[Advantage X7500, MDA Ameo ROM Development] Darkguy:
I finally got my Ameo from T-Mobile Austria this Friday (and it was a steal, with all my bonus points, and they even gave me a nice discount, since it was the last unit and had been on display for a while, even though it doesn't seem to have ever been actually used by anybody). The Ameo has officially been discontinued here and there seem to be only very few, if any units left to be had, so if you are with TMA and want to get one, please do hurry up! (A1 does still carry the HTC X7500, though).

Went right into unlocking and flashing PK 2.0, which both worked like a charm, and all I can say is: This is awesome, thank you guys for making a great device even better! I'd love to get you guys some monetary reward as well, as I mentioned before to ltxda, but it would have to be by means that do not require a credit card (since I don't own one, and PayPal here in Austria only lets you sign up with a credit card). If you have any ideas how to do this (without my bank charging me ridicolous amounts of money for an overseas transfer) please let me know!

If there is some other way I can help out, like maybe with testing or localization/translation (to German), helping out with questions on this thread, etc. please let me know as well. One thing I might be able to offer is maintaining or putting together some sort of FAQ or guide, since there is a lot of information on this thread, but with literally hundreds of postings it can be a bit hard to find one's way around it, and might be a bit intimidating to any newbies (I know I'd have a hard time finding any info, if I hadn't started reading this thread right from the start, even with no Ameo to play with).

I cannot yet comment on battery issues, since I did not use the unit a lot away from home or mains power yet. It seemed to drain a bit fast on first use, but I since removed batti and X Button from Startup and use pBar. From the limited expirience I have with the unit as of yet, that step seems to have improved battery life. The real test for the unit will start in the next couple of days, with university kicking off again full-time and me being on my way most of the day.

I absolutely LOVE the 96dpi mode, with all the info you can fit on the screen. Since I work using UXGA (1600×1200) on a 15" notebook display, I am pretty much used to very small lettering, and don't have any issues with the size whatsoever (even with being far from 20/20 eyesight). I just took a quick look at my MDA II (HTC Himalaya), and could only bear a few seconds of looking at the seemingly HUGE pixels of the 240×320 screen, as compared to the crips screen of the Ameo. Funny what little time it takes to get used to and depending on this kind of resolution.

Sure, a few apps get somewhat distorted, but I can easily live with that, since most work great with that resolution. RealVGA does indeed rock, and the localization component provided with it translates most applications into German without any glitches! The only thing that slightly bothers me is that the SIM-pad is pretty messed up (do we have a solution for that already - a quick search brought nothing up, but I might have missed it). Input works with the stylus as well as the hardware keyboard though, so it's mainly an optical glitch for me.

There is something annoying about the software keyboards, but I will ask my questions about that one in an independent post in this thread, as not to bloat this up too much.

Again, thank you lots and lots for all the work that is going into this, I'd love to help out any way I can, just let me know how!

Regards,

Darkguy