[Full HD2 review] The HTC HD2 was the first Windows Mobile phone with a capacitive touch screen. The HD2 comes loaded with Windows Mobile 6.5 Professional with HTC Sense (TouchFlo 3D) interface on top. It's packing a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 576MB of ROM and 1GB of RAM. The 4.3-inch color transflective TFT screen has a WVGA 480 x 800 resolution. The HD2 has a five-megapixel camera with dual LED flash and autofocus. And thanks to the tons of developer support, the HD2 is also able to run other operating systems such as Google Android, Meego, Ubuntu and even Windows Phone 7. Read on for the latest HD2 news, reviews and videos:
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by Brandon Miniman | November 26, 2010 5:19 PMRead OnRemember back when the HD2, known internally to HTC as the "Leo", was seeing daily leaks? The Windows Mobile world was in a whirlwind over what would be the first capacitive-touch Windows Mobile device. In turns out that the early HD2 ROM had a feature that never made it to the final product: pinch to zoom in Manila (also known as TouchFLO 3D or HTC Sense). This feature would allow the user to zoom into a specific part of TouchFLO 3D without the soft keys disappearing. Additionally, a square would appear that would show you where in the frame you were zoomed to. While this would have made ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | November 24, 2010 2:16 AMRead OnThe first video of Windows Phone 7 running on HTC HD2 was an effort from the DFT Team and those we brought later -- both the initial capture and the five minute one -- came from another source but the goal is the same. Now, almost two months later, DFT Team announced they are able to run Windows Phone 7 on their HTC HD2 devices with things like "GSM, GPRS, Camera, GSensor, USB, SD, BT, WLAN, etc" working. What they didn't manage to crack -- and "no bypass ways are known" -- is Microsoft's Genuine Software check we posted about recently -- which will basically disable all cloud based ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | November 20, 2010 4:27 PMRead OnYou might remember our post about AMOLED vs. traditional LCDs from the picture viewing perspective and then the comparison between Super AMOLED, AMOLED and LCD in direct sunlight. Different devices employ different screen types and different technologies. In the video below you can see some high magnification pictures of various screens employed by different manufacturers, namely LCD on the HTC HD2, S-AMOLED on the Samsung Galaxy S, AMOLED on the HTC Desire (later they switched to SLCD and we showed you how to spot the difference), SLCD on the HTC Desire HD and AMOLED on the Acer Stream. ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | November 7, 2010 2:06 PMRead OnFirst there was the initial project of getting Windows Phone 7 to boot on an HTC HD2. Then we saw a video of an alleged full port running on the legacy Windows Mobile device and today we're presented a five minute video with more Windows Phone 7 running on the HTC HD2. The video demonstration boots the new operating system on the HTC HD2 side by side with the HTC Surround (which by the way is booting faster) and Windows Phone 7 on the Leo seems to be supporting phone operations too as the author calls the Surround using the HD2. There's also demonstration of multi-touch, Pictures hub, lock ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | November 6, 2010 1:54 AMRead OnWe've heard about this being rumored for such a long time and definitely we've crossed our fingers for this to happen together with lots of HTC HD2 owners. Last month we've shown you a bold project where Windows Phone 7 allegedly booted successfully on an HTC HD2 and today comes with a new tease! What we seem to have here is a full port of Windows Phone 7 on the HTC HD2 which seems to be functioning well judging by the video you'll find below. The handset looks to be booting from a powered off mode, going through the bootloader (note the red text info on the top left), Windows Phone 7 ...
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by Brandon Miniman | November 3, 2010 4:06 PMRead OnDo you ever stop to think how dramatically smartphone packaging has changed over the last few years? If you were a smartphone early adopter, you undoubtedly remember the oversized boxes that were used for packaging. While these huge boxes gave OEMs plenty of room to be more creative with the imagery used on the outside of the box, they weren't particularly eco-friendly. Today, in an effort to reduce packaging material (good for cost savings and the environment), smartphone packaging has become very much minimal. On the extreme end, we have the Droid X and Droid 2, which have boxes that are ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | October 19, 2010 4:14 AMRead OnRemember the leaked T-Mobile HD2 ROM (version 3.14.531.1) we spotted last week and how we anticipated that it will be officially available soon on to replace the current version 2.13.531.1? Well, the ROM update should be due today and according to the description, it should bring a lot of fixes and improvements. If it is anything like the European HD2 ROM update which was also recently released, it will be a very fast ROM. See below the list of issues fixed by the ROM update: - Browsing Facebook photos is slow - White screen while browsing the internet - Cannot delete GMAIL messages from ...
