Review of HTC Desire As Alternative To iPhone 544
Andrew Smith writes "My search for an alternative to the iPhone has been long and frustrating. On paper, the HTC Desire is the first serious challenger to the iPhone's reign as king of phones. But how does it compare in use? There is much good and much bad. (This review is primarily for UK readers as HTC's new handset, the Incredible, will not be available [in the UK].)"
It's great (Score:5, Informative)
Beautiful screen, Exchange integration works perfectly (even with the exotic configuration I have at work) and the widgets available are really cool.
Battery life is acceptable. Better than my last smartphone (N91).
There are some fantastic apps: Layar in particular is not only technically cool, it actually has a practical use.
Downsides:
1. Not all alls in App Market are available, including goodies like Google Earth. Though I hear that this'll be solved soon enough.
2. Keyboard is terrible when you need to write in multiple languages (in my case dutch & english). For English alone it's fantastic.
3. SMS, twitter dms, emails aren't integrated into one app. I'd love to see a single 'messaging center' for all apps (even if its just via a notification API or something). No idea if the iPhone / Palm can do this btw.
Re:It's great (Score:5, Informative)
Just RTFA.
>Many functions require a press of the menu button to bring up a list of
>options, whereas on the iPhone there would be a button on the screen.
>This extra step makes the Desire feel a little cumbersome.
The thing is, on the Desire you have a widget for almost everything, so you don't even need to open the application. It's just there. You just need to navigate to the correct home screen.
As I understand it on the iPhone you must load each application, and can only open one at a time. Which is more cumbersome than hitting the menu key occasionally to exit apps.
I also see no mention of the fantastic friends-list. It combines all your contacts from all sources. You can group them. Then you can put a group of contacts on one of your screens. It grabs avatars from gmail/facebook for your contacts, and that's what you can see on the contacts screen. It's useful and way more practical than any 'address book' feature I've seen in other phones.
>Sound quality during calls is noticeably worse than the iPhone. Both
>the earpiece and the speaker produce a feeble, tinny sound with a
>background hiss.
Sound on mine is fine. It's not as good as a good GSM, but then neither is the iPhone. Don't see any hissing. Speakers are tinny, but all mobile speakers are tinny. You'd not play music with it, just as you'd not play music with any mobile speaker.
> Battery life is appalling. With moderate use I have to charge the Desire
> twice each day. The phone loses around a fifth of its charge just sitting
> on the bedside table overnight.
I get a little over a day out of mine, with everything turned on to max and whilst playing with apps for several hours. Apparently you can improve this considerably if you turn the polling down and don't leave hefy apps open all the time, but to be honest I prefer having the bells and whistles..
Re: (Score:2)
Many functions require a press of the menu button to bring up a list of options, whereas on the iPhone there would be a button on the screen.
Wait, so that's a "menu key on the phone" vs "menu button on the screen" and the physical key is more cumbersome?
I'd think they would be pretty much equivalent except for tactile feedback and screen real estate.
Re: (Score:2)
Well, it does take some getting used to that most apps don't have a close button... and a lot stay open, only closing when you use a third party task killer...
Which is another critisism, and one which doesn't appear in the article. Probably because the author only spend 5mins playing with the Desire before writing his review.
Re: (Score:2)
Then the article sounds like another case of "it's worse because it isn't the same".
I remember an Open Office review where it was bashed for doing things differently from MS Office. Like, if you want the page to be in Landscape mode, why would you ever go to Layout > Page, instead of the obvious File > Print Properties?
Re:It's great (Score:5, Informative)
> and a lot stay open, only closing when you use a third party task killer...
Yeah, a lot of people task ram and resources running third party task killers which server no purpose at all, given the design of Android. All apps on the Android are candidates for closure if memory is required. It's unlikely to happen to an app you're using *now* because it's given a high priority, but if you click `home` or `back` on an app then it might techinically be `running` but not necessarily consuming any resources.
Most people are ignorant of this, hence the confusion. Take a little time to read about how Android works before spouting nonsense.
Re:It's great (Score:5, Interesting)
Just RTFA.
>Many functions require a press of the menu button to bring up a list of
>options, whereas on the iPhone there would be a button on the screen.
>This extra step makes the Desire feel a little cumbersome.
The thing is, on the Desire you have a widget for almost everything, so you don't even need to open the application. It's just there. You just need to navigate to the correct home screen.
I just wanted to add to that:
The menu button feels different from the iPhone when you're first switching, but I love it now. When i pick up an iPhone, *it* always feels more cumbersome to use. "Menu" is a very intuitive concept, and I like that more than having to keep every possible function onscreen on the iPhone, which is itself cumbersome. Or, many iPhone apps end up implementing a "Menu" icon onscreen, but those will all be in a different place based on the UI design. On Android, "Menu" is always in the same place, and since its always there, UI designers don't feel like they have to put icons everywhere for things, they can just use "Menu" without worrying about making a cumbersome UI. I think its better personally. But as I said, it feels awkward coming from iPhone OS... but that goes away.
Also not cumbersome? A Back button.
-Taylor
Re:It's great (Score:4, Insightful)
I think his battery life will go up as he uses it more. It's a feature of these small lithium batteries that they need to bed in. It's very noticeable on the iPhone, where I was charging the phone once a day from red to doing it every couple of days without changing my usage at all. The same was true for my sister's iPhone. I'm sure the Desire is very similar once the charging system has calibrated the battery after a few cycles.
It also seems, regarding sound quality, that the Desire can have carrier-custom firmwares that affect the sound, and restoring the default HTC one improve the quality considerably. Score one for being able to modify the firmware yourself.
Re:It's great (Score:5, Interesting)
I replaced my iPhone with a Desire just a few weeks ago. It has taken me a little while to get used to it. I forgot about the existence of the hardware buttons and would expect all functionality to be available on screen via a touch, like the iPhone. I'm quickly getting past that though, and I don't think either system is better or worse than the other, just different.
First the iPhone does feel more polished than the desire. Part of that may be because of familiarity, but other things, like my gmail account not showing up with the HTC mail widget is just annoying.
Other things though are much much better. Widgets are fantastic. All the information I want if available on the phone's 'desktop'. Multi-tasking! It's great! The best experience I had was something really simple. I recieved an email with a link to google maps. Touching the link opened up the maps application. I was able to navigate around the map and then clicked the back button. Because Android allows multi-tasking clicking back left the map and put me back into my email on the mail app exactly as I left it. That may sound trivial, but I think it's a major improvement over the iPhone. It's the way any device should work.
Re: (Score:2)
2. Keyboard is terrible when you need to write in multiple languages (in my case dutch & english). For English alone it's fantastic.
Have you tried the 'Dutch for SlideIT Keyboard'? It's a free app on the Market, it supports a primary language and secondary language(s), and it's getting five star reviews from users (I wish I could tell you what those users are saying, but it's all gibberish to me).
Re: (Score:2)
From TFA... (Score:4, Insightful)
"The problem, you see, is that the iPhone is close to perfect. It feels solid, it looks pretty, and its screen responds to the slightest gesture."
Followed by..
"But it is hobbled by Apple’s super-tight approval process that...."
Don't you think, that the reason iPhones are close to perfect, is because of the super-tight approval process.... Not only in the App Store, but also in the build and design of it. Where other manufactures make something just good enough to sell, Apple go one step further.... The touch screen has to work perfectly, it has to feel solid, and the Apps that are available for it, better not let the whole experience down....
