htc

Report: HTC To Launch 4G LTE Windows Phone On AT&T In Early 2012

December 19, 2011 | By Pradeep

As we are expecting 4G LTE based Nokia Lumia device launch in US early next year, it seems HTC is also planning to join the party with its 4G LTE device. According to the sources of BGR, HTC is set to launch a 4G LTE device on AT&T which will be similar to HTC Titan with 4.7inch display profile. If this report is true, then we will have the much needed 4G/LTE momentum for Windows Phone in US.

Source: BGR

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HTC’s Portable Bluetooth Conference Speaker looks pretty cool

December 16, 2011 | By Surur

htc-portable-bluetooth-conference-speaker-bs-p200

If you like your gadgets cool-looking, few would come close to this portable Bluetooth conference calling speakers by HTC.

The HTC Portable Bluetooth Conference Speaker BS P100 , which is currently up for pre-order, can pair with 2 different handsets and offer up to 10 hours of conference calling or 6 hours of A2DP music playback.

Like most of HTC’s accessories it is however not very cheap, weighing in at £89.99 at Expansys here, but think how much you will impress your business colleagues when you pull this one out of your attaché case at your next impromptu meeting.

Via WindowsPhonenews.com

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HTC may ignore German patent ban, risks 250,000 euro per phone fine

November 29, 2011 | By Surur

nrd2151-i2 HTC has said it will ignore the IPCom patent complaint which was decided against the company, and which would ultimately lead to a ban in the sale of HTC handsets, including their Windows Phones ones, in Germany.

HTC said that Ipcom’s intellectual property claim had already been ruled invalid by the German Federal Patents court in December 2010, but notable experts disagree. The patents relate to how phones connect to 3G base stations.

HTC has dropped its appeal case against an earlier decision which favoured IPCom, leaving the company with a default judgement.

"Since HTC has never come up with an offer that adequately reflects the value of these patents, Ipcom has been left with no choice – we will use the right awarded by the courts, likely resulting in HTC devices disappearing from shops during the crucial Christmas season," said Ipcom’s managing director, Bernhard Frohwitter.

He added that if HTC ignored the order Ipcom would ask for the phone maker to be fined.

"It’s up to the court and could go up to 250,000 euro (£213,000) per violation per phone," Mr Frohwitter said.

Ipcom said it has now told HTC that it intends to enforce the ban.

What IPCom is however after is ultimately license fees. He added that Ipcom was still willing to settle, providing HTC agreed to pay a "fair" licence fee.

HTC only sold 1.43 million phones into Germany in the last 9 months, making it an important but not vital market. It remains to be seen if HTC is willing to deal or not.

HTC: “We will focus on the product next year”

November 28, 2011 | By Pradeep

We hardly saw any new innovative design from HTC devices this year. Most of them looked almost similar with some devices being exactly same, for example HTC Titan(Windows Phone) and Sensation XE(Android). More than us, their investors are worried about HTC’s poor show this year. HTC’s shares fell over 30 percent in the last eight sessions and their CFO now says that,

“We will focus on the product next year, better and more competitive. Other than new LTE phones for the U.S. market, we also have phones for the global market. We will launch some worldwide flagship products. We’re confident in them.”

Hope they bring in some new devices for Windows Phone platform not depending too much on Android.

Source: Reuters

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HTC Windows Phones have potentially illegal Internet Sharing bug

November 20, 2011 | By Surur

Users on XDA-Developers have discovered after they received the firmware update which brings internet sharing to their devices, they have suddenly developed a dynamic MAC address, which is of course a major no-no and possibly illegal.

The Media Access Control address (MAC address) is a unique identifier assigned to network interfaces and is normally unchanging, except for spoofing done by hackers to circumvent security, such as MAC address filtering, where hackers change their MAC address to pretend to be another device.

It seems however after the HTC firmware update, if you want to change your MAC address on a Windows Phone all you have to do is simply reboot. The bug does not require you to actually use or activate internet sharing.

Besides being illegal, the problem can cause issues for users who are in an environment where MAC addresses are used for security, access control and to assign static IP addresses. With the address ever changing none of these measures will work very well.

Some XDA-Dev members have reported that HTC will be addressing the issue tomorrow. Till then, if you do rely on a static MAC address, it may be a good idea to decline the update when offered.

