I have an HTC EVO and the device does not come with video-chat out of the box. This is insane. As mentioned in the article, you have to install an app from the appstore, sign-up with an account, and then proceed to figure out that you can't actually talk to the person without holding down on the screen (note there is no indication of this while in video chat mode).
It's been a major pain trying to call my wife and tell her how to set all these things up before we can attempt a video chat.
I'd like to see Dan Hesse and his board of directors watch two HTC EVO noobs attempt to video-chat. It would be downright embarrassing.
Please, before investing millions of dollars with your front-facing camera make it at least work out of the box without having to jump through a dozen hoops.
Developer support is lousy too. Sprint has a library (https://docs.google.com/View?id=dhtsnvs6_57d2hpqtgr#3_Second...) that lets you access the front-facing camera, but you can't just test at runtime to see if it's there; once you include that library, your app will fail to launch on any non-EVO. So you have to distribute a separate app for the EVO, which is mostly going to be a nonstarter.
This issue will be fixed when Froyo comes out for it, Froyo includes front facing camera support in the sdk. HTC released this hardware knowing that the software would have to catch up.
This is very bad. Even my Motorola e1000 from 5 years ago had one touch video chat.
It seems that HTC can add hardware features faster than they can add the software, or they are taking the stance that the software should be third party, which has its own advantages and disadvantages, as pointed out by the article.
You would think that at the very least they would have worked with the two companies offering video chat to get stuff working easily.
Maybe this will all be sorted out in the next few months.
So you bought the EVO because of the video chat feature? Video chat is suddenly the most important thing a phone can do? Or does the Evo maybe have some other capabilities, that also used to be enticting (until the world learned that video chat is the only thing that matters).
Nothing against your desire for video chat, I just don't agree that having no video chat is "insane".
Also, couldn't somebody create a better app for video chat on the Evo?
Selling a feature that is known to not work is "insane". Nearly every time I've bought a gadget on the expectation that someday it was going to be great (Nokia N800, I'm looking at you), I've been disappointed.
Apple ships completed projects, many companies ship promises they never intend to fulfill.
It's been a major pain trying to call my wife and tell her how to set all these things up before we can attempt a video chat.
I'd like to see Dan Hesse and his board of directors watch two HTC EVO noobs attempt to video-chat. It would be downright embarrassing.
Please, before investing millions of dollars with your front-facing camera make it at least work out of the box without having to jump through a dozen hoops.