Help First day with my new Triumph

[Ayered]

Well, I'm happy with the purchase, especially since it was such a great deal. It's a huge step up from my old Nokia and should handle everything I was looking for (media playback, streaming, ebooks and browsing).

The stock interface is reasonably responsive, but I'd like to try some of the other Launcher options out there. I'm still getting used to Android (and the absence of an Exit button for programs), so I'm not sure if I had too many things running in the background, but I had a couple errors pop up over a few hours.

There were no deal killers and I don't think I'll need to exchange this for a replacement like others have mentioned in the past. The shortcomings were expected and have been covered in other threads, luckily for me most don't involve the main features I'm interested in.

At $300 I might be more critical, but at the sale price this is a pretty powerful machine and I'm sure it will keep me busy and entertained for quite a while.

------

To cover some of Whyzor's questions:

Screen light leaks - I had a close look and didn't see any. Minor leaks probably won't bother me on this size screen anyway.

GPS lock time - 2 minutes or so. I guess that's slow as others have reported. I don't know much about GPS and it's not a big feature for me.

Touchscreen response - Pretty smooth, but not perfect. Had some lag a few times and had some apps that seemed to be clicked and activating, but they didn't open.

Camera - The still camera is ok in bright light. Quality drops off a bit in low light. The flash is ok as a last resort. The video camera at 720P HD settings doesn't do more than 9fps (as others have mentioned). I didn't test lower-res, but you could probably get an ok frame rate at SD resolution. Video looks the same as others have already posted on Youtube.

Wifi - I had trouble getting it set up at first, but once I got it working it seemed to work fine whenever I needed to connect again. Never dropped a connection and didn't have any problems loading sites, videos or apps.

Signal levels - I get the same signal as my VM feature phone here (between 0-1 bars). I wasn't intending to use the phone anyway.

------

Random notes:

When I rotate the phone from vertical to horizontal, the screen is bit slower to rotate than I'd like. I'm not sure if there's a setting to change the delay.

Had trouble connecting to wifi the first time. Other devices connect to it fine the first time, but the MT wouldn't connect. I tried putting in Static IP settings and setting Wifi sleep policy to never, then I shut down the phone and turned it on again. After that, it said it was connected, but I couldn't connect to any sites in the browser. So, I went back and switched off the Static IP, then it connected. After that, the connection seemed solid.

I ran the Speedtest app and got the same speeds as my desktop.

Logging into the Android Market and setting up the Google login for the first time, I got an error: "Sorry! The application Market (process com.android.vending) has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again. It worked on the second try.

Took about 2 minutes to get the GPS position in the Navigation app. The Latitude app said location currently unavailable every time I tried it.

I didn't see any way to log out of my Google account after the initial setup. Couldn't log out of mail or anything, so I went into Running Apps and cleared all the caches and data from Google related services (I had already turned off syncing). I also turned off Background data and Auto-sync which prevented me from launching the Android Market.

I'm still not sure how to close apps after I'm done using them. They seem to keep running in the background. I saw the app manager option to Force Quit, but I wasn't sure if that was a good way to close them.

Netflix was decent quality. The Youtube mobile app and Youtube in the default browser only showed HQ clips which were lower quality. I guess I'll have to install another browser to see if I can browse in Desktop mode (the about:debug Desktop option didn't give any more options beyond HQ).

Sometimes clicking an app shortcut will seem to activate the button, but the app doesn't launch. It usually works on the second or third try.

The keyboard isn't really usable in vertical mode, so I always turn it horizontal for bigger keys. Unfortunately, not all apps allow screen rotation on certain input screens and it's a pain trying to type on the tiny vertical keyboard.

I thought I could just plug the USB cable into my laptop to transfer files, but the device wasn't recognized. I had to download Anycut and make a shortcut to the COM port selector and choose Mass Storage. After that it was recognized every time I plugged it in.

The still camera has ok quality at the 5MP setting. I took some video at the 720P high setting and although it was showing as H264, the file came out as a 3gp4 file (AVC/MPEG-4 video with AMR audio) at 9fps. I guess I may have to remux to get it to play in certain players. It did play in VLC. The still camera flash is mediocre, but it is enough to take a picture of a few friends at night (in low light, the picture is noisier and looks more like a webcam shot).

