The hardware
All those logistics aside, the true beauty of a solution like this is how it blends the responsiveness of regular finger input with an extremely accurate inking one. You'd think the screen was your typical capacitive screen, until you put the stylus to it. Unlike capacitive styli, you don't have to press extremely hard or worry about totally missing your on-screen target. And not to worry, N-Trig says the AAAA battery-powered pen battery should last about a year and a half -- so you'll have a bit of time before you have to run out to the drugstore and pick up a new pack of Energizers.
The software
It's also designed a Notes application that integrates with Evernote. You can take notes, change the color of the ink, etc. Additionally, you can scribble over images in the image gallery. In action all those things worked quite well, especially for its beta status. You will also be able to use the top button on the pen to select text and the button to erase. That's really all there is at the moment in terms of software -- or, at least, that's all HTC is demoing. We'd certainly like to see much more, including some sort of OCR software -- you know, the stuff that converts writing to editable text. Undoubtedly, that would make a ton of sense and be a great keyboard alternative on a tablet like this.
It's really too early to make a call on what HTC is doing with the stylus and Scribe -- it's certainly unique and it seems like a very useful solution for those that love to take notes with a physical pen. Ultimately, however, our concerns are centered around the fact that Android was built around a finger and that virtually no apps out there right now take advantage of the pen input. However, if HTC can manage to build out the inking software experience and integrate it throughout the OS, we're sure those who still believe in the power of the pen and want to use a tablet as a content creation device will be all over this.
The press-shots that we posted about yesterday? Yes they were real, as announced today by HTC at Mobile World Congress. The two phones namely, HTC Chacha and HTC Salsa have dedicated Facebook button, with a more customized Sense UI running on Android 2.4 to have more focus on the world’s largest social network.
The dedicated Facebook button on both the portrait QWERTY based ChaCha and the 3.4-inch touchscreen based Salsa is context-aware, which means that it will gently pulse “with light whenever there is an opportunity to share content or updates through Facebook”.
HTC Unveils Two Social Phones With One-touch Facebook® AccessYou can follow us on Twitter or join our Facebook fanpage to keep yourself updated on all the latest from Microsoft, Google and Apple.
HTC raises the bar for mobile social phones with HTC ChaChaTM and HTC SalsaTM
BARCELONA, SPAIN – Mobile World Congress – February 15, 2011 – HTC Corporation, a global designer of smartphones, today announced two new phones built entirely to be social, combining the simplicity, ease-of-use and depth of HTC SenseTM with the power and connectivity of Facebook®. As part of an extended portfolio of six new HTC Sense-based devices being unveiled at Mobile World Congress, HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa feature a dedicated Facebook® button for one-touch access to the key functions of the Facebook service that are integrated throughout the HTC Sense experience.
“HTC has always understood that different people want different things and the new HTC ChaCha and Salsa offer special new ways to experience Facebook on a mobile device,” said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corporation. “With more than 500 million active users worldwide, Facebook has become synonymous with the social web and we wanted to create the ultimate socially connected phones with mass market appeal.”
“We have worked closely with HTC for several years on bringing Facebook to their devices and HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa are the next stage,” said Henri Moissinac, Head of Mobile Business for Facebook. “HTC has brought Facebook to these two new devices in an innovative way enabling people to connect and share easily whenever they want, wherever they are.”
The Facebook button on HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa is context-aware, gently pulsing with light whenever there is an opportunity to share content or updates through Facebook. With a single press of the button, you can update your status, upload a photo, share a Website, post what song you are listening to, ‘check in’ to a location and more. For example, you can take a photograph of friends on your phone and upload it instantly to Facebook by simply pressing the button. Or let your friends know what song you’re listening to by pressing the button while listening to music on the phone. The track is automatically identified and shared on Facebook.
The new devices feature Android Gingerbread 2.3.3, the latest version, and use the latest iteration of HTC Sense to integrate Facebook throughout the HTC Sense experience. When you make a phone call, the dialer screen displays your friend’s latest status and photos, and even tells you if their birthday is approaching. The same updates are also displayed when you receive a call from a Facebook friend. You can also use your phone’s existing contacts to help you connect with them on Facebook or personalize your handset further with a number of new, Facebook-branded widgets.
The HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa smartphones make it simple to stay in touch with your friends using Facebook Chat and Messages on your phone. Your Facebook messages and conversations are integrated within your phone and appear within your text and email inboxes alongside your regular conversations.
Stay connected with the smartphone for the Facebook generation – HTC ChaCha The HTC ChaCha smartphone is designed to provide a seamless, social experience by enabling you to stay in touch with your friends anytime, anywhere. The unique tilt design shapes the display and physical QWERTY keyboard so it is easy to view and comfortable to type. Capture special moments in crisp, High-Definition detail or video chat with your friends using the dual cameras, including a 5-megapixel color camera with auto focus and LED flash and a VGA front-facing camera. The ChaCha smartphone also brings the Internet to your fingertips with a 2.6-inch, 480 x 320 resolution landscape touch screen.