Via Professeur thibault

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Windows Phone Update With Build 7740 Coming To Fix Exchange Server 2003 Issues

November 16, 2011 | By Pradeep

A month ago we came across a bug in Windows Phone 7.5 which caused the omission of the original message when reply to/forward a mail related to Microsoft Exchange Server 2003. It seems Microsoft is delivering an update with build number 7.10.7740.16 that solves this issue. Along with that Microsoft has also fixed the voicemail notification issue.

Did you get any update notification so far ??

Source: WPXAP via: Welovewp.hk

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Rumour: HTC developing software for direct synchronization with Outlook

November 10, 2011 | By Surur

ActiveSync Direct synchronization without a cloud intermediary is a feature for which there is huge demand, and which Microsoft shows no indication of providing.

Now Pocketinfo.nl reports that HTC is planning to develop software which will allow a Windows phone directly to synchronize with Outlook. The person Pocketinfo.nl talked to said as an OEM HTC had the deep access available to enable this feature, and that it would help Windows Mobile upgraders consider Windows Phone 7 more seriously.

It is not clear if it will in fact be over the USB port or wirelessly, but it is of note that Nokia has already demonstrated a similar feature with their ability to import contacts over Bluetooth from other phones, so it is certainly possible.

Would our readers buy a HTC Windows Phone over another simple because it could synchronize directly with Outlook, or is it just a really outmoded idea? Let us know below.

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HTC Cybertron will destroy the smartphone world in 2012

November 8, 2011 | By Surur

cybetron Pocketnow have released a list of HTC code names representing devices already released or still to be announced.

The list includes a few Windows Phone 7 handsets, like the HTC Eternity and HTC Omega and of course include a longer list of Android handsets.

Intriguingly however it also includes a number of device still to be released or leaked, including the rather exciting HTC Cybertron.

Already know	New names
Bliss Edge Eternity Glider Holiday Omega Prime Vigor Ruby Runnymede Radiant (a known upcoming WP7.75 handset)	Act Alpha Blue Cybertron Elite Fighter Fit Flick Grande Jet Key Layer Pico Pop Quattro RTP Splendor Square Tag Tahiti Tube Veloce Villa Vitesse

Pocketnow notes that there are more than 20 handsets yet to be released, which should last even HTC at least a year. Of course at least a few of those will be running Windows Phone 7, and we look forward to finding out which ones over the next few months.

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HTC spending Microsoft’s marketing money well in France

October 18, 2011 | By Surur

frenchtitan

HTC has decided on a theme with the HTC Titan, and that is big. Monwindowsphone reports the HTC Titan is being advertised in Paris with a huge billboard covering the side of a building, comparing the HTC Titan with the Eiffel Tower and sporting the slogan – “See everything big.”

htc-radar-pub-youtube They are also advertising the HTC Radar in France on YouTube with the tagline “Keeping track of your conversations” referring to the Windows Phone 7.5 threads feature.

We have earlier seen a full page spread for the HTC Titan in a UK newspaper and of course some creative TV advertising. Maybe turning the marketing money over directly to the OEMs was a good idea after all.

See more at Monwindowsphone here.

Thanks Gilles for the tip and Andrea for the picture.

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HTC buys Kids-friendly browser maker Inquisitive Minds

October 18, 2011 | By Surur

zoodles-22-520x354 HTC, who has been on a spending spree recently, has just purchased another odd-duck company.

Their most recent purchase is Inquisitive Minds, a California-based company which owns game app Zoodles, which is designed for children aged eight and younger, which HTC purchased for $13 million.

“Children interact with technology in a wonderfully natural way,” Mr Chou said. “It’s important that they are protected while exploring and learning. We want to create a wholesome, family-oriented environment for our HTC devices, which makes Zoodles a perfect fit.”

Presumably HTC is planning to launch a kind-friendly mode on their upcoming Android tablets, but with HTC also suspected to be looking into Windows 8 tablets this service may pop up in other places also.

HTC has also invested $40 million in OnLive, the streaming video game service, and appears to be slowly gathering a platform of services which, while not rivalling Apple or Microsoft in scope, certainly looks very interesting in breadth.

HTC accused of poor customer service in UK

October 6, 2011 | By Surur

The BBC Watchdog consumer advocacy program have come down pretty hard on HTC, accusing it of atrocious customer service in the above segment.

HTC responded by blaming a temporary issue due to 3rd party service centres, saying:

As a company, our key focus is ensuring that our customers have the best possible experience when dealing with HTC. Unfortunately earlier this year, we experienced some issues with one of our repair centres which resulted in lower than expected customer service standards. We are sincerely sorry that we disappointed some of our customers and are fully committed to resolving any outstanding issues swiftly.