Tested the video camera on 3 custom settings, all 720P with h263, h264 and mp4. The videos recorded fine, but when I went to change the settings back, the camera application crashed. "Camera (process com.android.camera) has stopped unexpectedly. Please try again." None of the 3 codec options went above an average 9fps although the bitrate varied. I guess you can just stick with the built-in 720P high setting for your HD flipbook recordings.

I couldn't get anything but the phone's own camcorder footage to play in the native video player, so I installed MX Player. It played 3 out of 4 test files: .avi, .flv and .mpg. The last file played, but it was too choppy to watch and out of sync. That was a 720P .mkv encoded at High@L4.1. From what I've read, the Snapdragon doesn't support that profile, so I'll try re-encoding to Main@3.1.

 

[iSnow]

sweet! enjoy

 

[Whyzor]

------
To cover some of Whyzor's questions:

Screen light leaks - I had a close look and didn't see any. Minor leaks probably won't bother me on this size screen anyway.

Screen light leaks are more noticeable in complete darkness, like when watching a movie.

GPS lock time - 2 minutes or so. I guess that's slow as others have reported. I don't know much about GPS and it's not a big feature for me.

Sounds like the stock ROM's problem of not using aGPS servers effectively, so using brute GPS (visual of the sky) way.

Touchscreen response - Pretty smooth, but not perfect. Had some lag a few times and had some apps that seemed to be clicked and activating, but they didn't open.

I hope this is just the crappy stock ROM doing stuff in the background that ignored your touch, and not actual touch sensor HW problems. Should be smoother on CM7.

Camera - The still camera is ok in bright light. Quality drops off a bit in low light. The flash is ok as a last resort. The video camera at 720P HD settings doesn't do more than 9fps (as others have mentioned). I didn't test lower-res, but you could probably get an ok frame rate at SD resolution. Video looks the same as others have already posted on Youtube.

Were the low fps video recorded indoors in artificial lighting? In such dim settings, camera shutters need a minimum amount of time 1/9 second per frame sounds about right for small sensor cameras like this. Try taking video outdoors in bright daylight and see if it's better.

Also I've heard of non-uniform focus. Pictures should either all be in focus or all blury (hopefully more often the former).

Wifi - I had trouble getting it set up at first, but once I got it working it seemed to work fine whenever I needed to connect again. Never dropped a connection and didn't have any problems loading sites, videos or apps.

I'm using an app called 'wifi analyzer' that gives me dBm readings, and I've recorded them on my OV from different rooms, to hopefully compare with my MT when it arrives.

Signal levels - I get the same signal as my VM feature phone here (between 0-1 bars). I wasn't intending to use the phone anyway.

Different phones interpret the bars differently. A more standard way is to see the dBM readings (using an app, or in settings - about phone - status)

Random notes:

When I rotate the phone from vertical to horizontal, the screen is bit slower to rotate than I'd like. I'm not sure if there's a setting to change the delay.

Had trouble connecting to wifi the first time. Other devices connect to it fine the first time, but the MT wouldn't connect. I tried putting in Static IP settings and setting Wifi sleep policy to never, then I shut down the phone and turned it on again. After that, it said it was connected, but I couldn't connect to any sites in the browser. So, I went back and switched off the Static IP, then it connected. After that, the connection seemed solid.

I ran the Speedtest app and got the same speeds as my desktop.

This was through wifi I assume? That doesn't test the 3G reception on the phone as well, need to turn off wifi & use the 3G data to test actual phone network speed.

I'm still not sure how to close apps after I'm done using them. They seem to keep running in the background. I saw the app manager option to Force Quit, but I wasn't sure if that was a good way to close them.

Most properly coded apps will exit gracefully if you use the 'back' button instead of 'home'. Even better are apps that have an 'exit' option.

Thanks for your writeup. It does sound like the HW is ok (except I'm still not sure about its signal reception vs OV & other phones). If I had your phone, I'd root & install CM7 to see if all of these problems would go away (very likely).

 

[piper_]

Yes, use the back button to exit apps, you'll see the phrase "application killed" or something along those lines.

Installing CM7 makes this phone a different phone
It should have been released this way since day one

 

[Ayered]

Well, my initial write-up was mainly testing, so it might sound more negative than I intended.

After I posted, I started to play around and use the phone like I normally would. I'm liking it more and more, it's really a cool device. I was able to set up my ereader almost exactly the same way I had it on my old tablet (using volume buttons to turn pages), so that was nice.

I wanted to test out Flash performance from browsers running in Desktop mode (since the stock browser launches the Youtube app). I installed Dolphin HD and Opera Mobile. I was stressing them with Flash video, but I found both browsers to have more lag and glitchy performance than I expected. (Lag loading pages and apparent clicks not doing anything.) I'll have to do more normal web browsing to see if they do better.

Anyway, 720P Youtube Flash in Desktop browser mode was choppy, so I guess that's beyond the upper limit of the processor at stock speeds. Of course, 720P is above the screen resolution anyway and 480P videos played fine and looked good.

I'm pretty sure the machine has the power to play some 720P files from SD card in MX Player, I just have to find the right encoding settings.

Screen light leaks are more noticeable in complete darkness, like when watching a movie.

Well, I was looking closely in a relatively dim room and didn't see any. My old laptop has a bit of light leak on the bottom, so I know what to look for. I played and streamed some videos and didn't see anything creeping in on the edges.

Were the low fps video recorded indoors in artificial lighting? In such dim settings, camera shutters need a minimum amount of time 1/9 second per frame sounds about right for small sensor cameras like this. Try taking video outdoors in bright daylight and see if it's better.

Also I've heard of non-uniform focus. Pictures should either all be in focus or all blury (hopefully more often the former).

I didn't start testing the camera until after dark, so I'll try again today. Others have reported similar low fps and you can see it in all the Youtube video samples from the Triumph camera (day or night).

I wasn't expecting much from the camera, but I wouldn't mind squeezing better fps performance out of it with mods or another app. However, from everything I read, no progress has been made on this since the phone was first released.

I didn't see a non-uniform focus issue. The still camera has a few different focus settings though which I didn't test (auto, normal, off). I left it on normal (default). The video app doesn't have that option.

This was through wifi I assume? That doesn't test the 3G reception on the phone as well, need to turn off wifi & use the 3G data to test actual phone network speed.

I'm not using this with phone service, just as a wifi pocket tablet. I'll leave the signal testing to you. My test is to walk around the house and see if I can surf and stream. The answer is yes, so that meets my needs.

Most properly coded apps will exit gracefully if you use the 'back' button instead of 'home'. Even better are apps that have an 'exit' option.

Ah, good to know. I wasn't seeing a difference, but I'll use back now. I also wasn't sure if the Home button long press previously used apps were still running or not.

f I had your phone, I'd root & install CM7 to see if all of these problems would go away (very likely).

Well, I plan to use the HDMI-out which isn't working on CM7 or MIUI yet. I'm still waiting on my cable to test it and can probably make due with rooted stock for a while.

I'm not opposed to dual-booting (I do it on my old tablet and PC), but I'm not sure frequent flashing back and forth a lot is a good thing, so I'll wait and see on HDMI-support.

But yes, from what I read many of my issues are fixed in CM, such as GPS, interface and multi-touch performance.

 

[cigarjockey]

Up to you, but I took the 2nd screen protector off.

 

[Raptor5150]

Up to you, but I took the 2nd screen protector off.

wouldnt that void your warrenty? and not let you take the phone back for a replacement?

 

[agentc13]

Great discussion guys! Very in depth.

Now for my $.02.

The keyboard isn't really usable in vertical mode, so I always turn it horizontal for bigger keys. Unfortunately, not all apps allow screen rotation on certain input screens and it's a pain trying to type on the tiny vertical keyboard.

I use Swiftkey X. I have no problems in vertical or horizontal mode. My fat fingers get in the wrong spot sometimes, but that is expected.

