[Nottingham] Mobile experience: From 'stone age' to 'smart age'!

[Martin]

On 22/10/10 20:08, Simon Sleaford wrote:
> Martin, which phone did you go for? I'm going to be buying an android
> phone for my brother in the near future and would be interested what you
> plumped for in the end.

I went for a HTC.

Beware the very wide range of ever changing deals! For my pattern of
usage, the pay-as-you-go option added with the various 'freedom' packs
works best. I'm also very leery of 24-month contracts when the mobile
phone scene and connectivity are so very rapidly changing. Note that the
deal I went for will likely change at the end of this week.

Find me at the next meet or email offlist for further details.


To continue the mini-review... It's had a few days live use now and...

Negatives:

It's far too easy to accidentally dial out to a contact. The phone tries
to be too helpful and can dial out without you needing to hit the dial
button! I demand total control of the thing!! If there is a dial button
there, that suggests that the phone shouldn't activate/action that
feature until you directly *tell* it to by using that button!

It tries to be too helpful for putting text messages in to mail-like
threads and hiding who or which group the thread is with. There appears
to be no way to split a thread to reply to multiple mobiles and edit the
response for each first. A clunky workaround is to use 'forwarding' and
reselect who it's going to;

There is no confirmation where a txt is going to, nor is the destination
shown when responding from a txt 'thread'. That is a recipe for
disaster, especially whilst trying to tap away on jerky bumpy transport.
(Hint: Midway between the wheels minimises the bumpiness. The jerkiness
is at the whim and stress levels of the driver!...)

The screen and camera are rather vulnerable to scratching.

Positives:

It works well. Works fine as a phone and for txt-ing. As with all new
GUIs, you need to get used to it and the odd design quirk;

The GPS works better than expected but you do have to do a reality check
on what it says! On occasion, it can get left behind on where it thinks
you are. It relies on the 3G or WiFi internet to use Google maps. So
far, the data consumption for that hasn't been excessive;

Web browsing works well enough to be useful;

The power of being able to download custom apps really makes it. Being
able to run an ssh client is a very big plus for me.

If you're conscientious enough to only have the GPS or WiFi enabled only
when you actually want to use them, the battery easily lasts a full day.


Cheers,
Martin

-- 
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Martin Lomas
martin at ml1.co.uk
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