Your Facebook friends never felt closer – HTC Salsa
Boasting the same deep Facebook integration as the HTC ChaCha smartphone, the HTC Salsa smartphone provides a fast, high-performance smartphone experience. Capture the moment in high-resolution stills or video with the 5-megapixel camera and immediately share it with friends on the generous 3.4-inch, 480 x 320 resolution touch display. Upload your photos to Facebook at the touch of a button. For face-to-face conversations on the move, the VGA forward-facing camera enables high-quality video calling.
Availability
The HTC ChaCha and HTC Salsa smartphones will be available to customers across major European and Asian markets during Q2 2011. In the United States, HTC plans to bring this unique user experience to market later this year exclusively with AT&T.

With the likes of INQ all set to release their own Android phone that ties straight into Facebook, today we learn that HTC is getting in on the action too.
Unlike the INQ Cloud Touch approach of hooking basic phone features straight into the Facebook ecosystem, HTC will go down the route of simply adding a dedicated Facebook button to the handset itself.
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It’s nothing new that the much-loved HTC HD2 can be hacked in order to install either Androidor Windows Phone 7, but how about dual-booting?
The clever people at XDA-Developers have sussed out a way to install both operating systems onto the one SD card, effectively giving the users the choice of which OS to run at startup, writes PocketNow.
Now before everyone runs out and starts hacking their beloved HD2, be warned. This isn’t a simple process and all manner of nastiness can occur if things don’t go according to plan. If they do though, just think how cool your friends would think you are!
Not that you aren’t cool already, obviously!
Full how-to instructions can be found at the XDA thread here. Video tutorial on how to dual-boot Android and Windows Phone 7 on HTC HD2 is embedded below.
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Microsoft and HTC made it official that the HTC HD2 won’t be getting the Windows Phone 7Android 2.2 Froyo upgrade although the hardware supports it. But that didn’t stop the hacking community from dumping a Windows Phone 7 ROM on the HD2, yes you read that right! You can now boot Windows Phone 7 on your HD2 alongside Windows Mobile 6.5, Ubuntu, MeeGo, or Android 2.3 Gingerbread.
We will have our own guide on how to install it soon. In the meantime, you can follow the instructions posted over at MobileTechWorld here.
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Search Amazon.com for htc evo 4g phone
So what if nobody has bothered to announce it yet? Sprint's upcoming EVO Shift 4G
Update: The product image is user-submitted so we can probably disregard it. Still, Amazon's got HTC's unannounced phone up on its site, giving us the closest to official confirmation we've had yet.
Hardware
One thing that we miss is a 3.5-mm jack to give us more control over the audio output. The Media Link is so portable that you're bound to pack it up and use it in situations where a decent amplifier isn't available -- like, say, in a conference room with a projector or connected to a hotel room TV. Situations ideally accompanied by a set of small but powerful portable travel speakers.
Setup
It's worth mentioning that HTC is developing a Media Link app that will help you quickly switch between the Media Link hotspot and your home network. It's headed to the HTC Hub but it wasn't yet available for download at the time of this review.
Streaming
You won't be regularly streaming 1080p Matroska Blu-ray rips from your storage constrained handset so we began our testing with a real-world scenario: using the Connected Media app found on the Desire Z to stream The Engadget Show podcast video already synchronized to our handset. This worked perfectly, whether the Media Link was setup as its own WiFi hotspot or as a member of our home WiFi network (located about 30 feet from our wireless router) without any hiccups in performance, thus erasing our initial frustration with the projector setup. Same with our on-device audio collection and the images and video captured by the Desire Z's camera -- it just worked.
In general, streaming content that the Media Link recognized (more on that later) stored on our HTC Desire Z worked most of the time -- we'd say about one in ten uses resulted in some kind of unexpected behavior. Foibles ranged from the wrong picture being displayed when selecting individual images from a photo album, volume controls not responding, unexpected delays or resets, and large videos unceremoniously quitting (and requiring a restart from the beginning) while trying to scrub forward or back. We were disappointed to discover the lack of album art support on streamed music and our inability to fast forward or rewind our streaming audio or video -- you can only skip to the next or previous items in the playlist. Other issues that frustrated the experience included the occasional WiFi dropouts, and our inability to ever get the Media Link to work with our home theater projector. Nothing to get too worked up over, mind you, because when it worked (which was most of the time) it was fantastic and dead simple to operate. And the fact that we could use the Desire Z to select compatible media from our Windows 7 laptop (Microsoft built DLNA support into the OS) and Mac running the Twonky Server (sold separately) was just icing on the cake. We even managed to sneak a Galaxy S in to share some photographs.
