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Cellphones Communications Handhelds

HTC Dream (Android) Video Emerges 142

Posted by timothy from the future-looks-bright dept.
Barence writes "A video purporting to show the new Android-based handset from HTC has surfaced online. The video claims to show the HTC Dream, with its orientation sensor in action, automatically flipping the screen as the user changes from holding it horizontally to vertically. HTC announced earlier this month that it would be ready to release an Android handset before the end of the year, with speculation that this referred to the Dream handset."
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HTC Dream (Android) Video Emerges More

HTC Dream (Android) Video Emerges

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  • Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @10:43AM (#24555653)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • The phone is just one piece... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by tgatliff ( 311583 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @10:52AM (#24555771)

    In all the coverage that I have seen, they keep talking about the phone itself. In my opinion, the reason the ipod was so successful was not as much because of the device, but rather on the integration of an easy to use platform of services for consumers. The ease of use App Store for the iPhone is a great example of this, but is only a small piece long term. In Apple's case, you can bet they have big integration plans for their OSX/iPod/iTunes/iTV product lines.

    Meaning, I really question is the industry can effectively challenge Apple in a long term sense without the full underpinning support of Microsoft and eventually the Linux community... I guess we will see, though...

    • The App Store will need considerable improvement if Apple is to keep up. There were early attempts to game Apple's system, and the number of apps is getting to "daunting" levels.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by samkass ( 174571 )

        The App Store will need considerable improvement if Apple is to keep up.

        Keep up with what? No one else has anything like it yet. At least wait until the first big competitor emerges to decide what Apple has to do to "keep up" with them.

        Yes, the App Store needs refinement. On the other hand, Apple now has a HUGE amount of data they can sift through to improve things. They know where referrers are coming from. They know how many hits each page is getting relative to the number of purchases. They have a

        • The competitors are Samsung and RIM, among others. No one else has anything else like it, true. But Apple needs actually to stay ahead of everyone else. I should've said "keep up the pace." If they let everyone else catch up, they'll just be another running in the pack. They need to keep out ahead of it.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mvdwege ( 243851 )

            No-one has anything like it?

            <looks at Nokia phone menu>

            Gee, what's that Download option doing there? There sure are no applications below that, are there?

            Mart

    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by rfunk ( 765049 )

      Yes and no. I have an iPod Touch (iPhone without the phone), and I like that it's easy to get accessories, but I don't like iTunes, and I want nothing to do with Apple's online store. On the other hand, the underground jailbreak-apps community is great (though in danger of being killed off by the App store).

      The potential with Android is that there could be a similar independent community of developers.

      As for Apple's integration.... I tried to go to apple.com/trailers yesterday with Mobile Safari, and the

    • I don't think too many people here in India use the iTMS, but the iPod's the most popular PMP here as well..
      • I'm curious though, are those genuine iPods or cheap knockoffs? From what I've seen in Bangladesh, there are a lot of cheap knockoffs that look like iPods, although I have seen what looked like genuine iPods too. However, those were owned by some pretty well off people, so I don't think it's that common in Bangladesh overall.

    • In Apple's case, you can bet they have big integration plans for their OSX/iPod/iTunes/iTV product lines

      Maybe. And yet I can sync Apple's Address Book and iCal with my Nokia phone with Bluetooth at the touch of a button. I can send and SMS from Address Book via my phone at the touch of a button. I can use my phone as a modem via bluetooth giving me access to the Internet from my (Apple) laptop when I'm mobile. And yet, sadly, I wouldn't be able do any of these things with an iPhone.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Belial6 ( 794905 )
      I'm sorry, but any device that already has wifi capabilities and can surf the web, but requires me to boot a full computer just to download a podcast fails the "easy to use" test by a wide margin. I'm not saying that the iPhone is a piece of crap, but it is slow, crashes, and has UI hurdles that we erected in an attempt to use their clout in the PMP player market to push their products in other markets.

  • Lousy video (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Nerdposeur ( 910128 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @10:54AM (#24555787) Journal
    Hey, I'm excited about Android, but that is one lousy video with illegible screen text and fuzzy icons.

    • The phone did not look that great either. Did you notice how the guy had to punch several of the icons over and over again to get them to respond? And I could not really tell because the video was so lousy, but it looks like it had an issue when he tried to flip it. I could not tell for sure, but it looks like the orientation did not actually flip until he poped out the keyboard.

      Oh, and for those of you who were too lazy to click through the article, here is the video [youtube.com]

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by filthpickle ( 1199927 )

        Did you notice how the guy had to punch several of the icons over and over again to get them to respond?

