I've had my Desire since Wednesday evening. I took it out of the box and put it on charge right away, and charged for 5 hours before switching it on. Since then, several issues have cropped up, and I've read more forums and posts than I can even remember. Here are the things that still erk me, I hope people here have some helpful or consoling words:
- Why do wifi and mobile data have to be 'on' or 'off'? My previous phone, a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, simply activated wifi or mobile data (choosing which based on whether an open wifi network was available, if not then using mobile data) for the activity for which the phone needed it, and when you had finished whatever you were doing (browsing the web, downloading apps/podcast etc) it would close the connection. This saves battery life, data use and saves me having to remember to turn wifi on or off every time I want to pop on the web for a minute. Why do I have to keep a constant wifi connection the whole time I'm at home, rather than the phone just opening and closing it when it's being used?
- Why do we need to fiddle with a host of different settings just to get the thing to last a day? As much as I loathe them, iPhones do not seem to require this. I do not want one of them, but the comparison is inevitable. With light use, the best I've had from this phone in 4 total charge/use till phone switches off/recharge-fully cycles, is about 13 hours. How can one enjoy a phone when you're afraid to use any of the advanced features that you bought it for, for fear of sapping the juice?
- Why is the heat sinking so woefully inadequate? This thing heats up whenever I do anything even remotely taxing - just sitting on the underground train listening to Spotify caused the phone to become uncomfortably warm. The heat all develops around the SD card, which I have read somewhere is where the processor is housed. I understand that a powerful processor is bound to heat up, but again - how have iPhone engineers circumvented this?
- Why is the loudspeaker not just mono, just appallingly badly balanced? It is just a head full of treble, like listening through a tin can. What happened to stereo speakers on smartphones? We are regressing here.
- Why is there no native podcast support within the music player or anywhere else in the 'stock' Android setup? I can't get Google Listen to work (due to the very common problem of the program refusing to run saying it needs a Google account, even though I already have one!!! Buggy bug bug bug!) and its still in Beta anyway, which means Google are being very slow off the mark. For now I'm downloading podcasts with PodCat, then listening to them with MortPlayer's audiobook player and an accompanying Widget (very impressive apps by the way). This works nicely but its not perfect, with Mortplayer sorting by folder rather than getting the podcast name from the id3 tag. At any rate, I shouldn't have to use third party apps for something as basic as podcast downloading /listening.
- Why does the Spotify app seem to be permitted to run a constant process, and apparently prevent the device from sleeping (evidenced by the uptime/downtime figures I've been getting). I know this is more Spotify's fault, but no one else seems bothered, so I'm confused.
I love the design of the Desire - the plastics used in its construction are without exception the finest I've ever experienced in any mobile device, ever. Ditto the svelte damping on the hard buttons. The sound quality through headphones is also utterly sublime, without fault and quite exemplary for all mobile device preamps. The screen is great too, and the speed of that overhungry and overheating processor is nonetheless stunning - I've never waited for anything on this phone, it is all instant. There just is no lag.
I so want to love this phone. I'm a big fan of open source and of Google, and I've long thought of HTC as one of the great unsung heroes of the mobile tech world (before they started using their own company name on devices they'd designed for carriers!). The look, feel and philosophy of this phone and associated communities are ideal for me. But the faults above are driving me nuts. I'm giving the phone till Wednesday, and if it's still bugging me, I'll be sending it back to O2 and requesting something else. I don't think battery tech or OS development is ready for some of the features now available and in demand for smart phones. THe current crop of high-enders seem to be pushing the limits now. I think I want a dumber phone until this stuff is ready.
Alas - hopefully the Desire will grow on me in the next few days. I genuinely hope so much that it will, because I so so SO want to love this phone. The massively varied experiences people seem to be having it suggest 2 things to me - firstly, that an open and gloriously tweak-able OS like Android will result in a broadly varied user experience, so its hard to make comparison. But to an extent I also fear for HTC's quality control, as a lot of this seems to be hardware related (heat/battery life), with many tales of 'i sent the phone back and this new one is perfect'.
