yashsingh1/xdaforums huggingface dataset:
[G2 and Desire Z General] Borteeo:
Danielle replied to my email:

So I replied to her email via a link that was provided in a part of the email I didn't quote. Earlier I had already submitted my comment to the HTCDev site, but you don't get any feedback from there.

Someone in the thread was saying it is ridiculous for people to request the driver source code from HTC. I guess you also think requesting unlocked bootloaders was ridiculous? Nobody is trying to cheat the system, or get any undue advantage; we just think that if you buy hardware, you should be provided the tools to use it however you wish.

If HTC responds positively to this, particularly on the level of making it company policy to release source code for devices that are no longer officially supported, it will be an enormous PR victory for them, and many users will make future purchase decisions based on it - knowing that the device they likely bought on a two-year contract, after the year of official support has ended, will still continue to be functional and current. Then when they receive their next hardware upgrade and subsidy, they'll put it right back into HTC's pockets. On the other hand, if HTC fails to take advantage of this opportunity, most of us will probably be less motivated to buy HTC in the future - maybe we would end up with another phone from them, maybe not. It wouldn't particularly matter, unless some other company beat them to the punch and had the competitive advantage of supporting the unofficial development scene in this way.

Another phone in a similar situation is the LG Optimus G2X/2X. The phone has a Tegra 2 chip, and is theoretically a bargain with great performance. However, NVidia has been reticent to provide source code for many implementations of this device. They're basically, it seems, waiting for LG or T-Mobile to pay them a licensing fee to develop new compiled drivers for ICS, and unwilling to provide enough information for independent developers to develop for this device. As you would expect, many owners of the device feel betrayed, and are not likely to purchase devices using NVidia chips in the future as a result.

I should note that I have not looked into this issue for about three weeks. At that time there were some hints that LG would be officially upgrading the device to ICS eventually, and the drivers would be provided, to allow continued development. However, I do not think NVidia is willing to budge on the source code. They'll eventually release for a single implementation, apparently, and probably a clever developer will be able to make a mostly-functional driver from that, but if another major revision of Android comes out and LG or T-Mobile or whoever doesn't bankroll another official driver, the users will be out of luck. The only reasonable reaction to this for someone who enjoys running custom ROMs is to avoid NVidia devices in the future. I'd hate to see HTC going down the same road. I'm willing to take ten minutes of time to suggest a better alternative to them, even if it's probably going to get lost at the bottom level of their employee pyramid.
[G2 and Desire Z General] sorgo:
It's not so easy. Desire Z is really an old model with pretty less RAM, there are practicaly zero chances to get ICS Sense update. The leaked ics sense rom for htc sensation has driver for different camera chip. Don't know exactly which phone camera chips are compatible with DZ, but I fear no old models will get official ICS Sense roms.

The solution would be to release source code for camera driver and let the community do the rest (build a working driver). Problem could be if HTC does not have right to publish it (e.g. it's their camera supplier prorietary code), but as stated before, it's only question of will from HTC's side. After unlocking bootloaders, publishing source codes, HTC started a sympatic way of openness, so I personaly hope, they can do something about it without high costs or much effort. It would not make people buy a new phone from HTC because DZ is old and not supported, but because we can be sure, we will get pretty decent support in future. So it would be an appreciated step from HTC.
[G2 and Desire Z General] SyaoranLi:
Support from Spain

Here, from Spain, I sent the message as well.

Let's do it guys. I'm so excited about ICS on my phone. I really LOVE the Desire Z. If I could buy any phone at this time, regardless of the money, I would buy the same one.

To me, more than 10 years later, playing PSX and N64 games is priceless. Oh memories from my childhood...

Let's keep moving this! :)
[G2 and Desire Z General] XxhTcG2uSERxX:
I have some good news

http://www.androidpolice.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/image40.png
[G2 and Desire Z General] steviewevie:
That's bootloader unlock though, not sure how that has anything to do with camera driver source code. Did I miss something ?

Sent from my Desire Z running CM7.
[G2 and Desire Z General] ashwinmudigonda:
I got a reply

Dear Ashwin Mudigonda,

Thank you very much for taking the time to contact us here at HTC, Ashwin. We will gladly provide more information regarding drivers for your HTC Desire Z.

