HTC Desire Thoughts

Disclaimer:

·         I tinker with my gadgets a lot; more than the average user anyway

·         More control, functions, access to settings, ability to root, etc, is a huge plus for me

·         Really dislike closed systems similar to Apple’s Iphone and iTunes - so yes, I’m just personally biased against Apple, that’s not to take anything away from the good bits about their take on a smartphone

·         However, thanks to Apple’s foray the smartphone market is growing at breakneck speed, Winmo did nothing of that sort even though it was in the market years earlier.

·         Have fiddled with the iphone (2G, 3G and 3Gs versions, since everyone around me had one :S), played with winmo devices here and there HTC HD2 being the last one, only Android has intrigued me off the bat, symbian user since 2004.
·         Everything written below are all personal opinions, based on my usage and fiddling with the phone so far, and owing to the nature of software, work-arounds and improvements are constantly coming in; so just take everything with an open mind, this is mostly some thoughts for the geeks, potential-android users and whoever else is bored enough to want to read this

Background to the OS:

·         Android used to be an independent startup that was bought over by Google Inc.

·         The founder of android now serves as VP of Engineering in Google Inc.

·         Truly open-source software for developers and enthusiasts to modify, create, etc, think linux for the mobile platform

·         Even the brand is open-source and has a creative commons license 3.0 (go google it)

Why not Apple or Winmo or Symbian:

·         Winmo has been in the market for years and has never impressed me enough; only the differing hardwares that it was installed on got some of my attention, but other than that, I was pretty indifferent to the platform on a whole

·         Apple is just extremely closed (personal view) as an operating system, not that I am going to start coding for Android anytime soon, but usually, the more open a platform, things progress a lot faster, and improvements, enhancements and 3^rd party apps are created helluva faster (less restrictions, more innovation, and yes, more crap too)

·         In essence, Android seems more nimble (technologically flexible and front running) as opposed to Apple and Windows who seem to let margins, principles, corporate red tape, antiquated ideas about what consumers want hold their OSes back (personal opinion, disagree if you want)

·         Symbian has not been innovating or moving like the Big 3 mentioned above for a very long time, the E71 was my last straw with the system, and I’m not impressed with the upcoming symbian and updates, hence bye, symbian, it’s been great for awhile, but I need to move on

The phone (google the tech specs):

·         General Likes

o   3.7” AMOLED touchscreen that’s wicked bright, although personally I like my brightness levels low, colors seem better than the 65k possible

o   Zippy processor, huge ROM and RAM makes web browsing, gaming, using the phone a breeze

o   Speaker is loud enough for ringtones and handsfree communication

o   Large screen (as compared to my prev. E71’s) is a joy to read text and webpages

o   The overall design of the phone is sleek, clean and Zen-ish to me, the buttons just seem to be in the right places, tactile feedback is just about right, a huge difference over the QWERTY keypad and button-laden E71 (which to be fair, I kind of miss the QWERTY)

o   HTC sense is not as bad as feared - think manufacturer-specific pre-loaded software on laptops, PCs

o   The menus upon menus of customisation and settings that are available to the user (+1 to android) I’m personally a control/tinker freak when it comes to my toys

o   ‘mobile multi-tasking’ which has been on the OS since day one, the hardware has only caught up recently to give decent power/speeds and battery life

o   Mobile IMs are so much nicer on a large screen

o   Android market is growing fast, so there’s no shortage of apps, most are repeats or variations of each other anyway; so one platform having more apps than the other is a meaningless comparison factor

o   Android’s inbuilt web browser with google integration (obviously) is surprisingly good, as I have personally expected a lot less after dealing with Nokia’s inbuilt symbian web browser

o   Like most smart phones now, the integration of the native photo-album app with social networking sites like flickr, facebook, etc. so snap a pic on the phone and post it on the spot! Lovely.

·         Specifics (killer features)

o   HTC photo widget allows me to view my entire library of pics on my flickr account as if the library exists on my phone (slow when loading huge sets)

o   Ringtones, HTC has a ringtone-creating app allows you to ‘clip’ any song in your mp3 library in the SD card, which is then saved as a ringtone in a separate folder

o   Gmail, Gcal, Google maps and everything google-cloud-related integration. ‘nuff said.

o   Power control widget for instant command access to Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, Sync and Screen Brightness

o   Android market has the “downloads” tab that show the current list of downloaded apps you have loaded into your ‘droid phone, it doubles as a “Add or Remove” software window where you can download/install more apps and also uninstall apps

o   Notifications are listed as they come in, email, smses, etc. allowing you to see all the recent notifications in one summary page (I believe winmo has something similar to this)

o   Android home screens similar to Apple’s Expose for OS X, pinch to see overall view of all 6 screens, tap on the one you want to enter the screen, else just flip it like you do in the iphone

·         Silly Little Extras that I liked

o   HTC sense has a weather widget that depicts the current weather in your vicinity; i.e. if it is raining in your area, the widget will simulate rain and droplets on your screen, and a wiper will wipe the ‘rain’ away whenever you unlock the phone or bring it out of sleep.

o   Photo/picture frame (HTC and android) – allows you to put a picture(s) on the phone; I.e. think of it as a separate photo frame on your desktop of your significant other

o   HTC has a buttload of ‘clocks’ you can choose from to place on the ‘desktop’ of the phone, most of them take up the entire window.

·         Dislikes

o   OS lags quite noticeably when downloading/installing an app in the background, hope this has been resolved in v2.2 (Froyo)

o   Manufacturers take time to update latest versions of Android on their own branded phones with their own GUI on top

o   Rooting voids warranty, then again, this is the norm.

o   Contacts from gmail, your sim card and imported from outlook from your previous phone are all mashed together, you can only select what is shown, there isn’t  a way to delete the sim contacts or organise them properly. i.e. I have a friend A who’s on my gmail, my sim card, and imported as a contact from my older phone, so I have 3x repeats of his mobile number, 2x repeats of his email

o   Included handsfree kit has pretty decent aethestic and functional design, but really bad acoustics (too trebly)

o   Major failure for me was the uncommon mini-usb jack, why can’t we use the mini-usb jacks that is being used on portable hdds, PS3s, DSLRs, etc? and the cable could afford to be longer

o   Battery life as expected is not fantastic as compared to my E71, but of course, that is a given; the screen is way larger, way brighter, hardware on the Desire is so much more power hungry. Battery does better than expected when 3G/EDGE/4G is not running constantly

o   Camera could be a lot better, but understandable given the physical constraints and keeping everything within a certain budget for mass-market, this is a phone anyway, not a camera featuring a phone’s capabilities

·         Recommended Apps (free ones):

o   Aldiko – fantastic ebook-reader with a great visual interface to search and download a variety of free, open-source ebooks (classics, free-contemporary writers, etc) and even links to buy commercial ebooks

o   Color note – make notes, set reminders, create checklists, etc.

o   Handcent SMS – allows aesthetic customisation of the messaging function of the phone, has a very useful ‘quick-reply’ function that opens a window when you receive an sms that bypasses the lock screen

o   FxCamera – a popular type of lomography app for a variety of post-processing of the pictures you take with your phone’s camera

o   Nimbuzz – have used this 3^rd party IM app on my Nokia E71 before, and found it a very powerful portable IM client that allows you to combine all your Facebook, MSN, AIM, Yahoo, etc contacts into one client, works great on the Android

o   iToday (for Singaporean paper newsfeed) – best of all the local papers’ apps on the android market; for more international news, I’d go with the BBC app