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Went to purchase a Desire but...

@phamster
phamster said:
@ Kartnite,
i too am in your position , but after reading all the info, desire is the logical choice..

can't not wait till i get my phone..

i will give you feed back once i get mine.. i currently have E 71 and need a solid phone that has a great photo viewer..
Click to expand...

Good luck with the purchase. Would love to hear your take, too.

None of the major electronics stores today have the Desire in stock. Pity... The agonizing wait continues.

Dropped by your blog. 'pon my word... Great job, buddy! More power to your mighty lens. :)

@moe: Not a problem at all. Good if you get that frustration out of your system. :) I am sorry to hear that. It does come as a shock to me. I hope they don't repeat it... Always is maddening when sh^t like that happens.

@Jammy: No, I am not from the UK. I reside in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Mobile phones are not network locked here...

Thank you for that word of warning. Coming to think of it, I have a close relative who works for Orange, UK. I politely declined an offer sometime last month because I preferred an unbranded mobile. Your point just reiterates that my move was wise indeed. ;)
 
The Vibrant/Fascinate/Captivate are hot sellers right now, but so is the Desire (well because it's Telus' only good phone, unless you want to pay another $250 for the Milestone). The Vibrant and Desire are pretty hard to find where I live, but keeping an eye out at Walmart, Best Buy, and Future shop and you can get one pretty quick. Telus official stores are a different story, they only get 3-4 Desire units per shipment and that's once every 3 some odd weeks.
 
Samsung Galaxy S has GPS issues.U can read them in the Galaxy S forum.It will be solved when Froyo arrives, but some consumers chased Samsung aggressively to let them know that GPS performance needs to be fine tuned.....
 
@sookster - Quite content waiting for the Desire... :) But I wasn't aware that the other 3 are hot sellers. At least not where I am.

@kumar - Hmmm, yeah - did read about it. Thanks for mentioning.

Have this week to kill. :/

Take care, folks. Peace.
 
Having had the Desire for a few months now, my downside comments are:

Video camera is not all that.
Froyo has helped the storage situation, but you can still run out of internal memory.
There is no equaliser for the audio.
Camera 'trackball' is not that accurate.
Battery life means I have to carry a spare, although this is not a big issue.
WiFi can still be flaky at times even on Froyo.

All of the above said, it is FAR AND AWAY the BEST Smart Phone I have EVER owned. I am a complete HTC/Android convert having been down the Samsung, Nokia & SonyEricsson routes in the past. (I have never liked Apple products, and RIM stuff is too business orientated for my liking.)
 
I intend to use it for both business and personal use... Primarily for business, though. I am quite content with my C905/K850i for personal use. :)

So... I am prepared for the "ordinary" camera and audio capabilities.

Thank you for pointing out the issues, @Jim255.
 
vanttila said:
First of all, the Galaxy S looks like crap to be honest. It's plastic all the way around and feel cheap "wiggly" in ur hand.

Second thing is the user interface. If you're not planning to root your phone, desire's the way to go. Samsung's Wiz UI is an pretty much like all samsung products; it's illogical, ugly and slow. The phone has alot of lag.

Third thing is the Kies software. I've never heard a good thing to be said about this piece of shit. It pretty much never works, and when it does, it's slow and insufficient - again, a definite Samsung product.

As u can probably guess, i'd go with HTC :cool:
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Have to agree was in the CPW couple of days ago, and they had a couple of Galaxys to play with, and they felt cheap and nasty, almost like a cheap toy in comparison to my Desire, I used to own an Omnia and the Samsung UI is Plop

Andrew
 
I had some negatives about my Desire as well (to counter the rather biased comments so far):

- too few apps allow to be moved to the SD card and I already only have 20MB left on my internal memory and I've only had the phone for three weeks. I've deleted lots of apps as well and only keep the ones I absolutely need. I hope upgrades will add the functionality soon or it will become a real nuisance. 512MB internal memory is really 150-200MB in practice after you subtract the OS itself and the pre-installed apps.

