Had full use of the phone since Thursday night now, so here's the initial opinion....
Very, very nice. I had to go into the T-Mobile shop this weekend to get them to unlock my broadband dongle, and mentioned to the guy that I had one, and he asked if he could have a quick go because the shop had sold out before he got to work the day they arrived.
The Good Bits
VERY responsive. Easy to pick up email from multiple accounts. Nice desktop - you can scroll left and right from the centre to get multiple screens of information, there are 7 in total. I've got one screen completely empty because I can't think of anything to put on there! Double click on the home button, or pinch to zoom out, and it shows you all 7 and allows you to zoom back in again.
Brilliant linking of applications - connects users email, phone, Flickr, Facebook and Twitter accounts all together in one place, which I like (my wife is on Twitter constantly!)
Camera takes decent pictures, with in-built automatic flash. Different clocks (which I really wanted from my G1!) - I have it set on the homepage with digital clock, showing local weather conditions from accuweather. As a gimmick, when you go to the home page, it animates the screen for the current weather - I have clouds drifting across the screen now, and yesterday it rained (until the windscreen wipers cleared the screen!)
USB cable to PC offers 4 choices - charge phone, HTC Sync, Disk drive, Internet Sharing. So, plug the phone in and it acts as a 3G modem for you - no need for tethering software a la G1.
Video player doesn't play AVI, but the MP4 that I have just copied over is pretty slick - screen is nice and crisp. Have watched youtube and it looks pretty good, as well. I also watched the GP qualifying yesterday on the BBC website, just playing it in flash rather than anything else. Flash plays out of the box - just been to the Flash website and it played fine.
Comes with a load of widgets and programs already installed - including a set of standard sample desktops (with widgets) depending on what you want to use it for. For example, "Work" has your agenda (from google calendar), world time, stock ticker etc.
Internet browser seems pretty good - they have borrowed the idea of pinching to zoom in and out, which is nice.
The Bad Bits
Annoyed that they have moved to a micro-USB cable for charging, though - but I found a cable in Wilkinsons for £7 or so that does it, so I can leave one at home and one in the laptop bag. Also means that I need new in-car chargers - USB to cigarette lighter socket £1 from the Pound Shop.
Group ringtone - I can add a custom / different ringtone to an individual, but to do it to a group you have to add it to each member individually. I like to have a different ringtone for agents, so I know whether to rush to answer the call or not (I have "Tales of the Unexpected" set). That's an Android thing, though, I think - had the same on my G1 so can't expect it to work on this, really.
RSS reader "News" doesn't seem to refresh - I have set it to refresh every 30 minutes, and if I open it and leave it open, it refreshes. However, I want to be able to flick to it and have the up-to-date feeds there automatically, rather than opening it and finding yesterday's news rather than something up-to-date.
Someone needs to write a decent LinkedIn application for Android. Seen the one on the iPhone, which is very slick, but there is nothing comparable that I have found for droid. Would be nice if the friend stream picked up from there as well, but you can't have everything.
Overall - buy / get one.
I have no idea how it compares to a Nexus One (since they don't seem to be too common at the moment!) or even to an iPhone. I've never used an iPhone, but have seen enough people with them. It's been touted as the Nexus killer, and the Nexus was touted as the iPhone killer - I don't know how accurate either of those predictions are (I doubt very, since people that like Apple will keep buying Apple regardless). All I can say is that I wouldn't hesitate in getting one again - although in 18 months I'll probably be drooling over something else.
With the G1, I sort of felt that I had to evangelize it because it wasn't quite as good as I wanted it to be. With the HTC Desire, I have no such need - it's very, very tasty.
Very, very nice. I had to go into the T-Mobile shop this weekend to get them to unlock my broadband dongle, and mentioned to the guy that I had one, and he asked if he could have a quick go because the shop had sold out before he got to work the day they arrived.
The Good Bits
VERY responsive. Easy to pick up email from multiple accounts. