Experience with the HTC Touch HD - Future of pleco / WM

daniel123

榜眼
Because the QVGA display of my ipaq 114 is not very clear I wanted to buy a new decice. I looked for something with a big display. The ipaq has 3.5" and I cannot imagine to use a smaller one. The Xperia X1 and also the new Touch Diamond 2 have 3.2" displays. I thought for well using pleco they are a little to small.

Anyway the only new WM device with a big display seems to be the HTC Touch HD. I studied the blogs and forums and thought it should be possible to get everything to work and bought a cheap one with 2 years warranty via ebay.

The result is I got a device that is neither meat nor fish. The display is made for finger use. But many things on WM specially inside Pleco are not usable with finger. thats why you need a stylus. Using a stylus is no problem for me. I use it since my first Palm in 1998. But working with the stylus on the Touch HD is like a pain. The stylus is so short and thin that my arm and hand hurt when using it. Also the display is not very sensible for stylus action. I have to press with much power.

Working with stylus on my iPaq makes fun. On the Touch HD it is annoying.

Many things using Pleco are problematic. IA does not work in all applications. Selecting a part of the dictionary on pages with scroll bar just works when the keyboard is open. This is because when keyboard is closed the page is finger scrollable like the iPhone. Sliding the finger up and down. But it prevents me to select and highlight one sentence that I want to copy via copy&paste. When I activate the keyboard the page is no longer scrollable with finger. Then it is possible to select text.
The same effect is in "Manage Flashcards": In left drop down I select category and in the right drop down I want to scroll down to find my category. This is just possible when the keyboard is opened because otherwise I scroll the main page (including the category content)

Some buttons of Pleco are good usable with fingers but many are to small. And because the touch display of the Touch HD is designed for finger use it does not work well with stylus. For example In flascard session - Free answer mode the Pinyin keyboard is like a pain with stylus because I have to give so much pressure to get a reaction.

This leads me to the question of the future of Pleco. For myself I don't need cool graphic effects. I just wanted to buy a device with big display (including a good phone) using via stylus. But I guess WM and the devices will change dramatically. In future more and more things must be usable without a stylus. And I am afraid there are less people that are willing to use a stylus. For the display sensitivity I guess it makes a big difference. A stylus gives pressure on a small point. A finger gives its pressure to a bigger area. But the finger could give easily more short and strong pressure like (short but forceful) pressing a real keyboard than writing with a stylus. When hand writing with a stylus I don't want to give much pressure. It should be a little pressure and than flowing. I think the touch display of new devices will change in respect to this requirement.

It is difficult to explain for me in English but I mean the contruction of a display for finger use is maybe not the same than for stylus use. On the Touch HD it seems to be true. The stylus sensitivity is worse than every other PDA I ever had.

When I have a look how the devices changed during the last 6 monts I am afraid next year the whole WM world (6.5 and 7.0) are no longer well usable with stylus as compfortable as today. We can see the beginning right now: The Toudh HD as I talked above, the Samsung Omnia has a stylus but no place for keeping it inside because Samsung maybe think you do not need it (I don't know how big the stylus is). Maybe soon the first WM device will be sold that has no stylus at all.

I think even if writing without a stylus will be compfortable, I nevertheless often want to use select and copy some text. Maybe a word, maybe a part of a sentence, maybe some characters. How can this be done just with my fingers? How can I write without a stylus inside the sketchbox?

Where goes Pleco user interface in the future? How can Pleco give an answer to this trend?
 

Shadowdh

状元
If it is the case that phones will move away from using a stylus I think alot of business users will be put out...

I use the x1 and have to say I am very happy if the phones keep moving this way it can be used with finger and stylus but the finger pointing can sometimes be less than precise as my fingers are fairly fat and clumsy... but the screen is very readable... and stylus use is very easy...

For my next phone (if I change in the future) I was thinking of a touch HD Pro 2 which has a keyboard... but I may have to look into it further...
 

renovator

榜眼
I have the HTC touch diamond and now on average do over 1000 flashcards per day in Pleco. I found out early on that the HTC stylus was made for Asians with midgit hands and is not comfortable to use for a few hours on end for larger European and American hands. I went to a local craft store that had a large knitting needle supply section and bought a pack of 5, 8 inch long orange plastic knitting needles pointed at both ends. I cut each needle in half which ended up giving me 10, 4 inch styluses. After cutting them, had to melt the cut end as theses needles are hollow with a metal core inside and the wire core would fall out if the plastic was not melted over it. These needle/Styluses are a little flexible and a pure joy to use. Even after a couple of hours of doing cards, the stylus is still very friendly to the hands and much faster to hit the proper keys on the Pleco virtual keyboard. To store the stylus, I cut a small slit in the neck band strap I use to hold my phone and put the house the stylus there.

After 6 months, I am still on my first stylus which shows no wear so this one pack of knitting needles will probably last me longer than the phone.
 

Shadowdh

状元
Renovator that is genius... not only the knitting needle trick but the storage of them as well... will keep that in mind for if (when) I lose my stylus... thanks for the tip! :D
 

renovator

榜眼
I tried several options before this and each option had problems of stylus falling apart after a month using converted yak earpicks found on the streets of Shanghai to metal needles that were too agressive on the phone screen protectors and on the hands as well. I will confess to using the needles as tooth picks as well and chewing on them while trying to remember some of my chinese characters. The following needles are the only ones that met all my requirements and are a real joy to use.

