I recently got a Desire, and I just thought it was interesting to read other people's thoughts... I can't say I mind the battery. I'm used to smart phones, and I've disabled most of the power hungry things and installed an appkiller. (Though battery life still isn't as good as my Touch HD, which has a slightly larger screen and is two years old with its original battery)
Having said that, the reason I found this post, was in looking for other people who found the Desire a bit overrated...
I've been a long time fan of HTC (7 in a row with Windows Mobile) Till now I've been using an HTC Touch HD. In comparison, the Desire is much smoother and faster, I must admit.
Unfortunately within the first week I've had repeatedly poor signal where the Touch HD was fantastic, unreliable texting (it often fails to send, even when the signal is high in places the HD had no problem). It is also now reading the micro SD card as 'damaged', and won't read from it (even after re-booting, unmounting, physical removal, etc). I've since read that a lot of people are having similar problems with their Desire. (The card in question worked without a single problem for the last 2 years in my HD.) So it's not just a case of a dodgy phone....
Beyond those hardware(?) problems and onto the subjective user experience, I'll say I'm not convinced on Android (or perhaps the Desire's usage of android, not having used another Android phone?). It's great from a visual and initial usage sense. Superior to an iPhone in almost every way (I've used a friend's several times, but find them far too limited). But past the surface, the user experience just isn't as intuitive or customisable. At least with Windows Mobile I was able to alter practically any and every setting with ease, if I so wished (again, I don't know, this may be just something I find with the way Android is implemented on the Desire, rather than Android in general?). I tended to find WM lacked the surface touches that make a lot of phones seem really swish, but it fires on pretty much all cylinders behind the scenes (Don't get me wrong, I think it's far from perfect, but I always found a way to do most things, or alter things that I wanted to, or fix any problems easily). Android seems to be all about the initial 'swish', and isn't quite so polished beyond that.
Also, I'm not a big fan of the capacitive screen now (all the rage since the iPhone). Yes, I know I should've thought about that before hand, but I thought it would be fine until I've now had more experience with regular usage. For those who have used a pressure sensitive screen with stylus like the Touch HD, you'll know how hamfisted it feels with a capacitive screen. It's better when ONLY using fingers, but only slightly. In my personal opinion the advantage of a stylus far outweighs the slight improvement a capacitive screen gives on finger usage. Any equivalent stylus for a capacitive screen is like using a block of chalk (so I've now discovered. My own fault, should researched better!). Now texting takes longer, with endless "Damn, that's not what I wanted to press" moments. The general texting system is also awkward and counter-intuitive, and that's still after installing numerous extra things to make it easier than out of the box.
To sum up, the Desire has left me seriously considering going back to my HD at the moment. It may be better than most other phones on the market. It may be much faster and look fancier on screen, but it just doesn't seem to have the usability or reliability for the basic functions, the way the Touch HD had, or even the previous HTC phones I've had. Perhaps I've been spoiled by how reliable and trusty HTC's own Touch HD has been.
Normally there's that period with any phone, of getting used to the differences, even finding the odd thing that your previous phone did better, but the pros have always far outweighed the cons. Within a week or so, I've always ended up really pleased with my new HTC phones, and more than happy at the upgrade. With the Desire, it's the first time I'm seriously unsure whether it was worth the 'upgrade', and I've had it over two weeks now. It's just constantly annoying me.
Took 10 minutes off my working day!!
