Peeved HTC smartphone owners offer bounty for driver fix

A website is offering HTC smartphone customers a $3000 financial reward if they're able to solve a series of graphics and related issues affecting the company's recent handsets, allegedly caused by missing or poorly performing hardware drivers.

The organisers of the HTCClassAction.org claim that the problem, which concerns drivers on HTC phones that use Qualcomm's MSM7200 and MSM7500 chips, stops handsets like the TyTN II - reviewed here - and the new Touch Cruise from delivering their full performance.

The website states that the MSM7200 chipset has an integrated video core based on an AMD Imageon video chip but that the graphics acceleration this provides hasn't been enabled on HTC's handsets. According to the site, that's because HTC isn't including appropriate driver software.

The upshot, the site maintains, is choppy video game performance, touchscreen lag, poor battery performance and slow operation whilst using the camera.

The allegation is based on the ability of similarly specced handsets from other manufacturers to handle these kinds of tasks smoothly.

A financial reward of $3000 (£1500/€2000) is on offer for anyone who can fix these issues. Meanwhile, the website said it has handed around 4000 signatures over to HTC in a bid to persuade the company to pull its finger out.

As the site's name implies, the organisers are also considering legal action if their demands are not met. It threatened to initiate a Class Action lawsuit if HTC doesn't come through with the goods.

HTC has yet to respond to our request for commment - when it does, we'll let you known. Meantime, do you have an issue with your HTC handset's performance? Let us know.

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