In rare cases HTC occasionally provides a developer version of an update for testing purposes. If this happens then the updated software is not sent over the air to the device or posted on our official web portal. Instead we make it available via our developer web portal at http://htcdev.com/devcenter/downloads . These types of updates are only recommended for experienced device owners and software developers. Installing such an update to your device is not supported or endorsed by HTC. If you choose to install a developer ROM to your device it would be at your own discretion. This is where the appropriate drivers would be located as well.

In the interim, we will be certain to forward your request to our developers.

We hope you find this information helpful, Ashwin. We thank you for your patience and cooperation. Keep in mind that we are here to answer your technical questions or concerns between 6am to 1am EDST, 7 days a week for your convenience, or by phone at 1-866-449-8358.

Let me know if I have successfully answered your question, please click here to complete this.

To send a reply to this message, please click here.

Sincerely,

Terri

HTC
[G2 and Desire Z General] gtmaster303:
Dear XXXXXX,

I understand you are looking for the camera drivers for the HTC Desire Z. I know how handy it is to customize your device and I will certainly advise. We are currently not releasing the driver source for HTC cameras as this is proprietary information. I don't have any information as to whether this will happen in the future. Please visit http://htcdev.com/contact to leave comments about your request.

Let me know if I have successfully answered your question, please click here to complete this.

Sincerely,

Douglas

Quite possibly the nicest way of saying, "I have what you need, but YOU WILL NEVER GET THIS, YOU WILL NEVER GET THIS, LALALALA!"
[G2 and Desire Z General] vchrizz:
i got following answer:

asked again, specific for the cam-drivers, lets see..
[G2 and Desire Z General] gtmaster303:
haha, tell HTC we don't care about the warranty. It expires in about 3 months anyway...
[G2 and Desire Z General] riahc3:
Keep sending those emails :) I sent another one yet again asking for drivers. Its really right now the only thing needed that the devs do not have SOME access to.
[G2 and Desire Z General] muffinwaffle:
You'd think HTC would wise up a bit, looking at their Q4 profits.
[G2 and Desire Z General] redpoint73:
Negative and defeatist talk, and vastly under-estimating the power of customer feedback. Just recently, customers have successfully persuaded:

Bank of America to not charge a monthly debit card fee

Verizon to not charge a fee for mobile bill pay

Netflix to not split their streaming and mail video services

All of these are big companies that were pressured by customers into decisions that directly affect their profits. All this purely by customer feedback. There are countless examples of letter writing campaigns changing the policies and practices of companies and government. You can just sit back and let things be done to you. Or you can speak up, and help determine your own fate.

Will it work in this case, who knows? If you don't bother to try, it certainly won't.
[G2 and Desire Z General] Cloonix:
Any "other" HTC model, that is likely to get an HTC OTA ICS, has a different camera and therefor a different driver.

And you can bet that writing the customer support will somehow affect them.
[G2 and Desire Z General] SyaoranLi:
I specified in my e-mail that we DO understand that they want to make as much profit as possible and that to do so, they need to sell new hardware.

I also told them that from a marketing point of view there is a community that will be more than thankful if they help us to "play" with our phones the way we want, as HTC will have a open-mind image for users...

I work as an export manager in a big company located in Spain. I didn't say that, but I hope all our comments, working all together, will "erode" their current decision.

About the guy who said that what we are doing doesn't make sense, I just feel sorry for him. He seems to be one of these people whith the typical opinion of: "if that's such a great idea, why no-one did it before?". I'm glad there are different people, cause otherwise we would be still in the middle age.

Let's push guys, I think it might work. It's not about if what we are doing is correct or not. It's about being more and pushing harder.
[G2 and Desire Z General] ldcn:
I received this response :
[G2 and Desire Z General] Borteeo:
I'll be sending my third reply in soon. Getting to have quite a relationship with my CSR, albeit it's pretty one-sided. I think I'll mention something about this:

http://mobile.theverge.com/2011/05/10/google-promises-android-devices-updates-18-months/
[G2 and Desire Z General] ldcn:
I'm not sure that to mention this will be helpful.

But I hope this issue will be solved quickly. I can't leave ICS now!
[G2 and Desire Z General] Arrch:
I don't really think this will work, but I wanna be part of tha thing.

