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Coping without an optical trackpad

andyg1

Newbie
Dec 17, 2010
11
4
I was an early adopter of the HTC Desire and have been really impressed with it. But it's time for an upgrade.

Where the Desire has been frustrating is the internal memory, so my replacement will have to better in that department. However my concern is that the newer HTCs don't have the optical trackball. Strangely not many of my contemporaries use it, but I think they are missing out. I regularly use it in the following ways:

- moving the cursor round the textfields (I have fat fingers)
- moving between links on webpages without having to pinch zoom right into pages
- for hover intent on some webpages e.g. menus or popups or tooltips
- as a button (opening menus, taking photos, "enter"ing forms)

My question is how would I achieve the above without the optical trackpad? (Or are there any new HTCs that are worthy of an upgrade that have a trackpad)

Thanks in advance
 
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Reactions: PaddyC
Wasn't too sure about it at first - but have found myself using it loads in the same way as above, and also to wake the screen.
Looks like the current fashion is to do away with hardware buttons altogether, so doubt we will see another one soon on anything other than niche devices.
These things come and go though - so give it a couple of generations (say 2 - 3 years?) and I bet somebody will release a mainstream flagship with some sort of hardware button.
 
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I honestly couldn't live without my trackpad.
The hardware buttons are also awesome because they give REAL feedback, and are more satisfying. :)


Except the Desire seems to have a common issue with them slowly failing. My "back" button needs a little persuasion these days. I've still got 9 months left.. I have a bad feeling that they'll get infuriating.
 
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How are you finding the lack of expandable memory? That severely put me off :(

Not a big issue for me. 16gb was enough on my Desire and if I need more app space I can just delete a few tunes. Space can be expanded using USB sticks although that's more for temporary storage and transfer. I'm more pleased with the 'one huge partition' route that the Nexus has gone so you will never run out of space for apps. Would have loved an SD card slot (as well as the 16gb internal) but it wasn't a deal breaker for me.
 
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galaxynexustelus.jpg
 
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