HTC has 44 repair centres across Europe, including four in the UK. Between March and May 2011, we transitioned one of our UK centres to a new partner to provide extended capacity and better service for our customers. Unfortunately, the move was not as smooth as we’d planned and this led to a backlog of repairs, some IT issues and a subsequent fall in customer service standards.

Whilst we estimate that less than 10% of UK customers served by our repair facilities during this time have been affected by this issue, we recognise that is not the point. We inconvenienced and disappointed those customers, and did not deliver on our brand promise. This is simply not acceptable and, for that, we would like to offer our sincerest apologies.
We have now conducted a thorough review of our repair centre operations and have put in place a number of measures to ensure that service is never eclipsed by an operational failure of this magnitude again. Today, our UK service operation is stable and performing at the same level or better than our service commitments, and we are using the learnings from this experience to change and improve process and management worldwide.

Any of our customers who may have issues outstanding should contact us on +44 845 890 0079, where our team will be on hand to assist them.

With regards to the four cases that Watchdog highlighted, we have personally apologised to Ms Holmes, Mr Meiklejohn, Mr Kenyon and Mr Oakley and can confirm that all four customers have confirmed that their individual issues have been resolved and that they have been appropriately compensated for the time and distress caused by the repair delays.

Once again we are extremely apologetic about the fall in customer service standards. We remain focused on delivering the best possible experience to our customers and continue to strive to meet our customer promise.

I must say, while I have no doubt the issues are real, the timing of the segment of very suspicious, with the release of the rather mediocre iPhone 4S. One can almost hear the subtext out loud – if you want good customer service, get an iPhone.

Have any of our readers been victim to this? Let us know below.

Read the full article at the BBC here.

Via Coolsmartphone.com

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HTC Radar reviewed by CNET

October 4, 2011 | By andrewbares

CNET Asia already got their hands on the HTC Radar and just published their full review of the phone, giving it about 3.7 out of 5 stars, praising the design but not enjoying the 1.0 GHz single core processor or the non-upgradable 8 GB storage.

Design-wise, CNET appreciated the clean white look of the handset, and found the 3.8″ WVGA (480 x 800) LCD display to be an adequate size for their needs. They note that the capacitive buttons weren’t as annoying as the HTC Evo 3D, which is great. However, they point out that you can’t upgrade the existing 8 GB of NAND storage, and that the 1,520 mAh battery is non-removable.

In terms of features, CNET liked the included HTC apps, like Photo Enhancer and HTC Watch. They also note the handset has WiFi Internet Sharing enabled! They concluded that the camera is average, and has a nice quick shutter, and performed somewhat better in low-lighting shots thanks to the BSI sensor. Sounds like HTC still hasn’t perfected their cameras, but at least they are making improvements.

And finally, they talked about the performance of the device. They said that despite the old 1.0 GHz processor, the phone didn’t feel slow at all (which we all know, since current Windows Phones are snappy as ever!). They also noted that you’ll be charging this phone every night, but it should be able to last you through the day with about 15% left at night (typical for most smartphones).

Overall, CNET sounded pleased with the device, but nothing truly impressed them. The HTC Radar is HTC’s low-end WP7 device, so a review like this was to be expected. HTC also is releasing the Titan, which is their high-end 1.5 GHz, 4.7″ Windows Phone that aims to impress!

Visit CNET for the Full Review

The HTC Radar is coming to T-Mobile USA and will support T-Mobile’s 4G network with speeds of up to 14.4 Mbps. It is expected to be available in time for the holidays. No further release date info is known yet for the USA.

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HTC’s Android phones contain massive data leak vulnerability

October 2, 2011 | By Surur

Security researches have found HTC includes a logging application in most of their latest Android phones which quietly collects user information in the background, and which then serves up the information to any application which asks who also has internet access.

The data collected by HTC Logger and which is available to any application with android.permission.INTERNET includes:

the list of user accounts, including email addresses and sync status for each
last known network and GPS locations and a limited previous history of locations
phone numbers from the phone log
SMS data, including phone numbers and encoded text (not sure yet if it’s possible to decode it, but very likely)
system logs (both kernel/dmesg and app/logcat), which includes everything your running apps do and is likely to include email addresses, phone numbers, and other private info

It is not clear what HTC intends to do with all the data, but the only way for users to prevent 3rd party apps from accessing the data is either to root their device or to flash a new ROM.

HTC has so far not responded to queries by the researchers.