I just emailed 'em too.
[G2 and Desire Z General] C.Flat:
Bah. Mine is expired already!
[G2 and Desire Z General] GrievousMcG:
Got a response from HTC:

I'll ask them if them if the source code for the camera is in the open or closed category.
[G2 and Desire Z General] sorgo:
Or you can ask them, who has owns the license to proprietary camera driver, so we can start bothering them :)
[G2 and Desire Z General] Arrch:
I got an answer too :

I will have to answer back reguarding what she says about how tested their rom are tested compared to XDA devs... My official 2.3 from HTC made me root my phone due to sense reboot and some other stuffs...
[G2 and Desire Z General] terminal addict:
Hmmm... What does that mean? I created an account at htcdev.com and found kernel source for Desire Z and G2, for GB and Froyo. I guess the response means, more specifically, that the code for the camera in the HTC Desire Z is not yet released. :)

Anyway, I emailed as well.
[G2 and Desire Z General] Imitate:
This would be one of the best things that could happen to my HTC.

Unfortunately, it would probably include about fifteen apps that no one finds any use for.

This is why I love custom ROM's.
[G2 and Desire Z General] Arrch:
Okay there you go :

I wrote back that stuff :

and they answered that :
[G2 and Desire Z General] vchrizz:
got answer:

Dear ,

Thank you for contacting HTC regarding your Desire Z.

I understand that you would like HTC to release the source code for the Desire Z, so the developers from xda can release a full functionable ROM.

Ice Cream Sandwich has not been released yet and it has not been planned for the Desire Z as for now.

All the available source codes can be found on the HTC Developer Website.

You will have to wait until this upgrade has been released but we have no information as to whether the source code for the camera driver will be made available later.

Sincerely,

Malik

HTC
[G2 and Desire Z General] shorty_boy:
Do you think we should emply...

4chan or Steven Colbert to bring some publicity to this. They have made companies change their minds about things before. :D
[G2 and Desire Z General] antinerd:
Rather than asking about the Desire Z, a phone that would probably not run sense and ics, why not ask about upgrades/drivers for the G2? They contain identical hardware (yes you irksome camera, i'm looking at you!), but without the easy cop out excuse from HTC about insufficient resources to run ics and sense, as the G2 never had sense.
[G2 and Desire Z General] riahc3:
Its closed, which is already where the problem lays.

Yeah, maybe this is a alternative route. Someone should find out what part number the camera has, with this the manufacturer can be found and contacted.

ICS can be ran. Not because I said it, but HTC says that any phone running GB can (theoretically) run ICS.
[G2 and Desire Z General] kaijura:
Of course it can, we already have working ports of it. Add sense on top which takes another 40,50mb (from GB) and not so sure anymore... we all know there's no way HTC is going to release ICS without sense on top of it.

ICS is pretty memory intensive, I've noticed a pattern seeing that phones with 512mb RAM or less didn't get the upgrade. Everything announced upgradeable has been 768mb or 1gb.
[G2 and Desire Z General] sorgo:
As far as I get it, our phones don't have dedicated camera chip. It should be Qualcomm MSM7230. By the features at pdadb site there is "camera support up to 12Mpx".

http://pdadb.net/index.php?m=cpu&id=a7230&c=qualcomm_msm7230

If you click on "Browse all devices based on MSM7230" you will see some other android phone having the "Snapdragon S2" cpu, but I doubt that some Huawei or Acer will get ICS update.

So probably it is Qualcomm that we should write a polite request? (Correct me if I'm wrong)
[G2 and Desire Z General] mintkyo:
HTC Reply

Thanks to you contact HTC.

About the problem of sourse code for your HTC Desire Z:

The information and download the sourse code has released website and now has not HTC Desire Z model, we have record your suggestion and we will send to related department to reference, suggest you pay close attention to the website, it will update if HTC has new released.

Thank you and be apologies for any inconvenience caused.