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Now see I don't mind apple having a quality control process for the apps. If they reject things because they are completely pointless/useless and/or they don't work properly or are very buggy, that would be fine by me, but that would get rid of the 301 flashlight apps and other junkware.
Instead, they block apps for all kinds of reasons:
1. Using 3G networking for things where it's "Not approved".
2. "Confusing users" by upgrading core functionality.
3. Using magical APIs that only Apple is allowed to use.
4. B
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Don't you think, that the reason iPhones are close to perfect, is because of the super-tight approval process.... Not only in the App Store, but also in the build and design of it.
Having experienced the App store approval process and used an iPhone. Absolutely not to the first point, and a resounding yes to the second point (the build and design of the OS and phone).
The OS, UI and tight design (not tight controls on apps) are what sets it apart.
There are no tight controls on app quality, quite the reverse (just look at all the terrible apps on the store), but there are bizarre, inconsistent, constantly changing controls on app functionality/use.
Re: (Score:2)
As anyone that has gone through the 'approval process' knows, it has zero to do with quality, all kinds of crap gets approved and good apps get rejected, the rules are arbitrary and are unevenly enforced. It is all about control and protecting Apple's interests.
Re:From TFA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't you think, that the reason iPhones are close to perfect, is because of the super-tight approval process...
Nope, not really.
Not only in the App Store,
They don't allow third-party app stores, so it's not just the app store, but the entire device that they're asserting that control over.
You give up nothing by using an open phone -- you can still stick with Google's App Store if you really want, or you can use a third-party app store, or install apps yourself, or...
also in the build and design of it.
That would be where it really shines, and where Steve Jobs' style may work really well. Unfortunately, it also has the effect that if there's any element of that design you don't like, you're SOL.
Some people want physical keyboards -- with Android, you can find phones with them and phones without them. With iPhone, Jobs says no keyboards, you don't get a keyboard.
The touch screen has to work perfectly,
And how hard is that to get right?
and the Apps that are available for it, better not let the whole experience down....
Because clearly, that's what's holding OS X back on the desktop. Riight.
I mean, people always bitch about some random OS X app not having a native-like interface, but you know what? If my choice is between The Gimp and nothing, I'll take The Gimp, ugly X interface and all, every time. It's not like one app is going to ruin my entire experience, and if it did, I'd know exactly where to place the blame.
Of course, you and I both know this is bullshit. Apple didn't censor "sexy" apps to make sure the experience was seamless. They didn't block tethering apps to make everything that much more perfect. They didn't block Google Voice because they just knew it was exactly what the customer wanted. No, they do all that and more for purely business reasons, when it isn't just someone fucking up or making an arbitrary spur-of-the-moment decision.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Suppose Apple did ban OSX applications that don't have a good interface. Certainly at least one developer would be willing to write graphics program for OSX that has a good UI because that would give them a market with less competition.
That only works if you're only considering broad categories of application, like "graphics program" -- it means that some little one-man projects would likely be gone.
And, as delinear points out, it would very likely drive people to less restrictive platforms. Think about it -- why would you bother developing for OS X, where you have to do that much extra work to develop a "good UI" which Apple may reject anyway, to get less marketshare than you'd have on Windows, which is going to be far easier to develop
Re:From TFA... (Score:5, Insightful)
Don't you think, that the reason iPhones are close to perfect, is because of the super-tight approval process....
No. There are plenty of apps that violate Apple UI conventions, that crash, that leak memory, and that are generally awful. Apple's approval process is there for business and strategic reasons, not as quality control.
iPhones appear "close to perfect" because Apple avoided most of the hard problems in making a modern phone: multitasking, application integration, file management, USB devices, full Bluetooth support, DUN, full over the air synchronization, security and access control for applications, intents and other APIs, etc. They also appear "close to perfect" because it's premium hardware and you pay a premium price for it.
It's a tradeoff that works in the market: Apple is grabbing market share now. In a couple of years, iPhone-like responsiveness will be on sub-$200 Android devices, but then we'll still be stuck with Apple having grabbed a large part of the market and charging a premium.
missed article due to database error... (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the review (Score:5, Informative)
Review of HTC Desire as alternative to Apple iPhone
My search for an alternative to Apple’s iPhone has been long and frustrating.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve walked out of a highstreet phone shop, disappointed by devices that promised so much but turned out to be flimsy toys with sluggish software and unresponsive touchscreens.
Anyone who has similarly quested an escape from Apple’s grasp will know my pain!
The problem, you see, is that the iPhone is close to perfect. It feels solid, it looks pretty, and its screen responds to the slightest gesture.
But it is hobbled by Apple’s super-tight approval process that, for example, blocked Pulitzer Prize-winning work by satirist Mark Fiore, and kept customers waiting an astonishing 20 days for the popular Opera web browser to be allowed on to the device.
(Fiore’s work was eventually approved after much public outcry, while Opera rocketed to the top of the iPhone app chart with more than one million downloads in 48 hours.)
The latest, and most enticing alternative to the iPhone comes in the form of the Desire by Taiwanese mobile phone specialist HTC.
With HTC’s announcement on Friday that its next handset, the Incredible, will not be launched in the UK — and presumably not on the Continent either — it is likely that the Desire will remain as the iPhone’s main European rival for some considerable time.
Hyped as the world’s first superphone, the Desire is fast, beautiful, and its touchscreen is every bit as tactile and responsive as that on Apple’s handset.
At the heart of the Desire is Google’s Android operating system so it is near-infinitely customisable.
It is also out-of-stock across much of the UK after delivery flights were grounded by the volcanic ash cloud.
On paper, the Desire is the first serious challenger to the iPhone’s reign as king of phones. But how does it compare in use?
Red faces
The failings of the Desire hit you within minutes of first using it.
Its screen is bright and colourful indoors, but almost unusable in sunlight. This severely hampers all aspects of the phone, from sending texts to web browsing, to taking photos.
The touchscreen intermittently remains active during phone calls and it’s too easy to press the on-screen buttons with your ear. I’ve accidentally hung up on people dozens of times.
Sound quality during calls is noticeably worse than the iPhone. Both the earpiece and the speaker produce a feeble, tinny sound with a background hiss.
Used indoors, the Desire’s vivid screen is great for most apps, but when viewing photos or web sites you realise that the screen is severely over-saturated. People’s faces become beetroot red.
Open Android
Web browsing is a joy. Pages render quickly and accurately.
When you zoom in on a web page using the familiar un-pinch gesture, the Desire neatly re-formats text to your screen width for easy reading.
Built-in Google chat is a surprise boon, offering a free and instantaneous alternative to text messaging between friends.
The phone is advertised as a hub-in-your-pocket for social networking, yet support for Facebook and Twitter is incomplete and unreliable, at times missing entire blocks of messages.
Thanks to the open nature of the Android operating system, there is a myriad of alternative apps to replace the standard ones.
Antiquated list-style text messaging is easily upgraded to a free iPhone-style app with familiar speech bubble conversations.
