Brutally Honest 1st Impressions - Epic Fail

[bedoig]

Wow... this thread took off quick.

In all honesty, I didn't bother reading all 13 pages. I just wanted to say I agree with schett. Personally, I love the Pro and think it is the best device available. That said, it would be a complete and utter nightmare for someone new to WM. I think we may have all become a little too apologetic for our devices.

Ahh...the good old days with the Apache. I seriously miss WM5 in a lot of ways (well, the later AKUs anyway). And boy would I love to have that xScale back, although I wouldn't want to give up the 802.11g/BT2/GPS/etc on the new chips. Ever since WM6 and Qualcomm I feel like we've been sliding downhill, and fast. Hopefully WM7 (I'm not holding out much hope for 6.5) and Tegra bring some dignity back to WM.

I'm sure someone will now tell me to go buy an iPhone, so let me go ahead and quote myself here:

Originally Posted by bedoig

Personally, I love the Pro and think it is the best device available.

Glad to see you're still around schett. I have to say I preferred your old avatar though

[aldojr80]

For someone new yes this can be a bummer but if they look around they will find people like us that can help and all this negativity is not helpful. If you went to the apple iphone side you will have an opinion there and a thread just like this one. That is our nature and on your next phone you will have another opinion. I bought my wife a 30 dollar video software for her iphone i did not say oh my phone does not need to be hacked and then buy a software to have video capabilities. For lots of us we love this phone and yes my phone does not have a stock rom running or even the same radio, but again thats why you guys are here, i followed Dream,Scott and the guys from the mogul side at one time. That made me a happy with my device and ever since then i have been a WM user. Lets close this thread and make a how to make Noobs happy with the touch pro with ROMS,RADIO, and tweaks. Hi everyone.

[henbone11]

I don't see how modding or tweaking your phone means that your phone sucks or is an epic fail. I am not sure that I own anything that has not been modded in some way. Some people just enjoy tinkering with their things to make them even better than they already are. I cant speak for everyone, but I don't buy something unless I already like it very much. By the sound of it, some people here buy things they hate then proceed to cry about how much they hate it. O_o Doesn't make much sense to me, but whatever. That is what makes the power of choice and ability to buy whatever you want great. And don't post that I missed the point. I got the point just fine. Again I ask you, why bother buying something you aren't in love with to begin with. You are not confined to just buying a HTC or winmo device. Feel free to explore your options.

[DSGamer]

Originally Posted by henbone11

I don't see how modding or tweaking your phone means that your phone sucks or is an epic fail. I am not sure that I own anything that has not been modded in some way. Some people just enjoy tinkering with their things to make them even better than they already are. I cant speak for everyone, but I don't buy something unless I already like it very much. By the sound of it, some people here buy things they hate then proceed to cry about how much they hate it. O_o Doesn't make much sense to me, but whatever. That is what makes the power of choice and ability to buy whatever you want great. And don't post that I missed the point. I got the point just fine. Again I ask you, why bother buying something you aren't in love with to begin with. You are not confined to just buying a HTC or winmo device. Feel free to explore your options.

I think the point is that many of us need what the HTC Touch Pro is providing. We need a more powerful smartphone. We need a full qwerty keyboard. We need a touchscreen and PIM functionality. We need data and we often need the phone to be on Sprint (so for some of us moving to AT&T is a non-starter). This phone is almost there in many ways, but yet requires so much work to get it to be a competent phone. And at the end of the day it's sold as a phone. Not as a mini laptop that happens to have a phone inside. It's sold as a phone. It should work better, out of the box, as a phone.

I appreciate that some of you like hacking and tweaking. Some of us, though, have careers and other hobbies that allow for enough hacking and tweaking to make us happy. You get to a point where you don't want to build your own home DVR Media Center Linux box and you just want to buy a Tivo. You get to a point where you play console video games, because you don't want to keep updating a PC. And you get to a point where you don't want to tweak a "phone". You just want to buy a phone and make phone calls. The fact that Microsoft and HTC make this more difficult than it should be is tragic. It's not about the freedom to tinker, but the NECESSITY to tinker. Some of us have gotten to a point in our lives where other things are more important. Other hobbies, time with our families, etc.

