I am a developer (mostly) Linux, and I just switched to an HTC Thunderbolt after having an iPhone for 2 years. I loved the iPhone, but I was sick of Apple forcing me to do everything their way.
I have had my Thunderbolt for 12 hours now, and I have to say, I am pretty disappointed. Not in the hardware; the hardware is fine and the screen is beautiful. But here is what I have run into in just the first day:
1) Forced to use a Gmail account on the Market. I already have 3 email addresses. This is why I left the iPhone
2) No CALDAV for calender syncing to our server. Really? How is that even possible this late in the product cycle.
3) Media sync doesn't work at all for me, even the ancient MTP protocol. Best I can do is connect to my box as a USB drive and copy everything at once. I don't know how fast (slow) the memory card is, but the current estimate is 17 hours to copy ~3000 tunes.
4) Made a couple of purchases at the Market, entered my AMEX card number. Went to make another purchase and it said the card was "invalid". After some Googling, I found that items listed in foreign currency will only take Visa and MasterCard even though AMEX is still listed right on the screen as a valid payment option! How hard is it to change the accepted payment options on the screen?
5) After attempting to sync in MTP mode, the Thunderbolt pretty much locked up. After it unfroze (about 5 minutes), I attempted to plug it into a Linux system and a Mac in disk mode. Neither could recognize it. After a reboot, it worked again.
There's more petty details, but the overall point is this; I am scared to death that I did no more than attempt to sync my music and my calender and buy an app and ran into all this the first day. The stuff I mentioned above is for the most part User Experience 101. I am somewhat shocked at how rough around the edges Android 2.2 is.
I can only hope that when 2.3 comes out they will have concentrated on fixing the obvious issues instead of piling on new features. I was ready to to ditch the iPhone, but Ubuntu is 10 times slicker and more ready for prime time than Android in its current form IMO, and a lot more regular users are using Android.
Keeping my fingers crossed; I'm pretty disappointed at the moment.
I have had my Thunderbolt for 12 hours now, and I have to say, I am pretty disappointed. Not in the hardware; the hardware is fine and the screen is beautiful. But here is what I have run into in just the first day:
1) Forced to use a Gmail account on the Market. I already have 3 email addresses. This is why I left the iPhone
2) No CALDAV for calender syncing to our server. Really? How is that even possible this late in the product cycle.
3) Media sync doesn't work at all for me, even the ancient MTP protocol. Best I can do is connect to my box as a USB drive and copy everything at once. I don't know how fast (slow) the memory card is, but the current estimate is 17 hours to copy ~3000 tunes.
4) Made a couple of purchases at the Market, entered my AMEX card number. Went to make another purchase and it said the card was "invalid". After some Googling, I found that items listed in foreign currency will only take Visa and MasterCard even though AMEX is still listed right on the screen as a valid payment option! How hard is it to change the accepted payment options on the screen?
5) After attempting to sync in MTP mode, the Thunderbolt pretty much locked up. After it unfroze (about 5 minutes), I attempted to plug it into a Linux system and a Mac in disk mode. Neither could recognize it. After a reboot, it worked again.
There's more petty details, but the overall point is this; I am scared to death that I did no more than attempt to sync my music and my calender and buy an app and ran into all this the first day. The stuff I mentioned above is for the most part User Experience 101. I am somewhat shocked at how rough around the edges Android 2.2 is.
I can only hope that when 2.3 comes out they will have concentrated on fixing the obvious issues instead of piling on new features. I was ready to to ditch the iPhone, but Ubuntu is 10 times slicker and more ready for prime time than Android in its current form IMO, and a lot more regular users are using Android.
Keeping my fingers crossed; I'm pretty disappointed at the moment.