There are superb free apps for Twitter, note taking, reading news feeds, and almost anything else you may want to do with a phone. Facebook apps are thin on the ground and quite poor, although a full-featured official Facebook client is persistently rumoured to
Re:Here's the review (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
Check the N900 developer site (Score:5, Informative)
I am finding that the biggest issue with the N900 is that it is being bought by people who think they are technically knowledgeable and are then finding that, basically, anything non-Windows is difficult. I went for it because it can ssl into my servers, and because the multitasking lets me run certain background applications that would never be accepted by Apple (they are our remote management tools.) So for me, as a developer, the N900 is a tool for which the iPhone could never be a substitute.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm pretty sure you could set up an enterprise developer account and do an internal app distribution. Not saying you want to but it is possible.
Re: (Score:2)
Call back when it's 100% done and bug free. No one wants a half broken phone when they can buy an Android or iPhone and jail break it to get exactly what you're complaining about.
The problem with HTC in reality is (Score:5, Interesting)
That they have excellent hardware but their long term software support is as miserable as the rest of the industry.
Usually you get the phone, and as soon as you are out of the store, they dont see you as a customer anymore.
If you are lucky you get one quick bugfix update, and then you wait for ages and if you are lucky you get another software update.
The classical example this time is the HTC Hero, the top phone from them until January.
The Android 1.6 update was promised, than they said, they were going for straight 2.0 in january, then february March etc...
Now they have released the HTC Legend which is almost the same as the Hero except for the sensor instead of the trackball
and the aluminium casing, it has Android 2.1, well the result was to protect their Legend sales the Hero update again was postponed
to June. However in May Android 2.2 will be released.
All I can say is avoid this phone like the plaque go for the Nexus 1 which will get the software updates in time for the forseeable future unless you are willing to hack your phone open and use the community as software update center.
Actually the Hero will be my last non google branded phone. HTC has pulled the same stunt back then on the touch, and I should have been warned, now they are pulling the same stunt again with the Hero.
As for me I will run the Hero until the end of the year and then will go straight for what Google has to offer (hopefully a non HTC Nexus2)
Re:The problem with HTC in reality is (Score:5, Interesting)
Problem is the rest of the industry is as miserable as HTC in this regard, Samsung, good luck to get any update after a few months, but they also have shoddy hardware usually, while HTCs is rock solid.
Motorola, they have good hardware, and so far the track record of software support is there, but outside of the USA they pulled the DRM stunt, by encrypting the bootloader, so that the phone is basically locked down and the community is prevented to open it to flash it on their own (Note this is basically just for the Milestone, the Droid is relatively open). So what if Motorola decides not to support the phone anymore.
Sony/Ericsson, they are still to new in the Android area, but given their track record, I do not have high hopes.
LG... shoddy hardware, and given LGs track record I would not have high hopes either to get a good customer support out of them
Acer... they just pulled the screw your existing customers by not supporting them stunt on the Liquid One. While having good hardware, the phone is a no buy.
So all I can say is, if you want Android, opt directly for Google, that is the only chance of being not entirely screwed by the manufacturer. Android itself is excellent, but the phone makers try hard to carry over their advertise sell and run businessmodell from WinMobile days.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Problem is the rest of the industry is as miserable as HTC in this regard
Not quite *everyone*, no?
I seem to recall a certain company that does simultaneous releases of their mobile OS across all their phones, and is only now after 3 years dropping support for their oldest model.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yep. Beats the hell out of losing support at the *start* of you contract.
Re: (Score:2)
Well I was stricktly speaking about Android phones, which is an area where mostly ex WinMobile companies are around and they took their old habits with them.
Other companies have a better track record, RIM for instance, or Apple, which you now can rely on having a 2 years of support (which should be standard, given the contractual times most carriers enforce), also Nokia on some models (Nokia is a hit and miss in this regard, but some of their models are really well supported, while others are cash in and ru
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is that some of the problems aren't "day one" or even "day 30" bugs. They crop up after weeks or months of use, or when you try to use an application that depends on something that's broken. Sometimes they're related to security issues.
With Windows Mobile that was embarrassing: phones would ship with broken add-on apps that would leak memory or crash, problems like SMTP timing out would corrupt your mailbox, time zones being out of date, etc. For a personal user this might not be an issue: fo
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Actually, the truth is somewhere between your assumptions and N1. Android itself is hosted and designed by a foundation of manufacturers (the open handset alliance) and every manufacturer who wants to brand his phone as android (fill version number here) has to proved the baseline of libraries the version itself has declared. So no phone manufacturer can bring out a cheap stripped down version of a baseline os like it happened with WinCE and Symbian in the past. However this obligation does not expand into
Re: (Score:2)
Exactly why I went with N1.
You won't want to HAVE to use modded ROMs just to keep up with the mainstream Android release.
The homescreens et al are neat but along the lines of the Android sw update issue, when these services change/update their APIs etc. how long before (if?) HTC responds.
To be honest N1's contact sync w/ google and running gmail/meebo in background is good enough for me, I have the brain power spare to differentiate between IM, email and phone details and don't mind using a different app/in
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, I have been running Android 2.1 from those guys and the ones from htcpedia.com, however, all those roms have their weaknesses, for instance, while it runs perfectly (the one I am running now) I found out yesterday that MMS was not working.
So hacked roms, while being nice often, almost ever are buggy. The only ones running fine are the 1.5 ones because the community has kernel access to them.
Until HTC releases the official 2.1 rom for the Hero (and the sources a few weeks after that for the kernel) the
Battery drain - how to prevent it (Score:4, Interesting)
I use a Google Nexus, almost equivalent to the Desire, and I can recognize the battery drain. However, after a few weeks, the phone easily holds a day - probably because "moderate; use" is really "let's see what this device can do; use".
Also, some apps are written badly and consume a lot of power when in the background. If you are experimenting a lot with your phone, chances are big that you have installed one of these. There are two solutions:
1) Uninstall the bad apps.
2) Use a tool, like task killer, which can kill the bad apps when the screen turns off.
Additionally, if you are always online, and have enabled wifi, it will consume power. Quick solution: put a wifi on/off widget on your front screen, and keep wifi off under normal use.
Re:Battery drain - how to prevent it (Score:5, Insightful)
I use a Google Nexus, almost equivalent to the Desire, and I can recognize the battery drain. However, after a few weeks, the phone easily holds a day - probably because "moderate; use" is really "let's see what this device can do; use".
Also, some apps are written badly and consume a lot of power when in the background. If you are experimenting a lot with your phone, chances are big that you have installed one of these. There are two solutions:
1) Uninstall the bad apps.
2) Use a tool, like task killer, which can kill the bad apps when the screen turns off.
Additionally, if you are always online, and have enabled wifi, it will consume power. Quick solution: put a wifi on/off widget on your front screen, and keep wifi off under normal use.
Also a +1 for android, when your battery gets low, there is a little "Why?" button, and you can see battery usage by process, to see if its some poorly written bad app using it, a good app just doing more than you realized, or you're an idiot and left the bluetooth and wifi on all day (which are simple to turn off with the homescreen widget!).
I use my nexus one like crazy and by midnight i still have half my battery left most of the time.
-Taylor
Re: (Score:2)
Task killer is a no go, actually Task Killer is the biggest battery drain, do not use it, it constantly polls your process list. Android does fine is its own internal garbage collector and it works fine for Android 2.x. The biggest bad habit people carry over from WinMobile is installing task killers, they do more harm than good. I have been running Android for months now without them, never missed them and the battery consumption actually was significantly reduced by not using them.
Neither was performance,
Battery life (Score:5, Interesting)
That's about what I get with my iphone using bluetooth and frequent mp3 playback. Annoying, I'd agree. But I think it'd be far less so in a device where I can just swap the battery out.
