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I have sent mine back

Howard99

Lurker
Sep 6, 2010
1
0
Read this before you sign up for one. I have sent my Desire back after 3 days. Why? I run a building business and am a heavy phone user. The battery was flat after half a day probably 1 hours worth of speach only. It would not work correctly in my car with my Parrott hands free, apart from anything else it requested authority to reconnect every time I returned to the car. It does not support voice tags which makes using the phone while driving dangerous. I wanted to read emails while out of the office. The complexity involved in connecting it to my PC is absurd. It is almost impossible to see the screen when outside on a sunny day. The internal loud speaker is terribly scratchy. If you are a technically skilled and work indoors I am sure that it would be ok especially if you can keep it plugged in. But as a mobile outdoor business tool it is hopeless.
 
I wouldn't have gone for the desire as a primary business phone in an outdoor industry.

It is a smartphone so battery won't last that long with constant use and/or an incorrect set up. It needs trial and error to get more out of it battery wise.

Plus its got that huge glass, crackable screen that wouldn't mix well in a pocket in a dangerous environment. I leave mine on the table at work. I wouldn't take it with me even if I was crawling under a desk or patching network cables.

For a building industry job I would go for something solid with good grip, hardware keyboard etc. Probably a blackberry bold actually.
 
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Read this before you sign up for one. I have sent my Desire back after 3 days.

My heartfelt sympathies! I do not work outdoors, I work indoors in IT doing UNIX server admin, and I am constantly asking "why does this phone deserve all these glowing reviews" ??? Are the other phones THAT bad ?

Battery life aside, because after the iPhone, it's no secret, touch screens chew battery, but the general useability of the phone is poor. The speaker is tinny for calls, so it's a phone, but don't use it for that...

The media player supplied (certainly with mine) is rubbish. I don't know much about it other than it's a green musical note. I've come from a Sony Ericsson W995 Walkman phone and it walks all over this one. Literally. The FM radio reception is ABYSMAL. The Media app doesnt even seem to have equalizer settings. Only something like the iTunes store. Great, I already own the album.. I'll buy it again? I don't understand this logic. Having to unlock the screen to get back into the app to change the song is a pain in the a**

On the point of media, the volume control is in a stupid place, I keep changing it accidently when its in my pocket on the train, or if it's in landscape mode surfing the net.

I live in France, but work in English, so an AZERTY keyboard is what I want not QWERTY and an English dictionary. Every morning I switch the phone back on, it's still in AZERTY but reverted to french dictionary.

So useabilty is down the pan.

The promise is that Android in the future will be what Apple OS isn't, open and more applications will get into the public domain.

So what's it good for ? Surfing the net, that's good. But battery life really prevents me doing too much.. The phone is on my desk all day on charge from my hour and half trip in to work, and of course it's on silent cos that's office
 
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i think too many people overzealously defend the desire. I own a desire and will continue to own it until the contract is up, but all the points he makes are all true and all valid. It's not a perfect phone, and not suitable for his needs.

Hardwarewise, go Nokia.

I for one am hoping Nokia go android before Nokia go bust, and then I'll drop HTC like a big bag of faeces! (HTC hardware doesn't suck... but compared to Nokia, everyone looks bad).
 
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Read this before you sign up for one. I have sent my Desire back after 3 days. Why? I run a building business and am a heavy phone user.

Sorry you had problems Howard but as a heavy-user why on earth did you get a phone that has fabulous reviews but all with the caveat that it has poor battery life. As many will point out the battery life isn't poor but you simply can't run a 1GHz processor for very long on a battery that small.

The battery was flat after half a day probably 1 hours worth of speach only.

Now, that's just wrong. You clearly had some process running that was taking the battery life (and there's plenty of advice on here telling you how to fix that).

It would not work correctly in my car with my Parrott hands free, apart from anything else it requested authority to reconnect every time I returned to the car.

Can't comment about the Parrott system, never seen it or heard of it but if this was a deal-breaker I'd have made sure the phone worked with it.

It does not support voice tags which makes using the phone while driving dangerous. I wanted to read emails while out of the office.

Agree voice-dialling is a feature that's missing as-standard. You can add it I think, I keep meaning to look into it but since I have a dash-board mount for the phone it's not too dangerous to dial.

The complexity involved in connecting it to my PC is absurd.

As others have pointed out it really isn't.

It is almost impossible to see the screen when outside on a sunny day.

Definitely a problem but one that occurs on a great many devices (I had a Sony camera once that was impossible) as someone who works outside, again, I might have checked this out before buying.

The internal loud speaker is terribly scratchy.

Oh HTC, what the f**k did you put in as a loudspeaker ? Definitely your most valid complaint.

If you are a technically skilled and work indoors I am sure that it would be ok especially if you can keep it plugged in. But as a mobile outdoor business tool it is hopeless.

I think you hit the nail on the head with the first comment. It's a phone for gadget freaks. It can do, pretty much, anything you ask of it but you need quite a grasp of technical matters for some of them. You really don't need to connect it to a charger all day - it'll do over 24 hours with pretty heavy-use but you need to understand HOW it works in order to do that.

You simply have to treat it like the computer it is. You won't buy a laptop that you can leave running off-battery for the same length of time as the Desire but you wouldn't expect to. The problem is it's a phone so people expect it to match other phones (while out performing them) which is unrealistic.

I agree with you Howard, it's not the phone for you. Had you asked before buying it I'd have said the same thing. Doesn't make it a bad phone. Nor would I suggest that it's unsuitable for anyone except genii with constant access to the mains. The first thing a new-owner needs to do is learn how to get the most out of it, once you've done that you'll have the best phone experience on the planet (so long as you don't try and listen to anything on the external speaker....)
 
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It would not work correctly in my car with my Parrott hands free, apart from anything else it requested authority to reconnect every time I returned to the car. It does not support voice tags which makes using the phone while driving dangerous. I wanted to read emails while out of the office. The complexity involved in connecting it to my PC is absurd. It is almost impossible to see the screen when outside on a sunny day. The internal loud speaker is terribly scratchy. If you are a technically skilled and work indoors I am sure that it would be ok especially if you can keep it plugged in. But as a mobile outdoor business tool it is hopeless.

Hi, just thought I'd add my experience

As a first time user of Andorid, I have enjoyed "getting to know" the system and at the same time making the Desire far more desirable - extended battery life, smoother email use, screen brightness managment etc to name a few.

I can confirm that i have no problems connecting the phone with my parrott kit (mki9200) and that said the voice dialling is intergrated with the car kit and so no problems there also.

The speaker is rubbish, I agree and comming from nokia 5800 xpress music have really noticed the difference but, I guess if manufactures made everything perfect in a phone then we wouldnt bother replacing it. sad but true fact of 21st century capitalism.

I am another desire user who is happy with the phone and all it offers and am looking forwd to how future updates (t-mobile) change/improve the way the phone works.
 
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What threads like this tell us is that people REALLY need to research their next phone rather just buying the first thing that catches their eye in the shop!

I'm sorry, but I have no sympathy for anyone buying a device only to find it doesn't do what they want. There are so many ways to research these things, there is simply no excuse.

I spent several weeks reading up about smartphones before deciding on the Desire and because of that I have the best phone I've ever owned. It does exactly what I want because I made sure I knew about its pro's and con's before I signed up.

It really grates with me that people feel the need to complain about this handset when, in fact, the real problem isn't the phone, it's the user. You can blame the phone all you want but the real problem is that you bought the wrong handset for your needs.

If this seems a little harsh, well, next time do your homework before buying. Then you won't have to join forums just to whinge will you?
 
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