Unfortunately, not all DLNA devices are built the same. Like many alliances, vendors grow weary of debating the merits of their enhanced feature suggestions in hopes of gaining formal ratification in the published standard. As such, in time, it becomes difficult to know where the DLNA spec ends and the manufacturers' customizations begin. We were already baffled by the stated Media Link requirement for "a DLNA-compatible HTC phone" coming into the review. Was that tacit admission of incompatibilities or just an attempt to promote HTC's own products? After all, DLNA certified devices should play nice with eachother, right? Not always, as we discovered when testing with the very popular Galaxy S from Samsung and WD TV Live HD from Western Digital.
Galaxy S owners are already familiar with DLNA, or at least they should be since the AllShare player / server is one of the handset's primary features. Things looked promising in our early testing allowing us to stream photographs captured by the Galaxy S to the HTC Media Link when using the S or Desire Z as the controller. We started having difficulties, however, when we began to test audio streaming between the Galaxy S and Desire Z. Although we could stream audio fine from AllPlay direct from the Galaxy S to the Media Link, we could not initiate the stream from the Galaxy S when using the HTC Desire Z as the controller. When trying to browse media from the audio folder the Desire Z kicked back a curious error message saying "no photo or video files" could be found -- even though we were looking for audio. And yes, we had the AllPlay server configured to automatically accept all video, audio, and picture requests. We also ran into what seems to be a codec issue when trying to stream H.264 videos captured natively to a .MP4 container by the camera on the Galaxy S. Unsurprisingly, it also didn't work when using the Desire Z as the controller to launch the stream off the Galaxy S. We even transferred the Galaxy S video to the Desire Z and still couldn't get it to stream to the HTC Media Link even though it would play fine locally on the HTC handset.
Just for kicks, we decided to further test cross-platform DLNA compatibility between the Desire Z and a Western Digital WD TV Live HD we have sitting on our network. Again, while things generally worked, we had issues that manifested themselves by the WD box showing up as busy (even though it was idle) and therefore unable to accept a content stream from the Z. The most irritating issue, however, was watching the Desire Z connection drop immediately after initiating a stream to the WD box such that it could no longer control the content playing on the display.
By comparison, the WD TV Live HD successfully streamed every test file over DLNA, and at 1080p when available, and connected to our home theater projector.
Wrap up
HTC Corporation has released a full-fledged YouTube client for Windows Phone 7 devices. Unfortunately though, this YouTube app is limited to HTC’s handsets only, running the exclusive HTC Hub.
Browse, search and watch all of the videos from the world’s most popular online video community.Microsoft’s current solution for YouTube on Windows Phones is a mere plugin, which basically opens YouTube web app in browser (not the HTML5 version as seen on iOS and Android devices) and then allows you to playback videos using the native Windows Phone 7 video player. Microsoft’s YouTube plugin also integrates with Zune’s music and videos hub, allowing users to go through their YouTube playback history.
Here’s to a hope that Microsoft or other OEMs such as Samsung will soon come up with a full-fledged YouTube app for other Windows Phone 7 devices.
YouTube for HTC’s Windows Phone 7 devices can be downloaded right now for free from either HTC Hub, or from the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace.
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Back in November 2009, we reported that you could get the HTC Sense UI on your iPhone running iOS 3.x We then repeatedly got requests to upgrade that theme so that it works on newer devices running iOS 4.x. And now, a much better looking HTC Sense theme (lockscreen only) has been released for iPhone 4 which is inspired by the latest version of HTC Sense found on Desire HD
Prerequisites:
- You will need to jailbreak your iPhone 4. Follow our step by step guide posted here to jailbreak your iPhone with Redsn0w on iOS 4.2.1, or with Limera1n on iOS 4.1 if you haven’t already.
- Download the required theme AndroiHD Lockscreen from here.
- Download and install Winterboard from Cydia.
- Download and install OpenSSH from Cydia.
- Download and install Lockscreen Clock Hide from Cydia.
- Any SSH client of your choice for Windows or Mac. Recommended client for Mac is Cyberduck, and for Windows is WinSCP.
Cyberduck
- Server: The IP address of your iPhone/iPad/iPod touch. Settings –> WiFi –> <Your Network Name>
- Username: root
- Password: alpine
- Protocol: SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol)
- Hostname: The IP address of your iPhone/iPad/iPod touch. Setting –> WiFi –> <Your Network Name>
- User name: root
- Password: alpine
- Protocol: SCP
Step 3: Navigate to private/var/stash/Themes.xxxx folder on your iPhone using the SSH client you are using and drag and drop the AndroiHD Lockscreen folder in this location as shown in the screenshot below.
HTC Sense on iPhone 4: Lockscreen with fully-working weather widget on left, homescreen on right.
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Most modern Android phones from the original Droid onward should be able to enjoy most if not all the new features, depending on hardware capabilities (3D rendering) and "distinct multitouch" hardware support -- the Nexus One, interestingly enough, supports vector maps but not the rotate functionality because it lacks the latter multitouch requirements. Google sent us a list of devices that support 100 percent of 5.0's features, which you can find after the break. The update is due out in the "coming days," according to Rubin. Great way to kick off Nexus S' launch, then.