Re: (Score:2)
Actually I am using the Hero (on a hacked 2.1) here, and I am getting 48 hrs with moderate usage. There are several factors:
a) Remove Task Killer if you installed it, that thing is a pointless battery drain
b) Use HTCs switching widgets so you can turn off selectively WIFI, UTMS etc... depending on your usage (they are really switches you can put on your homescreen, so no harm done there)
c) Give the phone at least a week to fine tune its battery
d) Turn of auto sync and use the sync button manually saves agai
Re: (Score:2)
TFA gives 403 Forbidden (Score:4, Funny)
Smartphones still too big (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
HTC in China? (Score:2)
Apologies for 403 Forbidden (Score:4, Informative)
Got an e-mail from my host (Pair) saying that my blog had been disabled due to a script problem. But it's just a Wordpress blog. I've re-enabled it and hopefully it'll stay up now. Sorry for those getting 403 earlier, or database failure now :-(
Seems an overly harsh evaluation to me (Score:5, Informative)
To be honest, as a Desire user, I think this review is overly harsh.
While I do agree with the screen complaints (the OLED screen is all but unviewable in direct sunlight) and the battery life isn't great (although I find it'll last the day with moderately heavy use (and thats before dicking around with sync settings and other various battery-improving tweaks)), the other complaints I diagree with - for example I much prefer the chat system on the Desire to the bubble-style conversations of the iPhone although obviously other people will prefer things the other way (and they can install Handcent or one of the myriad other progams that will bring that functionality.
He complains that on the iPhone there is a button to bring up the menu for any given app - this is true, but there is no guarentee it is in the same place or clearely labelled on each program - with the Desire you always go to the same place allowing for a more consistent experience. Personally I find that the phone has just the right number of buttons, even if it is a few more than the holy iPhone (home, menu, back, search and then power and volume keys
The standard keyboard is a bit tricky to use in portrait mode due to key size (especially for me - I'm 6'5 and fairly stocky) however what it does offer is *choice* - quite apart from the landscape mode keyboard (which I believe iPhone now allows globally?) there are two other portrait keyboards you can use instead - compact QWERTY (each key has two letters as with some blackberries) and then a Phone keypad. One feature that impressed me is that if you have accidentally added misspellings to the dictionary (which I have done more than once) you can delete words individually rather than just resetting the user dictionary (which is certainly what you used to have to do with the iPhone, but I must admit my info could be out of date here.
I do not see any of the complaintes about the sound quality of the phone - the earpiece is typical smartphone (which is to say good enough but easily beaten by the old dedicated phone handsets) and the speaker is pretty loud. Of course you'd never want to listen to music with it, but its good enough for spoken word stuff (audiobooks and stand-up comedy in my case).
I don't agree with his complaints about the trackpad either, although to be fair I've not tried to use it with wet fingers so I can't comment on that, however I have seen no unusual behaviour with it either (and to be honest I don't use the track pad much anyway, It's served more use as a camera shutter button than it as as a navigation device - while its nice to have the choice I find the touchscreen is just much easier.
To be fair there are some things that do annoy me with the phone, but its all minor things - for example in the media player I would like that in the media player it was possible to navigate back up the tree, but thats not always an option (for example if you pick a track from 'first principles' (ie fire up app, select artist then album then track) you can do it, but if you just tap on the media player widget it takes you to the currently selected track but if you want to change you have to navigate from those first principles again (with the exception of pickig a different track from the same album.) but its a pretty minor complaint, and the other things that annoy me are all little things as well.
One thing that is an issue currently is that a lot of pay-for apps are as yet unupdated for Android 2.1 and are just not there in the app store, which is really irritating to be in a position to download say a 'free' (whether ad-supported or somehow limited) version, want to buy the complete version and its just not there. Lack of Google Earth is particularly annoying.
iPhone vs Desire comparison (Score:5, Insightful)
As a Desire owner who's also played with the iPhone a fair bit, I think I'm pretty well-placed to judge this. It's fairly simple: the Desire is the better phone in almost every respect.
Additionally, I think the author of the article may have a faulty handset. Many of the problems he mentions having with the Desire are not an issue at all on my device. The supposedly oversaturated screen looks beautiful (put it side-by-side with an iPhone and see the difference), I've never had the touch screen remain active during a call, and the "tinny speaker" sounds great to me, giving far greater call quality than I've experienced on a iPhone. He's right that the screen can be difficult to see in bright sunlight, but I solved this problem by living the U.K.
iPhone pros
50/50
Desire pros
Some of the above will be added in the new iPhone OS, indeed I'm sure the hardware will catch up with (possibly overtake) most of the above too. So if you're a real Apple junkie it might be worth your while waiting for the summer. But if you're after the best smartphone available right now, I don't think there's really any competition.
Re:iPhone vs Desire comparison (Score:4, Informative)
My wife was getting jealous of my iphone 3gs (had it for 6 months), so I decided to give it to her and I picked up an HTC Desire (have it for a few weeks now). It was almost half the price of an iphone in switzerland (580CHF vs 1000 CHF), and while I expected it to play better with Linux, it turns out to be waaay better in all respects (except app store sheer size, most apps I need are there tho). By comparison, the iphone sucks, really. I'm really happy I switched. ... battery life seemed initially a little worse than 3gs, but I found the "power managment widget" and now its still fully charged after a day on my desk, reading slashdot and email sync. Now I would say the 3gs has worse battery life.
I like sooo many things compared to iphone 3gs: ... iphone I was stuck with an on phone calendar. ... +1 for over iphone. ... make for much quicker navigation than iphone "one button" madness.
- email client, vip list is great, search of "other" mails on server (iphone just does locally loaded if I recall),
- sync to gmail calendar great for linux users
- this alone will make me more productive than iphone.
- plays ogg and make ringtones with a push of button in media player.
- appears as disk for linux users to add music, etc. Not bound to itunes.
- optical trackball seemed superfluous to me at first, but it turns out to be great for text editing
- apps from third-party sites like andriodpit.com, with easy install by barcode scanning QR code on monitor! No unlock necessary.
- contact management compared to iphone is more felxible, for ex: an ActiveSync and Exchange server in parallel with gmail.
i.e. linking contacts together from different sources into one person. Very smart.
- I like that u can set schedule for push support, so I don't get pushed spam waking my up at 1am
- General htc sense software stack very mature and much more feature rich
- processor is easily as fast as iphone 3gs.
- can swap battery on the road to extend battery life.
- I like the extra keys like "search", "menu" but especially "back"
Waiting SBB (swiss train service) online e-ticket app. Though an app FahrplanCH gets basic schedule functionality I need. The rest I can do in the browser.
Skype seems to be not available yet, but nimmbuzz seems to be workaround, or one of many SIP clients: use case phoning home on wlan when I'm abroad.
So I'm happy to say good riddance to my iphone 3gs. As a Linux user who wants features and options, I'm much happier with my HTC Desire than my iphone 3gs.
Nexus One is the Android phone by Google (Score:3, Insightful)
If you want to see true Android, get a Nexus One. At least most people on Slashdot will find the feature set much more desirable than the iPhone, and it's overall price is actually slightly cheaper than the iPhone.