        I have the same problem on my iphone 3G...esp any buttons close to the corner of the screen

        it looks like it had an issue when he tried to flip it.

        my iphone also does this every now and again. Not enough to bother me, but it does happen.

    • Should they have called this the HTC Blur?

  • Automatic Flipping???? (Score:4, Informative)

    by spohnsoftware ( 963349 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @10:54AM (#24555791) Homepage
    "automatically flipping the screen as the user changes from holding it horizontally to vertically."???? It shows the user opening the phone and the oriententation changes!!!! Current HTC phones do that!!!! Where the "WOW" factor?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ghoti ( 60903 )

      The video is a joke. It's hard to tell if it's really the orientation sensor or if it's really the opening of the screen and there's just a long delay. He does turn it back to portrait briefly but there is no reaction (which could be due to the orientation sensor waiting a bit to see if the motion continues, though).

      Until there's a video that's actually focused and where the guy doesn't jerk the phone around like crazy, we won't know for sure.

    • My $120 Canon digital camera does it too.

  • I Want To Want This (Score:5, Insightful)

    by thomas.galvin ( 551471 ) <slashdot&thomas-galvin,com> on Monday August 11, 2008 @10:58AM (#24555861) Homepage

    I want to make love to this handset.

    The touchscreen looks solid, plus there's a full, slide-out keyboard. Beautiful.

    It's an open architecture, so there's none of this "sorry, we'll let this guy sell his 'I'm An Idiot' app for $1,000, but if you try to port a web browser over, we'll murder your children" crap.

    It runs Java, so there's none of this "you can program in any language you want, as long as your one of the ten people in the universe that uses Objective-C" crap.

    Please, Google, *please* don't screw this up. Cool it with the "for your eyes only" SDK shenanigans. Get a decent build out the door, and start getting some handset makers in the game.

    Give me something better than an iPhone.

    • Re:I Want To Want This (Score:4, Funny)

      by DoofusOfDeath ( 636671 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @11:16AM (#24556071)

      I want to make love to this handset.

      Given their open development environment and the types of programmers it attracts, I think you'll only have to wait a few weeks after the release date...

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by MightyYar ( 622222 )

      It runs Java, so there's none of this "you can program in any language you want, as long as your one of the ten people in the universe that uses Objective-C" crap.

      There may be fewer Objective-C programmers than Java programmers, but there are a hell of a lot more Objective-C programs with a sensible GUI then Java programs.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by mrboyd ( 1211932 )
      AFAIK Android doesn't run Java(TM) the platform by SUN(TM). The primary (only for now) development language has the same syntax as Java but none of the Java "JRE" API. The compiled bytecode is not the same and your pre-existing Java mobile application will not run nor can you recompile for it.

      Java, Objective C, C#, Python, whatever. It takes few hours to pick up a new language syntax but much longer to properly use a complex API. Since Android is no more Java than C++ is the STL I don't think it's giving

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Troed ( 102527 )

        Please go visit the Apache Harmony website, then re-post.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mrboyd ( 1211932 )
          Ok, my mistake, it seems Android is using apache harmony classlib. I was still on the old impression that they were not using a classic jvm but only a java compiler to "dalvik" and had their own API instead of sun's classic library. From what I've read very quickly because I don't care so much :)

          Let's then hope then, they'll be the first one to make java not suck so badly on a mobile phone. :)

          • You are correct. they are NOT using a classic JVM, but a precompiler to convert java bytecode to Dalvik bytecode (dx). Dalvik, appears to be a register (as opposed to stack) oriented VM. And is better tuned to work with ARM processors.

            The Andriod development kit, DOES use some J2SE stuff, for familiarity reasons (Stringbuffer, etc) and uses Apache Harmony to provide the implementations.

            all information is on Wikipedia, and Android websites.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by forgoil ( 104808 )

      What's with the ObjC hate? It is real easy to learn and a very capable language. I fail to see how anyone could consider themselves a professional in the software world and be scared of learning a new language as easy as ObjC. You can learn enough to be productive in one day for sure.

      Check out Jimmy Nilsson: http://jimmynilsson.com/blog/ [jimmynilsson.com] I often hear him say "You should learn a new language every year". I can't but agree. Heck, I wish I could learn all the ones I am interested in this very year:)

      That being

  • Could be... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by ahoehn ( 301327 ) <andrew&hoe,hn> on Monday August 11, 2008 @10:59AM (#24555875) Homepage

    Both the Boy Genius Report [boygeniusreport.com] and Engadget [engadget.com] are fairly skeptical that this is the "final" Dream, mostly because the phone in this video isn't nearly as attractive as HTC's other recent phones.