[bedoig]

I've argued both sides of this myself in the past (and even today actually), but I think it ultimately boils down to what DSGamer said. You shouldn't have to tweak it to adequately perform common tasks. Well, I might be overstating things. In my opinion the Pro does adequately perform all tasks, but you expect things like phone operations to really shine. HTC has done some polishing, but it feels like in the process they roughed other things up. I'm not saying I hate the Pro or WM in general. It is still the most powerful, versatile mobile OS around. It's just that MS has been standing still for the last few years while the competition has been moving forward. In the past, the only competition was Palm and Nokia, both of which were mostly on par with WM. Now that you have Apple and Google in the ring, this kind of slow progress is painfully obvious. In reality, I'm not even sure I'd call it slow progress. Since the end of WM5 there have only been a hand full of useful new features, but those came at the cost of increasing instability and poorer performance. It's more like slow regression.

You can do things with WM that you can't do with any other mobile OS, but the slow and clunky feeling inherent in its recent incarnations rob you of any joy of use. Take it however you want, it's just my opinion, but the truth is that there are clearly areas that need work. I'm still hopeful that 2009 and 2010 will see some awesome improvements for WM. There are some really exciting things on the horizon. I just don't see why some of us get so defensive when anyone points out a weakness. Constructive criticism doesn't automatically make you a WM hater, or mean that you should go get a different device because you can't hack it (oh boy, awful pun) with the Pro.

Anyway, that's enough out of me on the topic. Ultimately here's my opinion: (and I'm sorry, this really is a bit offensive, but I guess my gross immaturity finds it a little funny)

[Dorenda]

Originally Posted by nonstop

My mogul, for all it's short comings was at least reliable to ring when it was supposed to. So was my PPC-6700 for that matter. 2-3 years between 6700 and 6800 and I've never had reliability issues receiving calls and text messages like I'm experiencing with the Touch Pro.

I actually had to replace my Mogul because it failed to ring and was lucky enough to get the Touch Pro as the replacement. But I must say that I also have had the phone issue. It would send callers directly to my voicemail. The issue eventually resolved itself.

[DSGamer]

Exactly. I'm not a WinMo hater. I've used Windows CE/Pocket PC devices forever. I always preferred them to Palm for their power. But when they got put into phones the glaring problems of battery life and speed suddenly made my phone work less efficiently. The HTC Touch Pro, believe it or not, is one of my favorite phones ever. Maybe my favorite phone ever as I love the form factor and I really do like WinMo when it's all said and done. I just wish the phone part worked better. If I were to judge this as a phone it gets a D+. If I were to judge it as a mobile, Internet-enabled Handheld PDA it gets an A+. Thus my mixed emotions.

[chronster]

I don't know why people keep posting on this issue. It's obvious to me this is user related and has nothing to do with the device.

[peblo224]

Originally Posted by Mbai2

It seems like I'm the only one not having a problem from the looks of this thread. The only tweaks I've done are to disable the SMS sent notification and the tethering fix. My phone rings every time and I get all my text messages quickly. In fact, when my friends send out mass texts to each other, I'm usually the first in the room to receive it. The only complaint I have about the phone is its dismal video playback abilities.

My pro works just fine as well. The only tweaks i've done were to disable the sms notification and roaming only. My phone rings recives text, email, voicemail, and mms just fine.

Iphone users, at one point, did have to tweak their phone number. They would have to jailbreak their phones to put any 3rd party apps. Hopefully in the near future, HTC will release an update to solve everyones problems.

[frazell]

Originally Posted by schettj

Seriously. Ok, so sure, I'm a vet of HTC/WinMo/Sprint, so I unboxed this exquisite corpse of a phone and immediately ran over here to set about fixing it so it's usable.

Hack, regedit, hard reset, etc, etc, tweak tweak tweak, lowlevel tweak for SCI, etc...

Noticed today (literally 4 days into tweaking) I forgot to do the magic disable all the htc dialer crap so I can actually answer the phone before voicemail...

and then it really hit me - this phone, this amazing hardware, so totally sucks - it fails the out of box experience to such spectacular levels that it truly earns the epic fail. I mean, it actually fails to function as a phone out of the box. Huh? Ok, well, does it work as a data device out of the box? Er, yeah, if you use it plugged in with a heatsink glued onto it...