No CalDAV, no sale (Score:3, Informative)
I researched long and hard before I bought my iPhone a couple months ago. I had been using some form of Palm device for about 15 years; the last two of which were a model of Treo. The bottom line is that I needed NON-EXCHANGE-TYPE access to calendars on mail servers. Specifically, I have a Zimbra FOSS mail server for my family, and a Zimbra NE server at work (which handles 2 companies). I didn't want either server to be "canonical," so I refuse to use ActiveSync and let it "take over" all of the PIM functions of the phone. For calendars, I use CalDAV, and the iPhone has KILLER CalDAV support. (I use a Funambol server at home to sync contacts, and the Zindus plugin to make them work with Thunderbird, though SyncEvolution works almost as well with Evoltion.)
Neither the new WebOS-based Palm phones, nor any of the Android phones I can find, have any support for CalDAV. At all. How this situation exists, I have no idea, but I don't care. The iPhone has been great. However, I am one of those people who has used Linux on the desktop for about 11 years now, and I'm watching and waiting for an Android phone that will integrate with my collaboration servers as well as an iPhone. When this happens, I'll give the iPhone to my wife. Heck, I'd pay an early-termination fee to switch providers if the Sprint Evo could do it!
Re:The reality is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, the article didn't dispute that either. The reason people want alternatives (inferior as they may be) is Apple's tyrannical control over the platform.
Re:The reality is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The reality is... (Score:5, Insightful)
His point was this is a technical site.
He only paraphrased parent on the "elite" part.
Regardless of how it's worded, we on /., cares about wether a system is vendor locked or not.
Most of the regulars anyway.
Re:The reality is... (Score:5, Interesting)
"Huh? My PC died. Why can't I copy the music off it to another?"
"Huh? Why doesn't it work with my new car's head unit? I got the top of the line VW one with phone integration?" - no decent bluetooth control, and no remote SIM support, and no chance of a fix
Re:The reality is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Precisely.
The difference is that geeks care about such things in advance because they can imagine where all of that leads, while normal people concentrate much more on what it does right this minute. But that doesn't mean they don't end up running into trouble later.
Then it seems that the real source of those issues isn't the one that gets the blame. Instead the blame goes on computers or tech in general, and some friendly geek/tech support is asked to deal with it.
Re:The reality is... (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is that geeks care about such things in advance because they can imagine where all of that leads, while normal people concentrate much more on what it does right this minute. But that doesn't mean they don't end up running into trouble later.
For my two cents i can never understand why normal people do not want to be able to carry a spare battery. This will always be the deal braker for me with an iPhone. Why do I have to send the whole unit back to apple for this? My Sony Walkman I had in the 1980's let me change the batteries when the old ones ran out, why can Apple not master it now?
I have no objection to it being a proprietary battery that costs a fortune either. They can even sell me an additional charger that allows me to plug and charge batteries directly without the phone. I will probably even then leave my spare battery on the charger for weeks until I know I am going to need it, thereby giving a lifetime of a few months before memory effect kicks in and I have to buy a new spare battery. I swear they will get a small fortune out of me.
Just please, please let me have the option so I can go away for a few days and not give a crap about there being a plug socket of the correct format for a hundred miles. I also like travelling light so am not keen on always carrying a charger and universal plug socket adapter.
Especially when even with these things I have to leave my phone stationary and plugged in while it charges. If I am out and about I am terrible for forgetting to do this before I crash out, especially if alcohol is involved (or a women, but that hardly ever happens).
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> People accept that, so why is a phone any different?
Music, Movies and Books have never been a "proprietary console" experience.
Consoles have always been proprietary because CODE tends to require higher compatability barriers than DATA.
Of course Apple is happily encouraging the confusion that Microsoft helped to start.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
People accept that, so why is a phone any different?
Phones are semi-critical part of peoples everyday lives. I'll agree that nobody would die without a cell phone, but voice and data communications have become almost necessary for many people to communicate with friends, family, and coworkers. I think people are more willing to accept restrictions on purely entertainment devices (especially since the usefulness of the device is contingent on its ability run new software in the future). We don't accept that on phones because we feel that we need to contro
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure why people say this.
I recently purchased my first android phone. People say that it is 'open'. But, people say a lot of things.
My phone isn't open. It's very much locked down. If I want to delete an application like 'Sprint Nascar Cup' - I can't. It won't let me.
If I call up Sprint customer support and ask them how to delete it, they tell me it's impossible. I know, because I asked. It can't be done.
'Rooting' the phone is possible; but it violates your warranty, it forfeits your right to
Re:The reality is... (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, *someone* (read: many people) buys the Android over the iPhone, and as it was said, it's not because of "total experience".
Maybe it's because of Latitude, or Voice or any other of the apps the Apple denied? Being against Apple's control is not a philosophical position, it's has real consequences for its users.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
1 out of 2 (Score:3, Interesting)
Google Voice was denied by Apple, from what I remember. However, I don't recall the reason–don't know if a reason was ever given. That is Apple's fault.
Google Maps with Navigation, that is Google's fault. They are the ones that have denied iPhone users that opportunity.
On a slightly different, but very related issue, it is funny how the people here often rail against Apple's managed platform, but not against Google's very aggressive collection of user data, for their own uses with Android. Very intere
Re:The reality is... (Score:5, Insightful)
At some point, we as consumers need to step back from the glossy black surfaces, and sleek lines, and realize that the tools we buy should be stylish, but they should be functional first. I won't be using an iphone, ever. Because I ONLY use platforms that are extensible by the user. Because I want function. What is it you are shopping for?
Re:The reality is... (Score:4, Interesting)
I think the big issue is the whole 'functionality before hype' argument. Electronic toys are all fine and dandy, but so much about the iPhone is based on hype, rather than on how good it is. This is why they can't give the iPhone away in Japan, because without the hype, the iPhone isn't really all that great compared to the competition.
Dude, get a clue and keep current with reality (Score:5, Informative)
What are you smoking? Judging by the mod of 4 and 'insightful', it must be a group water pipe, filled with some really good shit.
http://erictric.com/2010/04/23/iphone-market-share-in-japan-surpasses-72/ [erictric.com]
The iPhone has 72% of the smart phone market share in Japan. However, even I take that with a grain of salt, because the definition of a 'smart phone' is even more confused than it is here. However, the iPhone has 4.9% of the total market, and growing.
However you cut it, seems to me that they are doing quite well in what may be the toughest mobile market in the world. A place that has destroyed attempts by others do the same thing.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
As someone that's actually been to Japan, I would like to call bullshit on this nonsense.
Perhaps if you cook the numbers long enough it looks like the iphone is something other than ignored in Japan.
If you've actually been there, the perception is remarkably different.
Much of the current Apple hype comes from selective and self serving presentation of the numbers.
Re: (Score:3)
I've been there, too. The iPhone is not the most popular phone...and may will never be. But it is certainly not the complete failure pictured by the guy I responded to originally. The numbers are correct, however. Will they be at that level or higher/lower, next quarter? Who knows. That is the toughest mobile market in the world.
Re:Dude, get a clue and keep current with reality (Score:5, Informative)
I live in Japan. There are lots of reasons for the popularity or lack of popularity in the iPhone (depending on whose side you want to argue). The first is that the iPhone is only sold by Softbank. Softbank is the the low end of the market -- it has cheap(ish) rates, but the coverage is poor. For example I can't make a telephone call in my apartment on Softbank. The very people who Apple would want to entice with the iPhone (image concious people) are the ones who would avoid Softbank. So sales numbers are not as high as they might be.
