I’d always previously written off the idea of a smartphone because I didn’t see the need; I used my phone for calls and texts, why would I want something with loads of whizzy features? The answer of course came as my usage patterns changed. I started to use things like Twitter more, and became more interested in checking my e-mail on the move (especially as I can’t log into it from work) so as time grew on so did my inclination to change to a phone and plan that let me do this sensibly.
Now, I was never going to get an iPhone – I don’t run Windows or Mac OS, so I wouldn’t have been able to use it anyway. The Palm Pre, whilst much advertised before launch by O2 (and at the time my only non-iPhone upgrade option) was a bit of a non-starter for a few reasons – most notably that they were already being removed from stores in the US (and soon after Palm were bought by HP). So I was left with the choice of either Nokia’s N900, where the OS has now merged with Intel’s offereing, or an Android based phone.
Having played with both the N900 and a HTC Desire, as far as I was concerned it was an easy decision to go with the Desire. It won out due to three main factors: the device is a more sensible size when already carrying a blackberry for work, Android offers more applications and a proper multi-touch interface, and the contracts available were much better for me.
Decision made, I sorted out all the stuff related to migrating my number and got the phone. Since thebn, there’s been no looking back. The phone is as good as I hoped and probably more: I find myself recommending it to anyone who’s interested – and from other people with them I haven’t heard any stories of dissatisfaction.
The one thing that I will note is that the battery life isn’t fantastic. I’ve found that if I use it heavily (especially with lots of network traffic) it will need a full charge within the day. Turning off data and not playing around with it all the time, however, sorts a lot of this out and it will last a lot longer.
In terms of apps, I could probably go on for a while about those, so I’ll leave that for another post, as this one has gone on a bit already. However now I have a device I can blog from (most of this post was written on it), hopefully I’ll update a bit more often.