Near Bezel-less design
Zellweger noted that HTC will be coming out with near bezel-less screens in the future. When there is no bezel around the screen this leaves more space to implement technology in the case below the screen. He goes on to reason that nobody will complain when you make the screen larger but leave the phone dimensions around the same size (so that it won’t take up even more space in your bag/pants or wherever you carry your phone). Next to the bezel-less design they are certainly aiming to dive below the 10-13mm thickness that most HTC phones currently have.
If this means that we will see more differentiation in HTC designs is unknown. But we believe the company sure could use some new ideas.
Another big question here could be if HTC will continue to use their beloved Super LCD screens or will they be able to buy some of the production of Super AMOLED screens by samsung? They tried to jump to AMOLED when the HTC Desire was first released, but met with a huge shortage which led them to SLCD technology.
NFC
Zellweger from HTC also noted that the new models will be coming with an NFC chip. NFC (Near Field Communication) allows you to make payments with your mobile phone by holding it close to a transaction point. Google recently launched their NFC payment service Google Wallet so it’s probably not speculation that the new HTC phones will be compatible with this service.
Onscreen keyboard with feedback on the touchscreen
Tweakers.net also reported that HTC is working on a technology that allows for feedback while using the onscreen keyboard. How they will manage to do this is still unknown. Zellweger hinted at possible use of bubbles on the screen where they replace hardware keyboards. Do we really want bubbles on our smooth touchscreens? We can’t see this working out very well – but perhaps HTC will prove us wrong here.
Many users have been outing their concerns about making bezel-less phones, but why? Well imagine a phone doesn’t have a bezel at all and you would drop it on a corner – even from a very low fall the phone screen would most likely shatter or at the least be damaged. Certainly this would not pass HTC quality control? Could it be that HTC is coming out with more bendable screens that could withstand such a drop/pressure? Time will tell. It’s certainly an interesting idea.
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Earlier this year, there was a lot of news around HTC concerning their locked bootloaders. A locked bootloader means that the HTC Evo 3D can only boot a kernel that is signed with a private key that only HTC has – making it impossible to boot a custom kernel. There was an uproar on the internet and some major news blogs picked up the story. HTC Promptly responded that they would revise their bootloader policy. Shortly after this the CEO of HTC issued the order to make the bootloaders unlockable – but not before the HTC Evo 3D was shipped. The did however promised to unlock to bootloader in an update.
Of course the folks at XDA aren’t too patient and love a challenge. This has now lead to the bootloader of the HTC Evo 3D to be hacked by “Team Win”. Because of there efforts the HTC Evo 3D phone is now open to custom software. The procedure isn’t easy so Team Win is still working on that – but it’s coming. Please follow their effort in the source link below and please.. read before you act – don’t ruin your brand spanking new kickass htc phone!
Source: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1148819
A small rundown of the Evo 3D’s short but interesting history:
March 22, 2011, The HTC Evo 3D was announced to the public on. The phone started going on sale on
May 19, Evo 3D information and release date of June 4th was leaked
May 24, Evo 3D was confirmed to have a cryptographically signed bootloader, recovery and of course kernal image. The internet responded with furious anger
May 24, HTC released a statement hours later that they will look into their bootloader policy
May 26, HTC realised there was no other way out – Peter Chou the big cahuna aka CEO of HTC issued a response saying they will no longer lock their future bootloaders.
June 24, HTC Evo 3D goes on sale!
July 4, HTC Evo 3D bootloader cracked
Many HTC Desire users have been waiting for a long time to finally receive an update to gingerbread – it was promised ages ago and there was already a leak of a fully working rom leaked around 4 months ago – because of this many users were puzzled to find out the update was temporary canceled by HTC.
Only a week after their statement HTC just came out of the blue with the fact that they are allready testing the over the air gingerbread update. They have posted this on their facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/HTC). Certainly seems odd that after having many issues ‘trying to get gingerbread on the Desire’ they come out so soon saying they are testing. Guess they had something lying around for some time now .
Only time will tell if the HTC Desire gingerbread update will be upon us sooner rather then later – let’s hope for the former.
* HTC Desire was released April 2010 (15 months ago)
* Gingerbread was released to OEM on November 2010 (8 months ago)
Next to being a big fan of HTC Phones (Android and Windows Mobile). I also highly enjoy using a phone I recently received called the Motorola Milestone. It has been some time now and the Motorola Milestone has finally been rooted. You can find instructions on rooting your phone at the following URL:
http://motorolamilestoneroot.blogspot.com/
Some reasons that would make you want to root your phone:
- Screenshots of your ‘desktop’
- Wifi tethering
- Push or remove new APK files to your system partition
And there is a lot more but maybe I will go into detail later on.
Enjoy the root for now, and sorry for going a little bit off topic on this blog. Hope you don’t mind!
Perhaps you have heard about Flight Control for iPhone? On iPhone this game is a great hit. It is a game for iPhone where you take control of an airport and reroute planes to land in specific zones. The WVGA Game for Windows Mobile looks a lot like this game and seems like a copy of the iPhone variant. But can it live up to the amazingly fun iPhone game? If you read this review you will find out.
The same people that brought us Tower Defense for Windows Mobile are responsible for this game, The game Tower Defense was valued as a great game with smooth and addictive game play and sublime graphics. On a first look Flight Commander appears just as smooth and fast. The game has cartoon graphics that really fit the genre. The main menu for some reason has some well rounded madams that well, don’t really try to hide their female shapes. Everyone knows sex sells but it does seem a bit overboard for a game like this, even if they are just drawn graphics. Though the graphics do look nice it truly feels out of place when compared to the rest of the game.
From the main menu you can go to highscore that shows you a list of scores you have attained and can genuinely work as a challenge to yourself to improve this. Like Tower Defense from the same developers this game has an option to continue a paused game which is good. Colorstone genuinely shows it’s understanding towards the mobile gamer here. It’s great that you can just exit a game and resume it subsequent on so you can fill the little gaps in your free time with this action.
In this Windows Mobile game you have to land choppers and airplanes on landing slips. There are 3 unique airports in a level, chopper pads, normal airstrips, and a water landing strip. As you start playing the choppers and planes start to spawn on the sides of your airport. As new planes or choppers come in the airspace you will see little blinking lights that alert you to their bearing. The planes and choppers have to be landed in this Windows Mobile Game on the airstrips. The planes can be landed on the strips by giving them a path to the landing strips/helicopter pads. Whenever you land a plane your score goes up, the game ends when you crash a airplane and your lives run out. You can make the game a bit more easy by having the option to go from 1-4 clashes before the game ends. As game play goes you might really prefer to use your stylus instead of your finger. Seeing as most windows mobile phones have resistive screens you can really play the game with a stylus for better speed and accuracy compared to the iPhone variant.
By using OpenGL ES for the graphics of the game Flight Commander is a genuinely glorious looking Windows Mobile game experience. You get with this, beautiful animations, speed and a great gaming experience. The price for the game seems a little steep comparing to the iPhone version. But because of the lacking support for game programming on this platform we have mostly Microsoft to blame for this. Flight Commander for Windows Mobile is all in all a truly great experience on your Windows Mobile smartphone. All we can say is: Hats of to Colorstone Ltd. for another great game.
This game works for sure on: HTC Touch HD, HTC Touch Diamond 2, Omnia 2 and Omnia Pro.
To Find more information on the game please go here
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