On the other hand, Softbank has a relatively understandable "unlimited" 3G packet plan. You pay X per month plus Y per month (for no reason what-so-ever) then you pay Z per packet until a certain limit (reached in about 10 minutes on an iPhone) and then it's free. Works out to about $50 per month (for 3G only). The two other big players, Docomo and AU, are incomprehensible... Seriously. I thought about switching but I can not for the life of me figure out how much it will cost me per month.
As far as I know, AU doesn't offer any smart phones at all. Now, it's a blurred line here because normal phones are pretty "smart". For instance, it is rare to find a phone that you can't buy games and applications for. You can read books, write memos, use a calender, maps, etc... So I will call "smart" something that operated similarly to the iPhone (i.e., primarily touch interface, etc)
Docomo has 2 smart phones as far as I know. They have an android phone and one other (which I forget). They don't really hype them either. I tried to get info on the android phone but the sales people weren't all that helpful. Basically, apple has the smart phone market by default right now.
The biggest stumbling blocks to adoption are the fact that the smart phones have no TV built into them and no pay card system. Many phones in Japan are able to interact with the bus and trains. You download money into the phone and flash your phone over a reader. You can also buy things at the convenience store or get coupons and the like. It is a very popular feature.
To make a long story a bit shorter, the iPhone is far for a failure here. But it is unlikely to take a large share of the market for a variety of reasons which people from other counties probably won't understand. People here like them fine, but there is a lot more to consider here than in the states.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
> Yeah, funny that. Not everyone requires their phone to be extensible in order to be "functional".
No. Apple users are just used to "doing without" and then making excuses for themselves.
It applies equally well to proper Macs. It's just a lot easer for a "geek" to modify a Mac so it's more flexible.
The problem with the Apple fanboy idea of "usability" is that you also have to cripple the device in the process.
You need to hide all of the scary details (even the filesystem) lest the frighten the end users
Re:The reality is... (Score:5, Informative)
There are also several 3rd party launcher replacements available on the app store that let you swap out the home screen if you want a different experience. Try doing THAT on an iPhone. Or replacing the dialer, or the photo picker. Apple is fine if you want to do things exactly the way they've accounted for. Thing is, that's not necessary to get a consistent out-of-the-box experience. The same is true of any Android phone right when you open it, but there you aren't prevented from replacing things if you want to.
Finally, you said the Android has a slow time getting traction. Everything I've seen indicates that they're picking up market share (and developer activity in their app space) faster than the iPhone. Yeah, they're a bit new to the party, and the first couple versions of the OS were more like a beta than a full release. The recent pace and quality is starting to pay off, though.
Seriously, anyone that says a Palm is the same (Score:3, Insightful)
is smoking crack. I am a multi-published developer and tech guy who's been in the industry since the days he was using a Sun 3/50 all-in-one 68k machine with SunOS loaded from DC600 tapes. I'm not tech-incompatible.
I spent days and hours frothing at the mouth because "in theory" the Palm "should" be able to do X, Y, and Z or because the Palm was "so close" do doing what I needed... and yet with all the hours and evenings spent trying to "just make it do this one little thing" that would make my life easier,
Re:Seriously, anyone that says a Palm is the same (Score:4, Informative)
I spent days and hours frothing at the mouth because "in theory" the Palm "should" be able to do X, Y, and Z or because the Palm was "so close" do doing what I needed... and yet with all the hours and evenings spent trying to "just make it do this one little thing" that would make my life easier, the Palms always fell short. I always fell back into "well, what are you going to do, those are the trade-offs of mobile devices" thinking.
Seriously? On my old Treo 650, I installed Chattermail and instantly had real push email with my existing IMAP email account. It took me less than 10 minutes to get it running and I absolutely loved it.
I *still* can't have it with my iPhone. STILL. No goddamned IMAP IDLE. The closest thing is msgpush.com, which requires me to give a third party my login to my email account so they can fetch my email and share it over an Airsync/Exchange mechanism. Absolutely retarded. And Apple of course won't let anybody release competing email apps. I find the email on my iPhone to suck and it's the one, huge absolute frustration.
Also, I had AIM chat on my old Treo when I wanted it. It would actually notify me if somebody IMed me. iPhone has IM applications, but at least until a few months ago, couldn't run anything in the background to get notifications (I don't really use IM anymore, so I haven't checked this out lately - I suspect that you can now get IM apps that run in the background with iPhone OS 3.0).
Shit, I remember when iPhone came out and Apple said nobody needed a native app SDK at all! They said everything should be a web app. They had no intention of even creating an SDK and App Store until they got petitions from users demanding it!
iPhone is doing well now, but let's not pretend it hasn't been an incredibly rocky trip getting there. And let's not pretend that Apple's absurd restrictions on apps don't have real impact on usability of the device. They do, for anybody who wants more than the limited drek that Apple spoon feeds you.
Now that Android is maturing a bit, I'm seriously considering trying it again. At least I can run a real third party email client there (or at least a fork of the included email app), k9mail, that supports IMAP IDLE. I tried a G1 when it first came out but it was very half-baked compared to where iPhone was. I think that's changed at least somewhat now.
Re:The reality is... (Score:5, Funny)
Principle.
As a long-ago Apple fan, let me give you this bad analogy:
Let's say you're in love with this beautiful, intelligent, creative woman (slashdotters, use your imagination). She's just want you need, what you want and you adore her. No other woman is nearly as perfect.
Now let's say one day she says to you, "From now on, I'm going to charge you for sex. When you want to hold my hand, you've got to pay. When you want to talk to me, you've got to pay."
Now for a while, you might go along because you love her so much, but as some point, you're going to start feeling like a trick. You may finally decide that some woman who's not quite as perfect is a better match for you, because she doesn't make you feel like a trick.
Apple makes me feel like a trick. To be locked-in to AT&T makes me feel like a trick. To be locked in to the app-store makes me feel like a trick. To be told by Apple that certain apps are "off-limits" makes me feel like a trick.
iPhone/iPad users are still paying. That's their choice and I can understand it. I'm happy with the woman who might not be perfection itself but with whom I feel like a boyfriend, not a trick. Plus, she's up for an occasional dirty sanchez. That's my Android.
I hope this clarifies things.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I hope this clarifies things.
Since all girlfriends cost you money one way or another, the question is in which case you have to feel like being tricked. ;-) Let's say there are offers for free sex that we would both gladly turn down, no matter how honest they might be.
Personally, I would feel tricked by Google into a supposedly "open" world where most code was written by other people than those charging me for the phone and where the currency I actually pay in is worth more to me than money: it's my personal data. If Android phones c
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:The reality is... (Score:5, Insightful)
That's a rather subjective observation. My Android phone broke the other day, leaving me with my work phone (iPhone) as only phone for a week.
I wouldn't swap my Android for an iPhone if you paid me big bucks to do it. And that was true as of my first (1.5) Android phone. Slow as it was, I still instantly preferred it over the iPhone.
Luckily, both exist and people can pick the one they prefer.
Re:The reality is... (Score:5, Funny)
That's a rather subjective observation. My Android phone broke the other day, leaving me with my work phone (iPhone) as only phone for a week.
I wouldn't swap my Android for an iPhone if you paid me big bucks to do it.
Luckily for me, I don't have to pay you the big bucks. All I have to do is break your Android.