I thought I could just plug the USB cable into my laptop to transfer files, but the device wasn't recognized.

You found your own solution, but it may have been you computer's OS that is the issue. I run Win7 and had no problem. I also worked fine in Ubuntu for me as well.

Sounds like the stock ROM's problem of not using aGPS servers effectively, so using brute GPS (visual of the sky) way.

The aGPS that the phone claims to have is not working correctly. They say it is on stock, but it isn't. It is also not able to work on the custom ROMs (at least not yet). Tickerguy talked about it in his CM7 thread, and he got the brute GPS to work much better. I doubt it is something that can be fixed with out the correct source code (i.e. the parts we don't have). But my GPS works pretty well without it.

Also I've heard of non-uniform focus. Pictures should either all be in focus or all blury (hopefully more often the former).

Is there something about a phones camera that makes this true? I took a number of photography classes in college and stuff like "depth of field" would make some stuff in focus and others not. I wouldn't claim to know how to achieve this with this phone, let alone a cheaper digital (read non DSLR) camera, but I have seen it plenty in ones that work correctly. And I could see how depth of field could be mistaken for this at times.

Most properly coded apps will exit gracefully if you use the 'back' button instead of 'home'.

Very much this! I came from a blackberry where you had to exit everything, and was confused at first until I found this out. The Android OS handles things very well.

wouldnt that void your warrenty? and not let you take the phone back for a replacement?

I don't believe so, it isn't taking apart any hardware or messing with the software either. It is a screen protector. I took mine off.

 

[Maine Coon]

Well, I plan to use the HDMI-out which isn't working on CM7 or MIUI yet. I'm still waiting on my cable to test it and can probably make due with rooted stock for a while.

I'm not opposed to dual-booting (I do it on my old tablet and PC), but I'm not sure frequent flashing back and forth a lot is a good thing, so I'll wait and see on HDMI-support.

But yes, from what I read many of my issues are fixed in CM, such as GPS, interface and multi-touch performance.

Let's hope iSnow will implement HDMI Out for CM7 and MIUI.

While we on the subject, is there a tutorial somewhere to dul-boot into either stock or custom ROMs for Triumph?

 

[agentc13]

Let's hope iSnow will implement HDMI Out for CM7 and MIUI.

While we on the subject, is there a tutorial somewhere to dul-boot into either stock or custom ROMs for Triumph?

http://androidforums.com/triumph-all-things-root/437978-q-multi-boot-boot-manager-please-help.html

That is as close as I have heard of us being able to do this. Right now you have to flash back and forth between ROMs if you want to use more than one regularly.

 

[Ayered]

Day 2 notes:

HBO GO plays well.

I tried re-encoding some 720P clips to get them to play smoothly. Baseline@L3.1 got the video playing pretty well, but I think it may be possible to get better quality with Main, minus:

- No CABAC entropy coding.
- No B frames
- No 8x8 transforms (DCT)
- No P-Frame and No B-Frame Weighted Prediction

The video was looking good, but I couldn't get the audio to sync (files were in sync on the PC). I tried various codecs and downmixing, but that didn't make a difference. It seemed like it may have been a simple delay problem, so I tried to narrow the delay down, but didn't quite get it. Also I was only testing a short clip, so I'm not sure if a single delay would last or if sync would slip in longer videos.

Of course, another option is to resize 720P videos down to the screen resolution, but I was hoping to keep them at 720P for playing through HDMI-out on larger screens. Although, I'm not sure what the HDMI resolution is.

MX Video Player (with Fast Software Decode) was working the best. Moboplayer and Rockplayer didn't compare, so I uninstalled them.

During testing audio sync, I was copying a lot of files back and forth on USB. After a while, I had errors writing and the USB mass storage kept connecting and disconnecting. In the end, the Triumph crashed and rebooted itself. After restarting, the USB file transfer worked. That was my first and only system crash/reboot so far.