I think the reply means nothing......
[G2 and Desire Z General] riahc3:
Thanks. Going to try Qualcomm out and see what they reply....
[G2 and Desire Z General] riahc3:
Their contact page: http://www.qualcomm.com/connect/contact

Im personally writing to: qctweb.inquiry@qualcomm.com which is under Technology / Product Information and Chipsets.
[G2 and Desire Z General] Doc76013:
Really ?
[G2 and Desire Z General] sorgo:
I suppose they are trained to write a nothing-saying answer :)

I'm just thinking if it's necessary to release driver as opensource.

It's only one of the options. Maybe it would be enough to allow one employee to spend a week giving assistance to xda devs :) But releasing the driver is the easiest way (and with minimal costs).

At this moment I'm very curious about the Qualcomm answer. Just to confirm we are knocking on the right door :)
[G2 and Desire Z General] muffinwaffle:
But isn't 296mb still well within the 512 range?

I thought manufacturers are mostly blaming weak GPU's. Such as the Adreno 200. And not bringing ICS to those devices.
[G2 and Desire Z General] sino8r:
Wha? The G2 has around 367 MB of RAM while our cousin, the Desire Z, has 512MB. Besides, I believe he was saying that devices with 512MB and less aren't getting official ICS updates. Am curious to find out if qualcomm is the company to contact. As soon as we get a reply, we should all email and request the driver source.

Our Adreno GPU can handle it. Our ICS builds have proven that. Plus, I haven't found a game I can't run with the proper tweaks ;) It seems like the manufacturers are just rolling out models after models (way more then back in the WM HTC days) due to the smartphone revolution these days. It just seems like they are taking advantage of the openess of Android (dare I say fragmentation) and releasing new models just because it has the latest OS when your old one doesn't. There's much more to it than that but it does feel that way sometimes. I am getting a bit of new phone envy lol! Ready for the next G3 or something. Still would love to have my G2 running ICS with a camera intact while waiting on that next great qwerty model though. I think, honestly, the G2 has been my favorite phone of all times. I'd just really like a tad more ram. that's my only complaint. Okay, going off subject now. my apologies... I hope we can figure out how to fix this and who to ask. I already emailed and messaged through htcdev.com... same automated reply. :(
[G2 and Desire Z General] muffinwaffle:
Whoa that's pretty low ram. Thought it was the same.
[G2 and Desire Z General] steviewevie:
The DZ and G2 have exactly the same RAM, i.e. 512MB. That's the amount of physical hardware RAM, but on both phones you never see that when Android is running. That's because the radio and OS use up a load of that RAM, so Android displays as if you have that 367MB or so in total.

Sent from my Desire Z running CM7.
[G2 and Desire Z General] sino8r:
whoops! that's right. I was thinking it was around 384 total but the OS/radio does take up a lot. 367 is all that is available for the user although there are tons more stuff being used. This sounds alot like the missing 2GB internal discussion so I'm gonna shut up now ;)
[G2 and Desire Z General] kaijura:
I did some browsing around Qualcomm's site. It does really seem like they may be responsible for the camera source. If they are the ones we should be talking to, HTC might have been the wrong target all along.

Our phones use the MSM7230 adreno 205 Snapdragon S2 chipset.

http://www.qualcomm.com/solutions/multimedia/imaging

---------- Post added at 01:36 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:09 PM ----------

I'm not an engineer at all, just a general disclaimer, but I read and know my fair share of the whole debut of SoC's and how it works.

I was looking around for Qualcomm Snapdragon S2 block diagrams but did not find any. However, I found a reference Texas Instruments uses for theirs (TI OMAP 44xx, like the OMAP 4460 used in the Galaxy Nexus).

As you can see, the camera is labeled on there as part of the OMAP SoC.
[G2 and Desire Z General] sino8r:
MIPI is usually associated with TI back when I worked with cell phones. They are in alliance with ARM, Nokia, etc... This was few years ago so not sure on their current status today or if MIPI has become a generic term for a type of chipset. Anyways, point is... all signs would point to qualcomm on our devices. This is usually the fashion of chipset designs. I wish we could find one for our device though. Devices these days have all types of chip manufacturers so there's no way to know for sure without the proper diagram/schematics.