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The reality is... (Score:5, Insightful)
The problem is, no one's actually demonstrated why the iPhone is better either.
Does it have better screen resolution? no. Does it have a better camera? no. Does it have better processor/ram/storagE? no. Is it more open so that you can do more with it? no. Is it smaller, lighter, sturdier? no. Does it have better battery life? no. Is it more practical in allowing you to carry multiple batteries? no.
But of course, you look at the other things- does it look nicer physically, does the software feel nicer, and some people will say yes, others will say no.
So here's the fundamental problem in this discussion- the only areas where the iPhone can be said to be better than most other high end handsets that compete with it are entirely subjective. That doesn't mean you're wrong, but it doesn't mean the GP is wrong either- both of you like the other phone, you don't have to justify it and neither does he. It's simple fact that the iPhone doesn't win on things like those points listed above, and how exactly can he justify the other things? if Android works better for him, then it just does- just as most iPhone fans will tell you that the iPhone just works for them, but that doesn't mean it works for everyone. I for example can't stand any of these new touch screen phones for texting on any platform, be it an Android handset without physical keypad, or the iPhone, when the majority of use I get out of my phone is texting, they're both a massive step backwards. In fact, even full keyboards on phones are a hindrance to me because they're too small to type properly- I can text far faster with Nokia's predictive text on a standard numeric pad than any other phone, because that's just what I've been used to for over a decade.
We all use our phones in different ways, and we all get a different experience as a result. Some of us think differently, not everyone appreciates the UI features that others love. When the iPhone can only stand up to the other handsets based on subjective things there's really little that can be said in terms of proving your point, because you really can't prove something that's so subjective. The GP merely seemed to be making a counter point to this effect in response to the initial post because after all, just because one person says the iPhone is better, it doesn't mean it is for everyone.
Re:The reality is... (Score:5, Informative)
What swung it was Engadget riffing about integration with external services like Twitter/Facebook/etc - goes completely against Apple's principles, whereas Android actively works to do this. In the future, I want more of this, not less, and I don't think I'm going to get it from Apple.
Prior to this I'd change my phone every 6 months, so Apple has done well.
I'm not going back. I may be envious when the new iPhone comes out, but the Desire is great. I couldn't go back to a lower screen resolution, I love the OLED display and it's *fast*. You can customise everything, and the phone just keeps on giving with features - case in point: last night I wanted to copy the new Iron Man 2 soundtrack over to listen to in the car. Didn't have my sync cable to hand, so I when to the Android Market, installed ES File Explorer (took about 10 seconds to search and install - it's crazy fast) and used it to browse to the share on my LAN that had the MP3s on. Copied them to the handset - again, crazy fast - and job done.
Downsides? No dock connector. Handset doesn't have that "hewn from a block of glass" feel to it. Android Market smaller. iPhone more intuitive (although you could also say "more Fisher-Price"!) although Android more powerful. No Apple lockdown means differing app GUI styles sometimes. Headphone volume was low until I replaced the T-Mobile ROM with the vanilla HTC one (thanks XDA-Developers!)
Overall, it's a *great* handset. Very pleased.
Tight social networking isn't always a plus (Score:4, Insightful)
What swung it was Engadget riffing about integration with external services like Twitter/Facebook/etc - goes completely against Apple's principles, whereas Android actively works to do this.
I've been reading up on the Desire for the past couple of days, and funnily enough this is what really swung me against the phone. I don't want lots of social network integration. I don't want lots of integration with Google's cloud services. I deliberately avoid putting lots of data in the cloud and relying on third party services normally, so why would I want my phone to do this?
I want a phone that, first and foremost, makes calls well (good quality mic/speakers, simple controls for things like muting and conferencing people in). It also needs to handle messages well (good keyboard, good management of past messages, easy and ad-free integration with my e-mail systems) and manage contacts well (good address book, speed dialling).
There are plenty of other PDA features I wound find useful on a mobile device, but I want them to be generic and open. I'd like a calendar/alarms, but it's not worth much if it only syncs with MS formats and Google Calendar. Apps to do things like time zone conversion would be useful in my case, and a web browser is a useful addition and completely generic, but I don't need the bloat of lots of preconfigured apps on day one that tie in with specific services I will never use. (I appreciate that others would find this useful, and the right phones for me and for them will be different.)
Unfortunately, almost anything running Android seems (unsurprisingly, given Google's involvement) to be heavily biased towards lots of on-line working that I don't want. The iPhone is a non-starter because of Apple's closed system and their apparent willingness to append their own marketing to messages (hardly a professional image for a work phone!). So I'm back to looking at the established PDA brands again.
That's too bad, because the screen on the Desire looks really impressive, at least for those who don't want to use it in bright sunlight. It seems like small format mobile devices are finally pushing the envelope for high resolution full colour display technology in a way that only things like high-end medical imaging have done in the past. When they make a 24" widescreen version of that AMOLED screen, sign me up. :-)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Differing needs fuel demand for different devices. Its why Blackberry will be around for the foreseeable future, why KIN will probably take a lot of the market feature phones held, and that simple candybar and flip phon
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
I know this is going to come as a shock to you so brace yourself. Not everyone wants/likes the iPhone.
So comments like yours and from the article are really only from YOUR opinions. Now brace yourself for another shock, people have different opinions!
For example, some people like to walk rather then take the bus. Now sure walking is slower and less convenient, but yet people still do it. That doesn't mean however that it is better or worse then taking the bus or a car.
Sometimes you don't need to demand some
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Sometimes you don't need to demand someone justify every minute detail in the hopes of advocating someone to switch to your favourite thing.
You do if you're in a cult. Just sayin'.
Re:The reality is... (Score:5, Interesting)
So comments like yours and from the article are really only from YOUR opinions. Now brace yourself for another shock, people have different opinions!
Here's another opinion. As someone who _had_ an iPhone and went back to a $50 Nokia I'll tell you the iPhone is junk. It's shiny, polished junk.
* The battery life was woeful when you're actually using it as intended. I was lucky to get a day out of the thing and I used it as an ereader for about an hour during my daily commute and a phone casually.
* It's not compatible (enough) with earlier iPod connectors/interfaces so my iPod capable car stereo won't work with it. A lot of other iPod capable stuff either failed or whinged at me. The phone quite often whinged too. Here's news Apple - if you use a "standard" connector on the thing then support it; don't change the damn internals and then tell the phone to whinge the thing on the other end is too old.
* It's locked down - you can only buy applications that Apple approve. If you jail break it you lose warranty, and on 3GS models the ability to reboot the fucking thing.
* There is no pr0n (well there is, but Jobs is in denial that Safari can be used to access pr0n).
* It crashed and froze up more often than not.
* I couldn't save anything in it that Apple doesn't want me to. That includes the videos/photos of my son that came attached to a series of MMS. They were forever trapped in the phone and I had to ask the sender to email me instead.
* I can't send files via email/MMS that Apple doesn't want me to. I can't send that hillarious video that I just received to anyone else because it _might_ fuck over some record company somewhere.
* I was stuck using iTunes to sync the address book and calendar. What kind of shit is that? Some people actually don't want to use iTunes. Apple won't expose those things in a standard way so I can't just use SyncML or something similar.
* The app store is full up with absolute garbage, low quality apps. There's an app for everything where "app" is defined as half-arsed P.O.S and "everything" is defined as {lim x->0 (1/x)}. Finding good quality software was difficult. A lot of the apps blatantly lie about their capability and you don't find out until you've paid for them.