Well my friends, if crapple had released such a turd and NEVER addressed it (vs, in the case of the actually abysmal iPhone 3g OS which has been updated TWICE since release and now, generally speaking, has addressed all usability issues that can be fixed in software with NO "tweaking" needed....) no one would put up with it. NO ONE.

HTC, if you want to play in this space, you really need to learn how to make a phone that works. You should be forced to only use your own products out of the box with no tweaking as your only business critical phones. Yeah, your CDMA phones I mean.

Microsoft, you lazy bums, you don't deserve to play in this space either when 20 guys at apple, or 15 guys at palm can create devices in a few years that surpass your entrenched OS that has done nothing but become LESS usable and stable in the past 4 years.

Anyway, back to tweaking. It's nice hardware, I'm sure eventually it will be as reliable as my mogul was, for silly things like phone calls. I doubt it will ever be as reliable as my apache.

Does anyone disagree? Is anyone running a STOCK UNTWEAKED IN ANY WAY Touch Pro? Honestly, consider that next time you're tempted to laugh at that iPhone toting apple fan boy. Because he's not tweaking his phone, he's just using his phone. Which works.

Now I have to go back to staring at my phone, which might be ringing. I'm not sure, but I think I saw it flicker a bit out of the corner of my eye....

This thread has surp***** 11 pages so I haven't had the time to read them all yet, but I will over the course of the next few days, but I'll share my experience before I've read everyone elses...

I have a fairly good history of Windows Mobile devices (although not as long as many of you). I started my Windows Mobile run with the HTC Wizard (T-Mobile MDA (USA)) and followed that up with the HTC Titan (Sprint Mogul) which leads me to my current device (the HTC Touch Pro (Sprint Touch Pro).

I felt the Mogul, in many ways, was as slow as my MDA. Even though it had a CPU that was 2x as fast clock speed wise and a large amount of other enhancements, but I endured the Mogul nonetheless. I flashed and tried out a zillion Mogul roms, but I felt I'd rather just stick with Stock and did so.

With that said, I got the Touch Pro last week on Wednesday. I expected the same feel of going from my MDA to my Mogul. I expected the slow phone application, slow applications, and etc. I can't say I've had any of that experience, as you're having. So far the Touch Pro is proving itself to be the best Windows Mobile device I've ever used.

I run my Touch Pro on the Stock ROM and it has not been tweaked beyond hacking Internet Connection Sharing. I didn't do any of the other tweaks on my Mogul and don't see any reason to even contemplate them on my Touch Pro.

My device is connected to my company's Exchange 2007 server with Direct Push. I get a fairly large amount of email traffic, not withstanding calls and text messages. The device doesn't seem to get sluggish with all of that and the occasional Opera browsing to boot.

I also run SPB Mobile Shell and SBSH Pocket Breeze. I've turned off Touch Flo as I've never been a fan of it and see it as a waste of very good screen real estate. But for the few minutes I did run it the program was very smooth and fast.

The Phone application is fast. Not only does it answer calls when I tell it to or hang them up when I tell it to, it also stays responsive while in a call. I HATED the fact my MDA and Mogul would slow to pretty much a crawl when you did ANYTHING that required the phone call to be connected or sending and recieving an SMS. I'm glad that is not a problem with my Touch Pro.

That being said... My Touch Pro isn't all glamor and glitter. It does have one problem I think HTC should have addressed. Battery life. I can barely get through the day on a single charge.

My current plan is to carry around a spare battery. The idea of adding more bulk is unrealistic to me...

A few of your other points don't seem to make sense to me. The Touch Pro isn't the iPhone and I'm glad it isn't. The iPhone doesn't do what I need. If you feel you're better served by the iPhone then why are you not spending your money where you would be best served? I'm not saying that to minimize your comments on the Touch Pro as your views are very valid and should be shared.

You also knew that the Touch Pro shipped with WM6.1 so you shouldn't expect much more than what you saw on your Mogul, from the OS itself. I'm also unhappy with what Microsoft is doing, or in reality not doing, in this space, but I knew that before going into the TP and that isn't a fault of HTC. The good news is, based on HTC and Sprint's track records we will probably see a free upgrade to WM6.5 if it drops as planned around June.