchscreen itself - I also find this very hit and miss. Even when there are large settings icons present, activating those icons is yet more frustration. Sometimes extreme pressure is required to get a response, other times a simple touch will do. I've done a Calibration, but still no joy. Again, am I expecting too much? My TX touchscreen was much more consistent and responsive.

see above the touchscreen, as configured out of box invites returns. Once setup, after a day it works GREAT. really.

Originally Posted by DLCPhoto

3. User Interface - I found the TouchFlo3D to get in the way, and figured out where to turn it off. So I have the "Today" screen active, but I am very limited in what items I can put there. Why not links to Email, whatever Program I want, etc.?? What better more customizeable options are there for the UI? Again, with my TX, I had a single page of "Favorite" links. A hard button brought me there, and I had immediate access to more than 2 dozen programs on a single screen, no scrolling required.

You want Rhodium keyboard config (google it sorry) to setup your keyboard settings per key.

On the TP2 however i highly recommend Mobile Shell 3.5 and not TF3D as it's too clumsy for the 4 face buttons imho.

Originally Posted by DLCPhoto

4. Contacts - I haven't entered many, but there seems no way to show them by Category. Again on my TX, if I went to my Contact List, I could select a Category by a drop-down list, and show only those Contacts in that particular Category. Is that an option on the TP2? It might be there and I haven't discovered it yet.

not sure about this i use favorites.

Originally Posted by DLCPhoto

5. Also when selecting Ringtones or Wallpaper - there doesn't seem to be a way to have the Ringtones autoplay as I select them to try them out. I have to select it, hit Play, and if I don't like it, have to drop down the list, try another, rinse and repeat. Any other phone I or a family member has ever had will just play the dang ringtone as I scrolled the list. Same with the Wallpaper - there's a list, with no graphics, no way to preview it or see what the heck it is. Just select it, go to the Today screen, and see what it looks like. What the heck??

you can play them while selecting them

Originally Posted by DLCPhoto

That's about it for now. There are other matters, but these are the biggies so far, and unless I can figure out ways to get this thing working more consistently and efficiently, as hard as it is for me to believe it, I may have to return it.

I was pretty frustrated by the screen setup (requiring way too much pressure) and sloooow Opera9 (coming from Opera mini4 as my primary browser) but all this is fixable and HTC/Microsoft should listen to such feedback to allow a simple "TOUCH SCREEN" basic startup screen not with the silly crosshairs but simple "i want to touch very lightly to click" type responses. good luck.

[trids]

Originally Posted by DLCPhoto

5. Also when selecting Ringtones or Wallpaper - there doesn't seem to be a way to have the Ringtones autoplay as I select them to try them out. I have to select it, hit Play, and if I don't like it, have to drop down the list, try another, rinse and repeat. Any other phone I or a family member has ever had will just play the dang ringtone as I scrolled the list. Same with the Wallpaper - there's a list, with no graphics, no way to preview it or see what the heck it is. Just select it, go to the Today screen, and see what it looks like. What the heck??

For me, the best thing about Windows Mobile is that besides the huge variety in custom modifications and 3rd party apps, there are most times several ways to do something .. and it becomes a question of "which way is best for me?" rather than simply "how do i do it?"

Your problem with wallpaper is a good example: Yes, the dialog you describe is one way of doing it. But you can also change the wallpaper from the standard File Explorer as well as from the Pictures and Albums app (which meets your expectation of being able to do it with some sort of preview/thumbnail). And depending on your favourite 3rd party image viewer, you will probably be able to do it from there too.

Another example is text messaging: besides the obvious messaging shortcut on the Today screen for example, you can also initiate a text message from the Contacts manager. But my favourite way is from the phone pad: Just press the [Send] hardware button to get into the phone dialer, use its ultra cool search feature of narrowing down the list as you start to type the recipient's name, click the contact card icon and select "Send Text Message" from there!

So in WM there are many ways to peel your potatoes. If you invest a little time to see which way suits you, rather than stopping at the first solution you find which might not suit your needs entirely ... then you will really start to appreciate what it has to offer.