* Apple is reportedly known to stiff app developers.
* Glass screen is uber-fragile; I know of several people who have managed to break them even when being mostly careful. It's such a common occurrence that a lot of insurance policies won't cover it anymore.
* Bluetooth is a joke. Can't even transfer files with it. Apple's answer... use email or MMS. What if I'm sitting right next to the person and want to save some data charges? Nope. Use email or MMS.
* Apple seem to pander to the big telcos about ripping out features. For example it wouldn't let me download large (>5M) files over my data plan, even though I paid for a certain amount of data and wanted to use it as _I_ saw fit, not Apple. What if I need a 15M file right now this very instant and I'm nowhere near a WiFi connection? Nope, I'm S.O.L just because Apple says so.
* No VoIP... what's with that? It's my phone, and if I want to use VoIP over my carrier's IP network then so be it. Don't tell me I can't. To top it all off, my carrier was a Skype partner and I could use Skype quite happily on their network (they encouraged it). Nope. Can't do that on an iPhone because Apple said so, even though my particular carrier is ok with it.
* Did I mention the battery life sucks?
* Apple doesn't seem interested in fixing any of the shortcomings that practically no other phone has, because they are all shortcomings that force you to reach out into data and call charges land even when you really don't need to.
The three things I don't like about my $50 Nokia are the lack of a QWERTY keyboard (a standard addition to many smart phones now), small screen size (again, fixed on modern more expensive phones) and the fact it's slow and limited in memory (also fixed by every other smart phone). Other than that, one of the cheapest non-smart models of phone kicks the shit out of an iPhone any day as far as I'm concerned.
Re:Lets fix that for you: (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah! The networks are quite right: their inability to provide the services customers pay them for is the fault of the customers, for actually using said services instead of just paying for them.
Re: (Score:2)
As others have pointed out, you misunderstood my post. I made no attempt at supporting my point, precisely because it's subjective.
I simply pointed out that "the iPhone still rules the 'total experience dept'" is a subjective opinion a lot of people would disagree with. Me included.
If you're really dying to know, I can share some of my thoughts, sure. But with the plethora of Android reviews online, I wouldn't say anything that's not already been said. There's enough information out there for people to make
here are some problems (Score:5, Informative)
You claim that the iPhone (in your opinion) is worse than Android, and yet give no reasons why you feel that way.
Off the top of my head (I have both):
You may not care, but many people do. And these aren't just obscure geek-issues.
Re:here are some problems (Score:4, Informative)
I got an iPhone after using BlackBerry and Android phones for awhile now. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong -- here are some of my nags:
The list goes on and on but I'm tired of writing this.
Granted some of them may be because I'm accustomed to different smartphone operating systems.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
(Wow, the Apple fanboy and marketing moderation squad is out in full force again. Therefore, I'm just going to repost this. The parent asked what problems some people see with the iPhone and I answered what problems I see. I'm sorry if that causes you discomfort.)
You claim that the iPhone (in your opinion) is worse than Android, and yet give no reasons why you feel that way.
Off the top of my head (I have both):
Re: (Score:2, Flamebait)
His point was that "The iphone still rules the "total experience dept"" is a subjective observation, and his argument for that was good enough to support it.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
His argument was crap. His argument didn't prove or demonstrate anything except for the idea that he's bought into mindless hype and the crowd mindset.
This is in stark contrast to something like "safari can't handle a simple page with 3 frames" properly.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It's true - my sticking to Android is more out of principle than because the actual experience is better...
In my experience (limited to the Milestone...), Android is:
-Less stable
-Glitchier
-Slower
-UI lags
These things don't really bother me, and not having to own anything made by Apple (as well as having a resolution far higher than the iPhone's measly 480x320) is a pretty good reason to stick to Android... however, I can definitely see why prettty much everyone else prefers the iPhone.
Re:The reality is... (Score:5, Informative)
Simple, for power users at least these that travel abroad (and most do at least for a couple of weeks per year), the first thing is how easy it's to change SIMs.
In most (at least European) countries you can get something at least vaguely acceptable (especially for data access) as a prepaid SIM. Data roaming on the other hand is practically never acceptable for usage on smartphone.
For this let's compare the iPhone with the HTC Dream/T-Mobile G1.
First difference, the T-Mobile G1 is available as HTC Dream without lock. OTOH, most people in both cases will probably have gotten the simlocked version.
1.) unlocking experience on the iPhone: 2 days wasted trying to get a jail break going. 3rd day included a visit to a seedy 3rd party phone shop that advertised jailbreaking iPhones. Always in danger of undoing it all via iTunes that persistently tries to offer an upgrade for the phone.
2.) checked that the G1 is really simlocked, bought a 20 unlock code online, used it with my SIM of choice the same afternoon in the office.
Actually, both events happened some months ago, but I cannot remember the details of item 2 (as if the G1 was really locked), while item 1 makes me shudder. (Actually it's as bad that the iPhone got a non-smartphone assigned to cover wheneever the iPhone decides to go dead). OTOH, the G1 unlock did happen when the phone was very recent on the market, while the iPhone 3G jailbreak happened when the 3GS has been longer on the market than the G1 mentioned. And I'm still unclear how jailbreakable the 3GS are.
Next important item on a frequent travelers (that's what I admit is not exactly critical to the majority, but it's an important item about who controls the device that I own) is sharing Internet access. Obviously, a smartphone cannot manage to fill completely an UMTS uplink, so there is no drawback in sharing it's connectivity.
1.) the iPhone started to work as a tether after some months, basically after a couple of upgrades and the jailbreak. It offers USB Windows-only (perhaps Mac too?) tethering and standard PAN Bluetooth networking.
2.) the G1 offers TCP forwarding tethering via USB and after rooting, it offers a standard NAT-ing Linux kernel based router via Bluetooth or WLAN. The USB based tethering I was capable to use easily enough on day 1 to establish a full VPN (albeit TCP based) connection from my laptop. In practice the standard PAN Bluetooth networking is nicest for me personally, but everyone has probably his own favorite.
So I do not think that the iPhone rules the "total experience dept", as it's a total fail on two important items (one of general interest, even if they do not know, but they will when they go on their next holiday), so it's not even in the running for a phone here. (Ah, I learned yesterday why my wife got the iPhone 3G last year, "it was the cheapest colorful toy for our daughter that we could get back then easily and quickly", and "yeah that Motorola Droid looks cool")
Re:iPhone Killer (Score:5, Funny)
"Why don't you go by Michael?" - "Why should I change? He's the one who sucks!"
Re:iPhone Killer (Score:4, Informative)
I don't know why this has been modded troll because it's a valid point.
The reason why I wrote the review in the way that I did is because I've been using an iPhone for around 18 months and for the last year I've been looking for an alternative. So I wanted to write a review for people in the same situation -- people who are happy with the iPhone but not happy with Apple, so looking for an alternative phone.
This wasn't a review of the Desire. It was specifically a review of the Desire as an alternative to the iPhone.
Re: (Score:2)
It is rather light dependent. But once it does have proper light, I get 25fps. Which I assume is what it maxes out at by design here in Europe. 720p recording is supposed to become available via firmware upgrade in the not too distant future as well.
Cameras have always been HTC's weak point. From that perspective, thi