I did some outdoor daylight camera tests. The still camera at 5MP maximum setting does perform pretty well for brightly lit snapshots. The video camera did average a higher frame rate (19-20fps avg., min. 5fps), but it's still choppy. I tried the lgCamera camera app which has more advanced options, but I made various tests with different settings and the resulting files were all the same bitrate and framerate as the stock camcorder app regardless of my settings (6Mbps, H.264 Baseline@L3.1). The options are obviously limited by the hardware specs.

I use Swiftkey X. I have no problems in vertical or horizontal mode. My fat fingers get in the wrong spot sometimes, but that is expected.

Thanks for the suggestion. Swype and Swiftkey are on my list of things to try. Missing 3 out of 4 times isn't much fun on the narrow keyboard.

 

[Whyzor]

I received my MT a day early. I played around with it for a couple of hours. It has a manufacturing date of 8/11, v39.

First a few positives:

+ Using GPS Essentials app, it sees more GPS satellites 7 vs 3 on OV, but fix is a different issue, hopefully better in CM7.

+ Screen is brighter than OV even in lowest brightness setting (although it seems to have a lower brightness, just not set-able in stock ROM).

+ Touchscreen very responsive, the back capacitive button does hesitate to register sometimes, maybe if there's a way to swap it for the search button, if search is more sensitive, it may be better to just map that to the default back button since it's used less often.

Now onto the bad.

- Signals are slightly less than OV, side by side it's about 5 to 10 dBm less sensitive. It's odd that the battery back cover is metal and seems to have contacts for the electronics. Is it being used as an antenna? Or RF shield? Odd design by Motorola, not sure if I like it, more moving parts that could possibly malfunction.

- Light leak from lower right corner projecting upward, from the capacitive buttons being too bright. Most noticeable when the screen is all black. It seems the capactive button LEDs on the bottom are too bright anyway, if there was a way to turn down the intensity, the light leak would be less noticeable too. It doesn't need to be so bright because it's only useful in dim conditions, and only a little glow is enough.

- The camera has a green tint in the center area, like an old Acer Liquid phone I had, it was 5 MP, except had a pink tint. I'm guessing it's the same crappy 5MP sensor. Seems to be a common phenomenon. Anyone else notice with their camera? Here's an example of what I'm talking about:

http://www.howardforums.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=71643&d=1311680166

- When plugged into an LG microUSB to my laptop, it doesn't sleep properly, or when I turn off screen and press a capacitive button right away, it wakes it up again. Sometimes vol keys wake it, other times it doesn't. It needs to be off by 10+ seconds in order for the screen off to "lock". Didn't notice this unplugged & using the Motorola charging cable.

So far the only big complaint I have is the green blob in all the pictures. I'm a photo enthusiast, and the green tint really bothers me. The light leak I can live with. If I want a replacement from VM, they don't even have any more MT's in stock to send me, so it's either all or nothing. I think I will activate it & install CM7 anyway and use it for now. I have 30 days to return anyway.

 

[Ayered]

Thanks for your report.

- Light leak from lower right corner projecting upward, from the capacitive buttons being too bright. Most noticeable when the screen is all black.

Well, it took 3 days of staring at the phone and some Googling for me to finally see the light leak. That should give you an idea of how noticeable it is. I was reading an ebook with white text on black and didn't see it until now. You really have to be in pitch black and looking at it with a microscope. Anyway, I tried to take a shot to show what it looks like:

MT Light leak.jpg

EDIT: I just found this thread which might help:

Finally figured out how to turn off the ****ing button lights.

The camera has a green tint in the center area, like an old Acer Liquid phone I had, it was 5 MP, except had a pink tint. I'm guessing it's the same crappy 5MP sensor. Seems to be a common phenomenon. Anyone else notice with their camera? Here's an example of what I'm talking about...

...

So far the only big complaint I have is the green blob in all the pictures. I'm a photo enthusiast, and the green tint really bothers me.

Well, I'm into photography and video myself, so I didn't expect much at all from this camera. Definitely not an iPhone 4S camera.

I also took a sample shot on mine to show a lack of green blob. The picture is fuzzy because I don't have a case yet so I left the protective plastic on. If you are seeing green like the shot you linked, that's not how it should be.

Green blob test shot.jpg

 

[Ayered]

Well, after some more research and testing I finally have 720P file playing smoothly and in sync.