[DLCPhoto]

Interesting to have dug up this several month old thread, posted very early on in my TP2/WM experience. Much has changed since then, and I appreciate the recent comments and suggestions posted above.

I am now much happier with my TP2, and have implemented many of the suggestions above.

I still use the stock Opera, but have tweaked Opera.ini to be able to click links more readily without having to zoom in the vast majority of the time, increase the number of tabs, etc. I was not aware of the Registry tweak to improve screen sensitivity - I'll have to play around with that one for sure.

I'm back to using TF3D and have managed to adapt it to my liking overall. I am interested in trying Mobile Shell, but apparently it "breaks" some functioning in the Contacts. When they fix that, I'll probably give it a try.

I've also figured out most of the other difficulties, and you're all correct - there are often multiple ways to do things, and it's been a good learning experience exploring and figuring them all out.

I've added SkyFire for flash sites (the new version is much improved), Garmin XT for GPS, multiple free games, been playing with GoToMyPC PocketView which is pretty slick, really like the way Contacts are integrated with Outlook, can use Facebook photos, it has a much more useable PDF viewer than the TX ever did, the built-in RSS app works quite well for my limited needs and provides quick access to certain Podcasts I like to follow, the keyboard is quite good, Select Radio is awesome, WMWiFi Router really comes in handy at times, Skype enabled me to call home for virtually free via WiFi when in Peru, the integration of Google Maps and Bing with GPS and calling is extremely useful, etc.

There are still aspects of the Palm interface that I miss, but overall, the TP2 comes incredibly close to being a practical laptop replacement that I can carry in my pocket and also make calls with. Not perfect, but close enough for now anyway.

[DLCPhoto]

Originally Posted by gcianc

You need to calibrate the screen and to be honest the TP2 comes setup brutally bad (compared to the Imagio). Install advanced config or a registry editor to set the touch screen to light sensitivity (bypassing the screen configuration which is incomplete)

screen make ligher touch. go way down closer to 0 to start
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Drivers\TouchPanel\PressureThre shold

The lower the number the lighter you have to press on your screen [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\OEM\TFLOSettings]
PressureThreshold
FingerPressure

OK, I was able to change the Pressure Threshold (original value was 26, I reset to 13 and will see how that works).

I tried to change the "PressureThreshold" - original value was 57. I was given "Access Denied" when trying to make this change. I'm using CERegEditor ver. 0.0.5.2 by mdSoft. Haven't run into that one before.

Any ideas on what the deal is here?

ETA: Did some searching, and there is a suggestion to use the "Unlock Registry" function in CERegEdit. I started that, and saw that it required a response on my TP2 to allow CERegEdit to run some program on the device. Unsure exactly what it was doing I told it no for the first time until I found out more about it.

I recently ran into an issue that messed up my ActiveSync, requiring multiple hours to figure out and fix, so I'm a little reluctant to do things I don't fully understand.

So - does anybody know what "Unlocking" the registry does on the TP2, and whether or not there is the potential for unanticipated "side-effects" or consequences?

Thanks.

[goldenu]

A note about the zoom bar:

I first came across this retarded excuse for a control mechanism with my Excalibur...it was called the "Jogger" and was so bad that it shipped factory disabled. Later I bought a Touch Pro...now the Jogger was a circle in the middle of the (completely screwed) D-pad...it was every bit as bad as the original Jogger, but most folks just ignored it. Now I have the Touch Pro 2's "Zoom Bar," Please God, let this be the final iteration of this hopeless, useless, terribly-implemented technology.

BTW - it's not just HTC either: my mom-in-law has a Samsung Blackjack II with a similar device built into the center button and it blows chunks too.

[gcianc]

DLC - i used phmRegistry editor (free - install PocketPC/touch version) to do all the edits without unlocking anything. you need to reboot the phone for the settings to go into effect.

http://freewareppc.com/utilities/phm...ryeditor.shtml

you can backup registry from there also before making changes