    I hope it's not final. Why would HTC release something that looks like the generic phone in this video for their first android handset when the company is perfectly capable of making something as attractive as the Touch Diamond [htc.com]?

    Also, I know that Youtube comments are generally about as useful as catshit, but the uploader claims in the comments below his video, "i Think Semi-final but not Sure. And there is a black one. i'll upload the live demo of it."

  • The real news: No mention of iPhone in the article (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chairboy ( 88841 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @11:03AM (#24555915) Homepage

    Folks, folks, the REAL news here is that the word iPhone doesn't appear in the article. We've reached a point where a phone w/ new technology (Android, in this case) can be mentioned without the comparison being made. I don't know if it was an oversight by the author, or if iPhones have passed the hype-cusp or what, but this is a big day for cell phone news.

    I loves my iPhone, btw, but I'm not a fanboi that thinks that it has an inherent greatness because of its origins. The most exciting thing to me about the iPhone is the effect it's having on the rest of the industry. Competition makes things better, and if future phones make serious inroads to usability of the caliber the iPhone did, then we're in for some great stuff.

    The challenge for Android seems to be making it compelling for the user. The news I've read and documents I've reviewed suggest that the emphasis is on the developers, making it powerful to code on and providing a heavy duty framework. The UI demos I've seen so far have left me cold, though, and remind me more of Windows Mobile.

    Anyhow, I digress. No mention of iPhone: Good. Not because I hate the iPhone (I loves it), but because I think the focus should be on the user, not on one specific device.

    • Thank you for providing "iPhone" content

    • If they have researched well, they could figure Symbian devices having motion sensor (yes, they exist) already have gesture based control via 3rd party Application.

      Funny and sad thing is, the biggest player of market gets such an interesting application but only place you will hear about it is Symbian news sites.

      http://www.symbian-freak.com/news/008/05/hi_n_bye_gesture_controll_for_your_phone_is_out.htm [symbian-freak.com]

      Also I think Android isn't getting some real feedback from IT sites since they are afraid from Google. Lac

    • Anyhow, I digress. No mention of iPhone: Good. Not because I hate the iPhone (I loves it), but because I think the focus should be on the user, not on one specific device.

      I certainly understand where you're coming from, but I also understand why the iPhone is so often mentioned in comparison to Android and similar products: the iPhone is the "reference build" of a smart phone.

      Your phone has a touch screen? Cool; is it as responsive as the iPhone? Your phone has email? Nice; is it as well integrated as the iPhone? You have turn-by-turn navigation? Nice, is it... wait a minute, you don't have that on the iPhone? Wow...

      iPhone is the product to meet and beat, so comparison

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Zadaz ( 950521 )

      For the average consumer they don't need to mention the iPhone. I was at a bar last week and there was a TV on. Several times there was a commercial for a phone that wasn't the iPhone (but had a touch screen motion sensing, etc.) and twice I heard people make comments on the iPhone when they saw the ad. The iPhone has such huge mindshare that even an ad selling something similar to an iPhone is selling the iPhone.

      If anyone is going to really compete with the iPhone in the next several years they're going

  • orientation sensor? (Score:3, Informative)

    by Animaether ( 411575 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @11:17AM (#24556079) Journal

    I'm not seeing the orientation change when he tilts from from landscape to portrait and back. The only change I witness coincides with sliding out the keyboard; guess what, an actual switch - such as that on the HTC Wizard (I have one) - will do that much.

    But even if it had a proper orientation sensor - so what. This is a blurry video of a seemingly rather ugly flimsy (saw that slide-out wiggle? yikes) device that has trouble registering taps (see beginning of video).

    I know that Android is a platform, not a phone - but for the sake of the platform, I hope this device (whatever it is - I have a hard time believing it's an HTC product... even a model study) is not what is going to be associated with it.

  • ...automatically flipping the screen as the user changes from holding it horizontally to vertically

    My Nokia N82 does that. The phone in the video seems to flip the screen as the guy pulls out the keyboard.

  • Where's the (Open) source? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Nursie ( 632944 ) on Monday August 11, 2008 @11:24AM (#24556163)

    Android apparently runs a load of Apache and GPL licensed stuff - so where's the source guys?