Took a look myself and couldn't find one either. I'd still say it's a safe bet that qualcomm is the one ;)
[G2 and Desire Z General] sorgo:
http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=21460509

let's wait a bit, just to see if the guy is kidding :)
[G2 and Desire Z General] sino8r:
Looks like the real deal... I've been fooled before ;) I hope they don't run this guy off like they almost did to scotty and emmc unlocking lol! although, that was a bigger deal, imo
[G2 and Desire Z General] kaijura:
Sweet, m-deejay acknowledged it too. Bet he's definitely going to get it into the virtuous quattro builds. This is really good news to look forward to since the desireHD builds are interchangable with the DZ and Incredible S/2.

CM9 may come sooner for our single cores after all. They were probably waiting on the official releases for the adreno 220 phones to base it on!
[G2 and Desire Z General] gteye:
I agree with you but wanted to note that the fees listed above were in response to government legislation. There was a fee that businesses were paying when you swiped your card and that fee was removed due to the government imposed legislation. The cost of doing business however does not go down simply because the government imposes regulation.. the opposite actually happens most of the time... these fees will be passed on to the consumers via the bill... perhaps not as "monthly debit card fees" but rest assured, you will be paying it... the system wasn't broken before... but hey.. they had to change something or they can't justify their jobs... good or bad it doesn't matter.

The Verizon fee increase was similiar as well.

You are right though, the consumer has an extremely powerful voice.. not as a single user but as a group.

I remember when I bought my G1... and was promised A2DP support and then when inquiring about when it was coming being told that it "MAY" come in the future, the community was very mad and contacted them in droves... because it was about 5-6 features that they promised customers when they bought the phones,

I firmly believe that without consumer driven campaigns about things that it often would not happen.

You have the people who call you "whiners" and say "just be patient" yet those people don't understand that companies exist to make money (which is not a bad thing) and there is no money in going back and updating phones they already sold... unless they see a big PR hit.. if the community is silent.. there would be no incentive for them to do anything and then those people calling you "whiners" get to take advantage of the very things the community made happen as they then say "See I told you , just be patient"... of course it wouldn't have happened if we were.
[G2 and Desire Z General] riahc3:
Disgusting.

Since I posted here that I wrote to Qualcomm, I have yet to recieve a reply.

Lets send them some emails too.
[G2 and Desire Z General] Doc76013:
I did receive the same boiler plate message from HTC, I wrote to Qualcomm per the link and like some have yet to receive a response.

It has now been enough time for an answer.
[G2 and Desire Z General] resetrobot:
I don't want to be all negative but I doubt the G2 will get ICS. Just look at all the android phones on T-MO and see their update life. :(
[G2 and Desire Z General] burtcom:
You are misunderstanding, resetrobot...

We _know_ we will never get an official ICS -- we are trying to make it easier for ROM developers like CyanogenMod to make a fully functional ICS for us.

In fact, we already have ICS -- just that the camera isn't fully functional.
[G2 and Desire Z General] shinta86:
This would be awesome!
[G2 and Desire Z General] mapin0518:
Did you even read the first post? We don't what ICS from HTC, we want the code to get the camera to work on our custom ICS ROMs.
[G2 and Desire Z General] pentie:
the RC1 of Virtuous Quattro already have our camera working(not that perfect actually), does it relate to your contacted with Qualcomm?

I'm just curious :)
[G2 and Desire Z General] sorgo:
No, it's an initiative of one Chinese guy named Zhibin Wu (zbwu86 on XDA). His hard work and hard work of other developers integrating it into ICS roms.

More at http://xdaforums.com/showthread.php?p=21460509

But an official source code would help, since the current solution still is not 100% working and has some bugs.
[G2 and Desire Z General] pentie:
Thanks, I came through that post, the current solution is a work around for using the old driver. Anyway that's still good news.
[G2 and Desire Z General] riahc3:
The camera still has some bugs so.....

Something directly from Qualcomm would be nice.
[G2 and Desire Z General] captainreynolds:
So we have a LOT less confusion - MODS/OP - Please, change the title of this thread to its actual question, something like:

"Want to get the camera fully working on the HTC Desire Z/G2? Email HTC and Qualcomm!"

Of course, people will probably still wonder what we are talking about, because of the current hack on Quattro. But still, less confusion and less hacks saying the obvious!

Please! :)
[G2 and Desire Z General] riahc3:
VERY RUDE from Qualcomm...........Not a single reply from what I see.....