They are produced by Lion Brand Yarn Co., Art. #5008 and you can go to their website http://www.lionbrand.com to find the store nearest you in the US that carries these needles. The best ones are the Super Smooth Double Pointed Needles, US 5(3.75mm), 8"(20cm) Flexible Easy-To-Handle Durable.
 

mikelove

皇帝
Staff member
Replacing the stylus sounds like it could definitely help, though if you're not happy with the Touch HD in general it's probably best to just return it and move on. That's a great tip about knitting needles, though you definitely need to be careful to choose the right kind / make sure they're not too sharp to avoid damaging the screen. (sometimes even ostensibly blunt items will have a little plastic molding ridge or something that can cause scratches, so it's important to check for that) Manufacturers have been skimping on styluses for years, I still don't understand why - particularly annoying on some phones like the Touch Diamond where there's clearly some extra room under the battery cover.

As far as Pleco usage, IA from the taskbar really isn't the recommended way of getting to IA at this point, in fact we've considered taking it out altogether - it doesn't get along very well with TouchFlo. However, if you use PlecoLaunch, assigned to a hardware button or to the start menu or invoked using a third-party application launcher (lots of them out there that work fine with TouchFlo), that should work correctly. The scrolling issues you have are actually pretty easy to fix if you just run off TouchFlo scrolling - if you google around for "touchflo scroll disable" you should see a number of free utilities / registry hacks that can address that.

As far as the future of Pleco, we certainly plan to adapt the interface on WM to make it more touch-friendly, but we're waiting to see how Microsoft is approaching the issue of touch input in Windows Mobile 7 - we wouldn't want to redesign the interface only to have to redesign it again in 6 months or a year. The touch-related innovations they've made in (non-Mobile) Windows 7 appear to be getting pretty high marks, so hopefully they'll bring some of those same improvements to smartphones.

We've already come up with good solutions to the problems of finger handwriting input (maximize drawing area and it works fine, as long as the screen is big enough) and text selection which we'll be premiering on our iPhone version, and similar things should be possible soon on WM - you do lose a little accuracy in both cases, adding perhaps to the incentives for us to develop a desktop version to help with tasks which are no longer as easy as they used to be on handhelds, but the software's still quite usable for pretty much everything that people normally use it for.
 

daniel123

榜眼
I sold the Touch HD and returned to the iPaq. It seems that I have to wait for a good phone in future. Hope there will be phones with a more sensitive touch screen for stylus actions than the Touch HD.

The knitting needle thing is a cool idea. I will keep it in my mind.
 

tianli

举人
...have you fellas thought about forming a knitting group :p

You can buy multi functions pens that include a stylus. eBay varies by country but find pens and writing instruments and type in stylus. If you are using a PDA then you are likely also holding a pen or have one in your shirt.
Some include some mild springing as feedback, some have lasers (zzzzzrrrttt) some have multi colours, some have bling, and some will make you look smart and successful.

They will even improve your Handwriting searches as accuracy is increased 10-fold over a mini thingi stulus sticki ma-jigi.
You can even leave your supplied stylus in the pda as a backup for when you lose your new beaut stylus pen.

Fisher Space pens / Rorting / or really turn up the wank and buy a Mont Blanc http://willmonwah.blogspot.com/2006/08/ ... tylus.html :shock:
 

renovator

榜眼
The beauty of the plastic hollow core knitting needles are that they are somewhat flexible and therefore a joy to use even after a couple of hours straight of doing Pleco cards. So, pull out your Mont Blancs, Dolcevita, etc to look cool and quickly jot something down on your PDA, but when it comes to hours on the Pleco virtual keyboard of Pinyin input or drawing characters, you may not look cool with the knitting needles but your hands will thank you. :)
 

ben_gb

探花
Probably too late for the OP, but you can adjust the senstivity of the touch screen on WM phones to make them more easy to use with both finger and stylus. You can either use one of the 'tweaking' tools (like Advanced Config), or you can do it without extra software by re-running the 'Align Screen' tool (under settings).

To do the latter, you run Align screen and tap as lightly as you can on each cross-hair. I normally tap each cross multiple times gradually increasing the pressure until it accepts it. Doing this will increase the overall senstivity of the touch screen in all apps.

Ben
 

daniel123

榜眼
ben_gb said:
Probably too late for the OP, but you can adjust the senstivity of the touch screen on WM phones to make them more easy to use with both finger and stylus. You can either use one of the 'tweaking' tools (like Advanced Config), or you can do it without extra software by re-running the 'Align Screen' tool (under settings).

To do the latter, you run Align screen and tap as lightly as you can on each cross-hair. I normally tap each cross multiple times gradually increasing the pressure until it accepts it. Doing this will increase the overall senstivity of the touch screen in all apps.

Ben

THX for you help. It's some time ago that I used the Touch HD. But I already tried both. I could see a little improvement but compared to my HP iPaq 114 ist is still non-sensitive. Using it my hand hurt.
That's why I sold the Touch HD and went back to the iPaq waiting for a cool Phone in future. :)
 
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