    I want to run it on my Neo Freerunner as it's not looking like the openmoko guys are going to be geting a solid phone platform available any time soon...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Bazman ( 4849 )

      They don't have to supply the source until they distribute the binaries. GPL FAQ:

      http://www.gnu.org/licenses/gpl-faq.html#GPLRequireSourcePostedPublic [gnu.org]

  • "By the end of the year" is too late. My Verizon phone broke and the iphone 3g + my Verizon early termination is affordable.

    I already waited six months for Android and I can't wait another six months. Maybe I can spring for an Android phone in two years when my AT&T contract runs out.

    • If you want an iphone, just get it. If you want something else, then wait like the rest of us.

      I was actually wondering what I'd do in February when my AT&T contract period is up. My 8525 is getting a bit long in the tooth but I hadn't seen anything I really wanted more as I happen to like the keyboard interface for typing in notes (as compared to a touchscreen). The big question is the apps. I haven't kept up so I don't know what kind of calendar sync will be available with outlook. Note that I keep o

      • Just curious, why not upgrade to a Tilt? Or maybe a Touch Pro, that looks awesome but I don't know when it's going to AT&T. For once CDMA carriers got the flagship HTC phone first.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ErikZ ( 55491 ) *

      It's probably for the best that you do. If you're lucky, you'll be getting a second generation Andriod by that time.

      If you're unlucky, that's when the first generation will come out.

  • We've got a few demo models at work (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 11, 2008 @11:48AM (#24556435)

    For the most part the experience is pretty slick. Coming from using the iPhone for a year now some of the navigation paradigms seemed foreign so it took a little getting used to.

    For one thing, the screen rotation is not detected but dependent on whether or not the screen is slid out. When the handset is closed the screen is in a vertical orientation and when the handset is open and the keyboard is exposed the screen is in a horizontal orientation.

    There is no onscreen keyboard so the only way to actually do input is with the screen open. It's kind of annoying because you might be using it with one hand in vertical mode and come to a point where you have to type in something so you have to stop, rotate the device, open the screen and then start typing.

    One big feature it has over the iPhone is copy/paste. It only works on input fields but at least you've got something.

    The google maps street view compass thing was pretty slick and worked just as I had seen demoed. Overall I think it will be some good healthy competition and hopefully force Apple to open up their platform a little more.

    As far as development goes there's no approval process or dictator mandating unpublished UI rules. You can download the eclipse IDE, plug in the phone via USB and deploy apps right to the phone or publish a file that can be downloaded and installed.

    For people who require a physical keyboard, this will be the phone to have.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by GeckoAddict ( 1154537 )
      How is any of that different from something like the Kaiser (AT&T Tilt) [xda-developers.com] or a half dozen others [xda-developers.com]?

      Screen rotation based on sliding out screen? check.
      Onscreen keyboard if you don't want to slide out the keyboard? check.
      copy/paste? check.
      Google maps with built in GPS? check.
      Approval process for apps? none.
      Remove SIM Lock and operator lock for free? check.
      Tons of apps already available (many for free)? check.
      Physical keyboard? check.
      3G? check.
      Flash your own boot screen/OS/image? check.
      Write apps

      • whooosh.. thats the sound of something going totally over your head.

        YES, the "phone that was demoed" indeed does have technical features that existed before. Considering HTC has been building windows mobiles for ages, that is not surprising.

        The point here, is the SOFTWARE. Windows Mobile has MANY limitations, partly due to its age. We all know its limitations on the interface (most apps not yet read for finger access, inability to use more that 16bit colour schemes, and OS tuned for a screen res of 320x200,

  • beware the comical video quality. as pointed out in the comments it sounds like Darth Vader was testing it.

    "*whooosh* *huff* *whooosh* *huff* *whooosh* *huff* the force is strong with this phone."

    cure toy, but I'll reserve judgment until I see a more professional video of it - even for youtube that's bad.

  • I'm still very skeptical of on-screen keyboards. The iPhone keyboard is alright, but it's not quite as easy to use as most would like it. The OpenMoko's keyboard is terrible, and can only really be used with a stylus.

    How's the keyboard on the HTC models?

    I'm getting a new phone in October, and I've not yet decided between the iPhone, OpenMoko, HTC, or whatever is the successor to the Nokia E70 that Maddox so enjoys (Google "maddox iphone").

  • Will Android support all the 2D/3D graphics/video decoding functions supported by the Qualcomm chips in the HTC phones? I currently have an AT&T HTC Tilt and it is mediocre at best, with unbelievably buggy software and complete lack of graphics acceleration support. Any future HTC phone is going to have to be AMAZING and nearly perfect to buy HTC again.

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