I re-encoded my clip to Baseline@L3.1 with the same resolution and bitrate as the original. Then I demuxed to h.264 and .aac streams, then remuxed to .mp4 with Yamb.

That file plays well in MX Video Player with HW decoding and SW Audio.

I think the problems with my earlier tests were 1) using .mkv instead of .mp4 and 2) using a bad choice of muxer which caused sync problems.

I found some indications that High@L3.1 should work too, but I haven't had time to test that or figure out good settings.

I'm glad to have 720P working now even though it exceeds the screen resolution, because I've read that the HDMI output is 720P. A bigger screen will definitely benefit from the higher resolution.

My next video problem to solve is 720P Flash. With Flash 11 from the Android Market, 720P Youtube is choppy. I'm wondering if 10.3 has smoother playback.

 

[Whyzor]

Well, I'm into photography and video myself, so I didn't expect much at all from this camera. Definitely not an iPhone 4S camera.

I also took a sample shot on mine to show a lack of green blob. The picture is fuzzy because I don't have a case yet so I left the protective plastic on. If you are seeing green like the shot you linked, that's not how it should be.

Green blob test shot.jpg

I took some more sample pictures using daylight indoors and the green blob isn't there (or barely noticeable). I think this may be something to do with indoor CFL lights (and also regular tungsten bulbs), the white balance in the middle blob is off in those situations. Glad to see mine doesn't have it with daylight.

Just wanted to mention that my light leak is a lot better now running CM7, which has a feature deep in the settings to dim the capactitive button lights (it actually flickers them, so less noticeable.

Also the cable I used originally was bad or incompatible with the MT, so no more unintended wakes.

CM7 does make this phone run a lot more stable, as expected. I think I will keep this phone. I know I'm being picky, especially since I picked it up for a little over $100 brand new after discounts

 

[Gaffadin]

I just wanted to chip in here with my Triumph impressions since I just got mine this week (first was a dud, the front camera didn't work. Virgin sent me a new one).

Essentially it smokes my old Intercept in every single way. Using the Triumph has shown me how poor a phone the Intercept really was, and even though I knew it, it was a harsh reality after using the MT for just 5 minutes.

CM7 just makes this phone so amazing it's ridiculous. Snappy, responsive, with lots of storage space (my Intercept had less than 200MB!). My GPS locks in <10 seconds, so I don't have that issue, which is good (perhaps it's CM7 helping out).

The only things left I need to do is remove my 4GB sd card from my Intercept for use in my MT, and remove the stock screen protector and place my Zagg shield on it. It's by far the best phone I have owned (I don't use contracts on principle, they are an excuse for the big companies like AT&T and Verizon to lock you into sub-standard service for years at a time by selling your soul for 30 pieces of silver, or, in this case, a nice phone).

Anyone who picked this up for $128 in the recent deal got an absolute steal; I myself got it for $228 the week before and thought I got a good deal until now. But still, the phone is great.

I'd been on the fence for an MT for some time, but it was only the recent development and modding activity here (principally CM7 and MIUI) which made me go for it. I did not want to have a nice phone only to be running Froyo 2.2 on it, which is one of the biggest travesties that the stock VM phone has. Big props to all the devs and people who share their knowledge here, they are helping to deliver the true Android experience and are doing so for free.

All in all I'm very, very happy with my MT.

Now if I could only find a good weather widget...

 

[iSnow]

I received my MT a day early. I played around with it for a couple of hours. It has a manufacturing date of 8/11, v39.


- Light leak from lower right corner projecting upward, from the capacitive buttons being too bright.

i too recieved mine early same manufacture date as you.....light leak yes and the buttons do seem bright as all get out.

thanks agentc for the link

 

[marc12868]

Now if I could only find a good weather widget...

Fancy widgets has some good weather widgets... There's a pro and a lite version I believe.

 

[piper_]

Fancy widgets has some good weather widgets... There's a pro and a lite version I believe.

