Gadgets Blog News

Posted Jan 23rd 2008 9:45AM by Evan Blass
Filed under: Cellphones, Features, Portable Video In case you haven’t been following all the drama over at Engadget Mobile, Taiwanese smartphone kingpin HTC is seeing a rather unexpected customer backlash over sub-par video playback in recent devices employing Qualcomm’s MSM7xxx chipsets — apparently, handsets like the popular TyTN II and Touch Cruise were purposely shipped without drivers that would take advantage of the embedded ATI Imageon acceleration hardware. And now, instead of issuing a mea culpa or at least providing the drivers for a small fee, HTC has basically suggested in a recent statement that consumers will need to upgrade to future products if they want “high-resolution video support.” Obviously customers are outraged, with the statement only fueling further talk of a class action lawsuit.

We think it’s time for the Engadget community at large to weigh in on this snowballing controversy: what (if anything) should HTC have done differently in order to maintain the proactive, customer-friendly image that it has up to this point been known for?

What should HTC have done differently with respect to the video driver controversy?

Nothing, quit whining: they never advertised video acceleration when pitching the devices in questionAt least tell me on the box that a known feature of this chipset isn’t supported, geez!Drivers should have been built right in; don’t they have some great developers over there, anyway? Once everyone started complaining, free or very cheap drivers should have been immediately whipped upUm, why should I care about a minor issue affecting a few phone geeks?Vote

Tags: gaming, digital, pvr, gadgetry

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