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by Legacy | October 17, 2010 1:42 PMRead OnEarlier this month, SPB Software finally launched Mobile Shell 5.0 by releasing a video presentation for device manufacturers and carriers. It's still unclear if we'll ever see the customizable UI released as a standalone software purchase for consumers, but it's certainly come a long way since the demo we saw 8 months ago at Mobile World Congress. Aside from the presentation, demos of the latest, more polished version of Mobile Shell 5.0 have been scarce. Thankfully, videos of MS 5.0 running on the Samsung Galaxy S, Nokia N8, and HTC HD2 have recently surfaced after an event in Taipei, ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | October 13, 2010 1:57 AMRead OnHTC released an official ROM update for the HTC HD2 earlier this week which in our opinion is by far the fastest they've produced and it looks like that certain "enhanced handling for CPU processing" we were a bit worried about in terms of battery life turned out to not affect battery life in our usage at all. The update was intended for European HTC HD2 handsets and not compatible with T-Mobile HD2. A what looks to be an official ROM update for the T-Mobile HD2 was just leaked with the filename RUU_Leo_1_5_TMOUS_3.14.531.1_Radio_15.42.50.11U_2.15.50.14_LEO_1.5_Ship.exe which means it's ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | October 11, 2010 12:55 PMRead OnHTC has been busy today with their Windows Phone 7 device line-up launch but seems to not forget about good old Windows Mobile 6.5 users owning HTC HD2 handsets as they have just released an official ROM upgrade for the HTC Leo. As we've got used to by now, we're offered the same template when it comes to description: "An updated ROM is now available for HTC HD2 users to download. As always, HTC is committed to providing customers with the best possible mobile experience". There are some changes mentioned though as this version includes all previously released patched and fixes, faster ...
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by Brandon Miniman | October 8, 2010 9:02 AMRead OnLook what we have here! A video by developer Cotulla showing an HTC HD2 booting into Windows Phone 7, and it looks quite believable. After showing the video, Cotulla teases by saying: Remember this is just DFT team tests, please never ask about release date and etc. Please don't annoy with questions...Future will show all. It's been quite a while since we've heard indications on whether or not legacy Windows Mobile device could run Windows Phone 7. The official response from Microsoft, and the rest of the OEM world, was a straight "no", but that doesn't mean that hopes for the underground ...
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by Brandon Miniman | October 7, 2010 11:09 AMRead OnThe HTCSense.com portal was announced along with the Desire HD and Desire Z in September. The portal was to act as a way to manage your HTC Android device from the web. Even though the Desire HD and Z aren't yet available, we managed to get a look at the HTCSense.com website by running the Desire HD ROM on the HTC HD2. In this video, we provide a full tour of the portal. The website is divided into five sections: Dashboard, Footprints, People, Messages, and HTC Hub. Dashboard lets you remotely wipe, lock and ring your phone, plus it lets you find your phone on a map, forward SMS, and ...
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by Evan Blass | October 3, 2010 10:10 AMRead OnFollowing the successful port of the Android-powered HTC Desire HD ROM over to the Windows Phone 6.5-powered HTC HD2, another XDA member has managed to perform the same feat with the HTC Desire Z ROM -- better known as the Vision or the T-Mobile G2. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the ROM has good performance and benchmarks well, with the only downside being lack of camera support, which admittedly is probably a dealbreaker for quite a few users. Both the Desire Z and the Desire HD are announced but unreleased Android 2.2 Froyo handsets sporting the latest version of HTC Sense interface ...
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by Anton D. Nagy | September 25, 2010 3:21 PMRead OnIf you are an HTC HD2 owner - or another recent HTC device owner - you most probably know about the automatic loudspeaker switch feature triggered when you place the device face down on the table while in a call. You also know that devices equipped with Proximity Sensors turn off the device's screen when it's close to your ear and back on when it is further away. Well, implementing the same concept, AutoLoudspeaker will automatically switch on the HTC HD2's loudspeaker and put the current call on speaker when you will hold the device away from you and will switch back to Headset when you ...
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by Brandon Miniman | September 23, 2010 3:10 PMRead OnMany consider Windows Phone 7 to be the successor of Windows Mobile 6.5. While that may be true from a product cycle standpoint, the operating systems are totally different in every way (heck, you can't sync Windows Phone 7 directly with Outlook!). In this video we show you just how different the platforms are, not only visually, but fundamentally. In a lot of ways, Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 are complete opposites (by design): Windows Mobile is extremely customizable, but sometimes unstable (requiring the user to soft reset a few too many times per week), while Windows Phone 7 is ...