+1

 

[OmensEdge]

Just curious regarding the light leak issue since the photo that was posted doesn't really explain anything. What I'm noticing on mine is two bright beams (like movie theater spotlights) on each bottom corner projecting upwards. The one on the right is a little smaller. But, I'm also seeing a bit of light leakage coming out from the left bottom underneath the menu key.

This is the first phone I've had of this quality, so I thought I'd ask as I wasn't sure if the beams on the screen were normal or not.

 

[iSnow]

Just curious regarding the light leak issue since the photo that was posted doesn't really explain anything. What I'm noticing on mine is two bright beams (like movie theater spotlights) on each bottom corner projecting upwards. The one on the right is a little smaller. But, I'm also seeing a bit of light leakage coming out from the left bottom underneath the menu key.

This is the first phone I've had of this quality, so I thought I'd ask as I wasn't sure if the beams on the screen were normal or not.

mine too....im just hoping the case i get will cover it up

 

[Ayered]

My microHDMI cable arrived today and it works great. The output is full 720P, so the chipset is actually outputting higher res than the native screen. I'm glad I figured out the 720P video encoding settings earlier, because that was a perfect test clip. I also played Netflix, HBO and Youtube and tried some browsing and other apps. It all looked good. (By &quot;good&quot; I mean as expected for mobile streams blown up to full size.)

The only hitch I ran into was running the Onlive streaming game browser. I guess that's on the edge of what the CPU can handle because it played well on the phone screen alone, but when hooked up and mirroring it at 720P the picture was constantly breaking up on both displays. It's also possible that some of the breakup was due to a lower wifi signal.

So, I'm really happy with the HDMI out feature. It almost makes me want to get a Bluetooth keyboard (and mouse or touchpad?) to sit back and use the Triumph as a settop box without having to control it from the phone screen. It'll be nice to take along on trips and play videos on a full-sized screen.

It'll be tough to do without HDMI if I switch to CM7 or MIUI. I hope one of our ROM wizards can figure it out.

I took some more sample pictures using daylight indoors and the green blob isn't there (or barely noticeable).
...
Just wanted to mention that my light leak is a lot better now running CM7, which has a feature deep in the settings to dim the capactitive button lights (it actually flickers them, so less noticeable.

Glad to hear things are working out better.

Anyone who picked this up for $128 in the recent deal got an absolute steal; I myself got it for $228 the week before and thought I got a good deal until now. But still, the phone is great.

Yup, definitely. The more I play with it, I see the Snapdragon really has a decent amount of horsepower (more than I expected). It's a very solid single-core. And I haven't even loaded CM7 or done any overclocking yet.

Just curious regarding the light leak issue since the photo that was posted doesn't really explain anything. What I'm noticing on mine is two bright beams (like movie theater spotlights) on each bottom corner projecting upwards.

If you mean this photo I posted:

MT Light leak.jpg

Look in the lower right corner below the menu button. There's a razor thin white line of light coming through along the edge. I'm not really sure, but I was posting it to see if that's what Whyzor meant by a light leak. Maybe that's not it, or maybe a bad light leak is much worse.

What you're describing on your phone sounds worse than what I'm seeing.

 

[iSnow]

It'll be tough to do without HDMI if I switch to CM7 or MIUI. I hope one of our ROM wizards can figure it out.

thats what im working on right now!!!

 

[Ayered]

thats what im working on right now!!!

I know, thanks again! I'm refreshing your thread every 5 minutes.

 

[Whyzor]

Just curious regarding the light leak issue since the photo that was posted doesn't really explain anything. What I'm noticing on mine is two bright beams (like movie theater spotlights) on each bottom corner projecting upwards. The one on the right is a little smaller. But, I'm also seeing a bit of light leakage coming out from the left bottom underneath the menu key.

This is the first phone I've had of this quality, so I thought I'd ask as I wasn't sure if the beams on the screen were normal or not.

My theory is that the components work separately as designed, the LCD's backlight LED is ok, the capacitive buttons on the bottom are lit from behind, pretty common. The problem is with some (due to manufacturing irregularities or just unintended design), there's too much of a gap between the two, so the light leaks up onto the display. Kinda like opening the doorway in a dark movie theater.