I've had an HTC Desire in the past (now belongs to my mother) but bought a Nokia N8 18 months ago for the camera.
I'll be honest, the N8 is a bloody awful phone. Well, it's nice physically and camera is very good, but operating it is so bloody clunky and slow and buggy and unintuitive and just crap. So now my contract has run out, I'm looking at upgrading - possibly to a HTC One S as the is supposed to be reasonably close to N8 quality.
BUT there are actually a few features in Symbian that I like that the old Desire never had, so wondering if anyone knows if these are now available to Android phones:
1. Low power clock / status standby display.
The Desire gives you a blank screen when on standby, you have to press the power button to bring the screen up, then swipe. The N8 illuminates a few pixels on the screen to give you a little clock, date and text / alarm / missed call etc info when on standby, so I can see if anything is up at a glance - this is immensely useful.
2. Say callers name when ringing.
Its a bit of a silly feature in Symbian but actually quite useful - when I've got an incoming call and the phone is ringing, a little synthesised voice says the name of the person calling. This means I know who is calling me when my phone is in another room or whatever without having to go and look at the phone.
3. Lots of battery saving features.
My N8 has lots of options to turn off lots of things, and set it to turn things on and off at certain times - so for example I can set it to turn off 3G, bluetooth and Wifi and all data access at night when I'm asleep, then turn it back on again in the morning. It also has a low power mode which I've been able to stretch battery life up to FOUR DAYS with. I remember barely getting a day out of my HTC Desire - although weirdly when I got my N8 and had the Desire without a sim in it - it lasted almost a week without charge! Amazing how much connecting to stuff saps a phones battery life.
Also, how does the batterly life on the One S compare to the old Desire? Does the greater power mean lower life?
I'll be honest, the N8 is a bloody awful phone. Well, it's nice physically and camera is very good, but operating it is so bloody clunky and slow and buggy and unintuitive and just crap. So now my contract has run out, I'm looking at upgrading - possibly to a HTC One S as the is supposed to be reasonably close to N8 quality.
BUT there are actually a few features in Symbian that I like that the old Desire never had, so wondering if anyone knows if these are now available to Android phones:
1. Low power clock / status standby display.
The Desire gives you a blank screen when on standby, you have to press the power button to bring the screen up, then swipe. The N8 illuminates a few pixels on the screen to give you a little clock, date and text / alarm / missed call etc info when on standby, so I can see if anything is up at a glance - this is immensely useful.
2. Say callers name when ringing.
Its a bit of a silly feature in Symbian but actually quite useful - when I've got an incoming call and the phone is ringing, a little synthesised voice says the name of the person calling. This means I know who is calling me when my phone is in another room or whatever without having to go and look at the phone.
3. Lots of battery saving features.
My N8 has lots of options to turn off lots of things, and set it to turn things on and off at certain times - so for example I can set it to turn off 3G, bluetooth and Wifi and all data access at night when I'm asleep, then turn it back on again in the morning. It also has a low power mode which I've been able to stretch battery life up to FOUR DAYS with. I remember barely getting a day out of my HTC Desire - although weirdly when I got my N8 and had the Desire without a sim in it - it lasted almost a week without charge! Amazing how much connecting to stuff saps a phones battery life.
Also, how does the batterly life on the One S compare to the old Desire? Does the greater power mean lower life?
