I read so many reviews on the Amaze prior to purchase and many were simply regurgitating back the spec sheet or PR Releases. I have had the phone for 3-days now and wanted to post some quick thoughts on thing I never read in previous reviews.
1. No Wifi Calling yet - While this feature was advertised it's simply is not there. Neither the app nor the System Setting menu entries exist for it. I'm told by support that there were plans to introduce a more enhanced version of the WiFi calling code with the phone but it simply wasn't ready in time. By the time the decision was made to hold off till the first software update it was too late to include the earlier version in the phone. Weak excuse in my opinion.
2. Speaker phone quality - In my opinion this is the first HTC phone to offer really good audio levels on the speaker phone. My previous phone was an HTC MyTouch 4G which was simply terrible.
3. Accessories - NONE! Can you believe that at release there are NO accessories for the phone in the store. No D30 cases, no HDMI dongle, no spare batteries and no information when they may be available.
4. Battery Power - Holy cow, this thing eats through the 1730 mAh battery if your do any gaming or video. I watched one 45 minute video (800x480 encoded at 1,024 Kbps with 144K audio in MPEG-4 format) and consumed nearly 20 percent of the battery. I should point out that this phone does recharge rather quickly which does help you get through the day.
5. Heat - Anything that truly leverages these great 1.5GHz CPU's will seriously heat up the back plate of this phone. Not enough to burn you but certainly enough to make you say I need to stop as this is uncomfortable. My son played some game for about 40 min and had to stop due to the heat.
6. Instant shot? - Camera truly is amazingly fast to first shot once the camera app is open but, make sure you press the button firmly or use the touch screen. Secondly, it takes a bit longer than "instant" to open the camera app and shoot the first picture from a phone on standby (aka. screen off)
7. Voice Recorder is back. - Yeayyy. This feature was on the MyTouch 4G and present in the European models of the MyTouch 4G Slide and Sensation but was absent front the American versions. I was told by store people months ago when I noticed this that it was because it was illegal to record phone calls in the US. They told me to try 3rd party apps. Uniformly these would not allow me to do the following; place a call, switch to speakerphone and then start the voice recorder. These apps simply said recording is disabled when on a call if they bothered to display anything at all. In the case of one app it used the internal mic to try and record the audio from internal echos within the phone itself resulting in you hearing your part of the call well on playback but the other party was very faint. I have used this feature on the MyTouch 4G for conference calls when I need to take good notes. Fortunately it works again as described here on the Amaze..
8. Pictures - I need to look at this some more but in general the camera has the ability to capture low light pictures very well for a cell phone camera. The Burst shot feature however, resulted in horribly pixelated pictures and I wouldn't consider it usable in that mode. The panorama feature worked well even with people moving in in the picture. I'd rate that feature about a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10 as it doesn't stitch enough pictures together to get a true 180 degree panorama.
9. App resolution compatibility - Several of my apps were not available though the marketplace to install on my Amaze due to the different screen resolution. Some others did install but only used the upper 4/5 ths of the screen. Not a big deal as I'm sure this will be fixed down the road but I never read about this in any of the other blog reviews.
10. HTC Sense - I do like HTC Sense and the new themes offered by 3.0 but if you want to download more it asks you to sign in to "download apps, widgets, wallpapers and more" to your phone. When you go to create a new account it then asks you to enter your phone number and email address. The explanation for this is as follows; " Your phone number and email address will be used to suggest connections to friends who also use HTC Sense." Say what? I have no desire to have my name recommended to others in order for them to friend me simply because we use the same phone. How ridiculous and yet necessary of you wish to turn on Phone Finder in order to trace a lost phone. Another privacy intrusion I don't like. There are apps out there that let me track the phone directly via GPS which I prefer as it involves a silent SMS query to the lost phone rather than some other entity, in this case HTC, tracking me all the time.
Hope this helps you with your decision to buy or not. I do like the build and feel of the phone but short battery life (especially with no spare batteries) and heat generation is a big disappointment.
1. No Wifi Calling yet - While this feature was advertised it's simply is not there. Neither the app nor the System Setting menu entries exist for it. I'm told by support that there were plans to introduce a more enhanced version of the WiFi calling code with the phone but it simply wasn't ready in time. By the time the decision was made to hold off till the first software update it was too late to include the earlier version in the phone. Weak excuse in my opinion.
2. Speaker phone quality - In my opinion this is the first HTC phone to offer really good audio levels on the speaker phone. My previous phone was an HTC MyTouch 4G which was simply terrible.
3. Accessories - NONE! Can you believe that at release there are NO accessories for the phone in the store. No D30 cases, no HDMI dongle, no spare batteries and no information when they may be available.
4. Battery Power - Holy cow, this thing eats through the 1730 mAh battery if your do any gaming or video. I watched one 45 minute video (800x480 encoded at 1,024 Kbps with 144K audio in MPEG-4 format) and consumed nearly 20 percent of the battery. I should point out that this phone does recharge rather quickly which does help you get through the day.
5. Heat - Anything that truly leverages these great 1.5GHz CPU's will seriously heat up the back plate of this phone. Not enough to burn you but certainly enough to make you say I need to stop as this is uncomfortable. My son played some game for about 40 min and had to stop due to the heat.
6. Instant shot? - Camera truly is amazingly fast to first shot once the camera app is open but, make sure you press the button firmly or use the touch screen. Secondly, it takes a bit longer than "instant" to open the camera app and shoot the first picture from a phone on standby (aka. screen off)
7. Voice Recorder is back. - Yeayyy. This feature was on the MyTouch 4G and present in the European models of the MyTouch 4G Slide and Sensation but was absent front the American versions. I was told by store people months ago when I noticed this that it was because it was illegal to record phone calls in the US. They told me to try 3rd party apps. Uniformly these would not allow me to do the following; place a call, switch to speakerphone and then start the voice recorder. These apps simply said recording is disabled when on a call if they bothered to display anything at all. In the case of one app it used the internal mic to try and record the audio from internal echos within the phone itself resulting in you hearing your part of the call well on playback but the other party was very faint. I have used this feature on the MyTouch 4G for conference calls when I need to take good notes. Fortunately it works again as described here on the Amaze..
8. Pictures - I need to look at this some more but in general the camera has the ability to capture low light pictures very well for a cell phone camera. The Burst shot feature however, resulted in horribly pixelated pictures and I wouldn't consider it usable in that mode. The panorama feature worked well even with people moving in in the picture. I'd rate that feature about a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10 as it doesn't stitch enough pictures together to get a true 180 degree panorama.
9. App resolution compatibility - Several of my apps were not available though the marketplace to install on my Amaze due to the different screen resolution. Some others did install but only used the upper 4/5 ths of the screen. Not a big deal as I'm sure this will be fixed down the road but I never read about this in any of the other blog reviews.
10. HTC Sense - I do like HTC Sense and the new themes offered by 3.0 but if you want to download more it asks you to sign in to "download apps, widgets, wallpapers and more" to your phone. When you go to create a new account it then asks you to enter your phone number and email address. The explanation for this is as follows; " Your phone number and email address will be used to suggest connections to friends who also use HTC Sense." Say what? I have no desire to have my name recommended to others in order for them to friend me simply because we use the same phone. How ridiculous and yet necessary of you wish to turn on Phone Finder in order to trace a lost phone. Another privacy intrusion I don't like. There are apps out there that let me track the phone directly via GPS which I prefer as it involves a silent SMS query to the lost phone rather than some other entity, in this case HTC, tracking me all the time.
Hope this helps you with your decision to buy or not. I do like the build and feel of the phone but short battery life (especially with no spare batteries) and heat generation is a big disappointment.