- the touch screen can be odd when using multi-touch. I've discovered that it will often ignore input and I'm left wondering whether this is software specific or hardware specific. I did hear a rumour that it's due to the type of screen? I sure hope not. When using on-screen controls during games, it's especially noticeable.

- the screen is pretty poor under strong light sources - even indirect light outside (while under a parasol for example) easily block out the screen. It's not a huge problem since every phone I've had so far had the same problem but it may be a factor since the Samsung Galaxy is noticeably superior in this area.

The positive:

- the HTC Desire looks and feels quality. It feels solid, stable, strong and reliable.

- it's very responsive and fast to your touch which makes it very pleasant to use.

- the tactile buttons are a nice bonus for games and apps - the "home", "menu", "return", "zoom", volume + and - and trackball button give you 7 physical buttons to play with (although apps usually leave "home" unbound).

- the Sense UI is brilliant. Yes, there's apps that mimic it which will run on the Samsung Galaxy but I've seen comparisons and the app slows down, is bulky, far less stable, etc.

- lots of updates and nearly the first phone to get the new Android upgrades too.

- the HTC apps are often better than the default Android ones. In fact, I'm wondering whether I could back up the Android ones I don't use and delete them to free up space.
 
- too few apps movable to the mass storage? I thought Froyo sorted this..? Please correct me if I am wrong.

- Hmmm... Will keep that in mind. I sre hope I do not turn my Desire in to a complete gaming station. Am a pretty avid gamer. :/

- I am not letting the sunlight issue bother me all that much. Where I reside... Sunshine is aplenty! And unless I find myself in a rather awkward situation - like in the middle of nowhere, under a hot midday sun, when I suddenly face a necessity to text/browse thru contacts, etc. - I am prepared to handle it.

That said though, I do understand what you mean.

Thank you for your insights @Red_Avatar. Much appreciated!
 
Red_Avatar said:
I had some negatives about my Desire as well (to counter the rather biased comments so far):

- too few apps allow to be moved to the SD card and I already only have 20MB left on my internal memory and I've only had the phone for three weeks. I've deleted lots of apps as well and only keep the ones I absolutely need. I hope upgrades will add the functionality soon or it will become a real nuisance. 512MB internal memory is really 150-200MB in practice after you subtract the OS itself and the pre-installed apps.

- the touch screen can be odd when using multi-touch. I've discovered that it will often ignore input and I'm left wondering whether this is software specific or hardware specific. I did hear a rumour that it's due to the type of screen? I sure hope not. When using on-screen controls during games, it's especially noticeable.

- the screen is pretty poor under strong light sources - even indirect light outside (while under a parasol for example) easily block out the screen. It's not a huge problem since every phone I've had so far had the same problem but it may be a factor since the Samsung Galaxy is noticeably superior in this area.
Click to expand...

- you can force this for all apps and manually move them with the adb command but be warned you dont move background apps. also it does still store cache on the system partition

- a little of both, currently HTC use the best system for multitouch but it can still only recognise 2 fingers at a time . This is expected as android doesnt implement MT properly and never has. its up to the devs to hack it. (untill now samsung didnt have multitouch, their GS however has 5points which is superior)

- this statement is kind of strong. have you used the galaxy S in direct sunlight? Its just as bad in many aspects, its hard to see any of these screens in direct sunlight
 
- Yes, I used the trick to move apps to the SD card but the cache alone eats up nearly all the space. Having moved every app possible, I still only have 40MB to spare. Why it's not possible to have the cache stored on the SD card, I'm not sure. Also, I've nosed around on the internal memory and cache from deleted apps is left behind. I don't have write access there so I can't delete it sadly enough. 512MB really is THE biggest weakness of the Desire. I would have gladly paid 50 euros more to have twice that space. It's a huge design flaw if you ask me because, after the OS and basic apps, you barely got 15-20% left.

