Heading back in the time machine, you may recall a problem with some HTC devices lacking hardware video acceleration. Some people got fired up, threatened a law suit and starting furiously hacking their devices.
Fast forward a few months and the issue sort of died down, what with the Touch Pro and Diamond being released world-wide. These devices were promised by HTC to have better video performance and while it some aspects they do, in other areas evidently they fail.
Update: Ok, this is getting long. Join us after the break!
Over at XDA, member branko.savic & DSF did some intense side-by-side testing between the Samsung Omnia, HTC Universal and HTC Touch Pro. The test involved a video file encoded at 480x640 resolution, 25 FPS and 574 kbit/s and benchmarked via CorePlayer. The results were astonishing:
Omnia: Raw framebuffer: 442.74% (!)
Universal: Direct Draw: 165.28%
Touch Pro: QTv display: 152.44%
Furthermore, a bunch of comparisons between a Nokia N82, Dell Axim x51v and Touch Pro/Diamond were demonstrated using Quake 3 Arena. Once again, the stuttering of the new HTC device compared to the quite old Dell Axim is clearly evident.
(Watch x51v) (Watch Touch Pro)
So much ado about nothing or a big disappointment? Seems as if a lot of the graphic improvmenst on the new HTC devices come from a beefier 500+ mhz processor instead of solid direct draw/openGL hardware support. Yet devices like the Samsung Omnia and even Treo 800w both seem to have more advanced video support. What say you?
Big thanks to DSF for the details! You can also find more on this story at wmpoweruser.
Update: Below is a pretty incredible video -- an HTC Toronado clocked at 180MHz (right) puts the smackdown on an HTC Touch Pro clocked at 528MHz. YARLY.
...Now for some caveats: it's always difficult to say for sure why one WinMo device might perform better than another, so don't take any of the above as conclusive evidence that there's an issue here. On the other hand, it definitely looks like it merits more investigation.
