HTC Vivid [ Edited ]

[arienette]

Has anyone picked up the HTC Vivid yet today? How is it?

[rdcinhou]

I just picked up one today at the local AT&T store in Houston.

It was able to Bluetooth sync my 109 contacts and SMS messages from my old Nokia N97 easily.

It is quite quick and "vivid" in the display.

There are good online tutorials on how to use the phone, which is good since the user packaging has only a quick-start guide.

The first time charging it, the battery got really hot, but cooled off after it was off the charger.

I am having a little difficult with the WiFi...it kept telling me that the key for my home access point wasn't correct despite checking it many times--still working on that (there are a lot of people out there with WiFi issues with HTCs doing a cursory internet search).

The mail program is orders of magnitude better than what I had before, but take a good while to configure.

The Friends Streaming app is "almost" Facebook (i.e. it has the streams, but not the messages and other features).  The actual Facebook app is organized a bit differently than I am used to.

I'm trying to pick a good password manager app--I used Handy Safe Pro on my N97 but I don't know if the data file with my 300+ entries is 100% compatible between Symbian and Android versions.  I've written to the software manufacturer to inquire about that. 

Upcoming work....configuring my RSS feeds, picking an e-book reader and an MS Office-compatible viewing/editing tool.

Just too many apps out there with too little detailed reviews of their operation.

[rdcinhou]

Week #3 Update:

1. WiFi connection problem went away after my first reboot. Hasn't had a problem since.

2. I didn't like any of the RSS Feed readers that I've researched--instead I put bookmarks to each site inside a Folder on a Home Screen. Selecting it causes the Internet Browser to go directly to the site--much less hassle than all the rigamarole that the feed readers put you through.

3. eBook Readers...rather than choose one--I have several...Kindle, Nook, Google Reader, but the best is Aldiko--you can bookmark a book directly to a shortcut on a home screen and best of all it handles PDF hyperlinks and pre-formats tables of contents--something that the Adobe Reader doesn't do!  I highly recommend downloading the Vivid manual from the AT&T website links and installing it for quick-reference on your Vivid.  It is 199 pages of well-written instructions.

Side note... one reader app that was good on my Nokia N97 is unworkable on the HTC Vivid is eReader.

4. Still looking at Office apps...Polaris comes on the Vivid and seems to do better than the other "free" apps. It does a good job on Excel, but a poor job on Word documents.  I'l lkeep looking (recommendations welcome).

5. Battery life is a bit disappointing...I have to top off the charge about three times a day, but maybe I'm using it too much?

6. GPS is outstanding compared to the N97...nearly instant "fix" when outside and the fluxgate compass doesn't require "calibration" like the N97 did.

7. I did add (2) pay apps...HandySafe Pro (same encrypted password manager as on my N97) and the data transfer was perfect.  The other is ePrint which allows me to print to my non-WiFi networked color laser printer. The app has one glitch on retreiving email to print, but otherwise is very good!  I've written to the develop about the problem and made some other suggestions for improvement.

[groomerdude]

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rdcinhou wrote:

4. Still looking at Office apps...Polaris comes on the Vivid and seems to do better than the other "free" apps. It does a good job on Excel, but a poor job on Word documents.  I'l lkeep looking (recommendations welcome).

Take a look at QuickOffice Pro -- I am very happy with it.  Don't do a lot of editing on phone but am pleased with its display and handling of MS Office documents (word, excel and ppt).

[rdcinhou]

Thanks for the tip...I had both QuickOffice and OfficeSuite on my N97...I favored QuickOffice as the OfficeSuite app would "hang" in PowerPoint presentation mode requiring you to kill the app.

I'll keep looking and evaluating.

On another note...I'm very surprised at the lack of "voices" for the TTS (Text-to-Speech) for voice navigation.

The Pico TTS is very "mechanical".  I downloaded and evaluated some of the other ones on the Android Market but they suffer from many problems the worst of which is volume.  The N97 had a L-O-T of voices (for free!) available all of which were very understandable.

In many ways Android is not a mature as S60 v5.0 as many aspects of the integration into a personal communicator are not very automatic.

[Ann154]

Try SVOX for text to speech. They have trials for the voices at the moment.

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.svox.classic

[rdcinhou]

I tried the SVOX voices.

Their main problem is that for Voice navigation their volume is very, very low--even when you set the TTS and the phone volume at max.

Many people have complained about this.

Also because they consume a large amount of memory, they apparently fail in the middle of voice navigation when the memory fills up with map panel updates over time.  The reviews about this problem are many in the Android Market.

Still looking...

[iFrosty]

I have it. Works flawlessly. Worth getting

[rdcinhou]

Further "Vivid" updates....

The email client app has some "issues" with the SBCGLOBAL.NET domain.  Using their automated setup, it creates an account as IMAP though AT&T/Yahoo says they don't support IMAP for this domain--only POP3. It sends/receives mail and accesses folders and contacts just fine--but the return address for mail sent from the phone has a long computer-generated @Yahoo.com address instead of your normal email address.

Attempts to set up SBCGLOBAL.NET email as POP3 fail. Somehow the phone prevents the new "inbound.att.net" SMTP server addresses from being processed.

My current workaround involves using the YAHOO Android mail app which operates a bit slow, but has the best mail presentation fidelity (for fancy HTML email) of any email app on the Android.

Power consumption on the Vivid is still a problem--needing about three charges daily.

I wish there was an app to reduce the CPU speed to conserve power (like on my Nokia N800's).

[FredW]

If you have rooted your phone, you can get apps to set CPU speed (like setcpu), but to access the system to do this, you must be rooted.

[Doppelgänger]

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FredW wrote:
If you have rooted your phone, you can get apps to set CPU speed (like setcpu), but to access the system to do this, you must be rooted.

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And rooting has not yet been achieved, although the developers at the other website are working furiously on it.