- That explains things a bit but it's still highly frustrating since the emulators use on-screen buttons. A d-pad and two buttons would mean three touches on the screen which would explain why the GBA emulator barely worked.

This would be no worry if the Wiimote I have would connect but apparently the HTC devices have a major Bluetooth issue where everyone BUT HTC can use the Wiimote for the emulators and games. Combined, it's a big annoyance for me. Unless I find a gamepad that will connect through Bluetooth without using HID for detection, I'm screwed.

- well I've seen it tested in vids and it sure seemed like a big difference to me. Granted, I don't intend to use it outside a lot (I tend to not even read in the sunlight - not good for the eyes) but it can be a factor for some.

Oh and don't get me wrong - I LOVE my Desire, but I won't be blind to the weaknesses - I'm not like Mac fanboys who will drool and wank all over their precious iProducts and pretend they're perfect. "Oh we don't NEED Flash". "Multi-tasking is overrated". You know, ******ed comments like that :D

It's like loving a woman - the difference between a crush and real love is seeing the flaws and looking past them instead of pretending they're not there.
 
Agree totally with the above. The Desire is the best device I've had, but there is still room for improvement.
Smartphones should be sold with a minimum of 16GB onboard. 512MB is frankly laughable, and Froyo may address the issue, but the feature is not being supported by developers. Even the apps that are installed onto SD leave a sizeable chunk on internal memory.
Correct me if i'm wrong but the Samsung has 2GB onboard? That helps. I wouldn't personally go for one though due to the GPS issues reported by many users, the build feels cheaper than my Desire, and Samsung's own UI pales in comparison to Sense.
Android has come on leaps and bounds, and I think it's inevitable that it will continue to improve - hopefully they listen to some of the niggles and address them.

In short, go for the Desire.
 
pspbricker said:
Agree totally with the above. The Desire is the best device I've had, but there is still room for improvement.
Smartphones should be sold with a minimum of 16GB onboard. 512MB is frankly laughable, and Froyo may address the issue, but the feature is not being supported by developers. Even the apps that are installed onto SD leave a sizeable chunk on internal memory.
Correct me if i'm wrong but the Samsung has 2GB onboard? That helps. I wouldn't personally go for one though due to the GPS issues reported by many users, the build feels cheaper than my Desire, and Samsung's own UI pales in comparison to Sense.
Android has come on leaps and bounds, and I think it's inevitable that it will continue to improve - hopefully they listen to some of the niggles and address them.

In short, go for the Desire.
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That's there. There is always room for improvement. And human wants (read: DESIRES! pun intended!) are endless. ;)

Thanks for your input, @pspbricker
 
Yeah, if you can overcome the limited internal memory (which depends on your demands of the phone and your ability and/or willingness to make extra efforts) it's a brilliant phone.

Right now I'm tinkering with HD movies to find the right balance between quality and smoothness without crossing 1GB for an entire movie (I got a 16GB SD card inside so I got room for a few movies). Once it works, I can convert movies for my Desire whenever I may want to watch them on the move (like during a long train trip or while in the car as a passenger). Since it takes just 30 minutes to convert a 5GB 720p movie, it's not a big hassle anymore.
 
Red_Avatar said:
Yeah, if you can overcome the limited internal memory (which depends on your demands of the phone and your ability and/or willingness to make extra efforts) it's a brilliant phone.

.
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i haven't had an adroid phone ever.. so it is a newbie question

so you can't store apps on the expandible memory? (buy the fastest SDMICRO?)

or apps can only be on internal?
 
phamster said:
i haven't had an adroid phone ever.. so it is a newbie question

so you can't store apps on the expandible memory? (buy the fastest SDMICRO?)

or apps can only be on internal?
Click to expand...
There's a way to make it so almost all apps can be stored on your SD card but without it, you need to rely on the apps themselves to support it.

Storing media like pictures, music, vids, etc. is done on the SD card as well. The internal memory is used for:

- widgets
- settings
- most cache
- system apps
- the Android OS

I believe that's all.
 
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