Rant over. Thank you for reading. I hope this stuck a chord with some people.
This forum is great by the way, thank you for all the help reading your threads has given me.
Simon
- Why do wifi and mobile data have to be 'on' or 'off'? My previous phone, a Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, simply activated wifi or mobile data (choosing which based on whether an open wifi network was available, if not then using mobile data) for the activity for which the phone needed it, and when you had finished whatever you were doing (browsing the web, downloading apps/podcast etc) it would close the connection. This saves battery life, data use and saves me having to remember to turn wifi on or off every time I want to pop on the web for a minute. Why do I have to keep a constant wifi connection the whole time I'm at home, rather than the phone just opening and closing it when it's being used?
- Why do we need to fiddle with a host of different settings just to get the thing to last a day? As much as I loathe them, iPhones do not seem to require this. I do not want one of them, but the comparison is inevitable. With light use, the best I've had from this phone in 4 total charge/use till phone switches off/recharge-fully cycles, is about 13 hours. How can one enjoy a phone when you're afraid to use any of the advanced features that you bought it for, for fear of sapping the juice?
- Why is the heat sinking so woefully inadequate? This thing heats up whenever I do anything even remotely taxing - just sitting on the underground train listening to Spotify caused the phone to become uncomfortably warm. The heat all develops around the SD card, which I have read somewhere is where the processor is housed. I understand that a powerful processor is bound to heat up, but again - how have iPhone engineers circumvented this?
- Why is the loudspeaker not just mono, just appallingly badly balanced? It is just a head full of treble, like listening through a tin can. What happened to stereo speakers on smartphones? We are regressing here.
- Why is there no native podcast support within the music player or anywhere else in the 'stock' Android setup? I can't get Google Listen to work (due to the very common problem of the program refusing to run saying it needs a Google account, even though I already have one!!! Buggy bug bug bug!) and its still in Beta anyway, which means Google are being very slow off the mark. For now I'm downloading podcasts with PodCat, then listening to them with MortPlayer's audiobook player and an accompanying Widget (very impressive apps by the way). This works nicely but its not perfect, with Mortplayer sorting by folder rather than getting the podcast name from the id3 tag. At any rate, I shouldn't have to use third party apps for something as basic as podcast downloading /listening.
- Why does the Spotify app seem to be permitted to run a constant process, and apparently prevent the device from sleeping (evidenced by the uptime/downtime figures I've been getting). I know this is more Spotify's fault, but no one else seems bothered, so I'm confused.
I love the design of the Desire - the plastics used in its construction are without exception the finest I've ever experienced in any mobile device, ever. Ditto the svelte damping on the hard buttons. The sound quality through headphones is also utterly sublime, without fault and quite exemplary for all mobile device preamps. The screen is great too, and the speed of that overhungry and overheating processor is nonetheless stunning - I've never waited for anything on this phone, it is all instant. There just is no lag.
I so want to love this phone. I'm a big fan of open source and of Google, and I've long thought of HTC as one of the great unsung heroes of the mobile tech world (before they started using their own company name on devices they'd designed for carriers!). The look, feel and philosophy of this phone and associated communities are ideal for me. But the faults above are driving me nuts. I'm giving the phone till Wednesday, and if it's still bugging me, I'll be sending it back to O2 and requesting something else. I don't think battery tech or OS development is ready for some of the features now available and in demand for smart phones. THe current crop of high-enders seem to be pushing the limits now. I think I want a dumber phone until this stuff is ready.
Alas - hopefully the Desire will grow on me in the next few days. I genuinely hope so much that it will, because I so so SO want to love this phone. The massively varied experiences people seem to be having it suggest 2 things to me - firstly, that an open and gloriously tweak-able OS like Android will result in a broadly varied user experience, so its hard to make comparison. But to an extent I also fear for HTC's quality control, as a lot of this seems to be hardware related (heat/battery life), with many tales of 'i sent the phone back and this new one is perfect'.
Rant over. Thank you for reading. I hope this stuck a chord with some people.
This forum is great by the way, thank you for all the help reading your threads has given me.
Simon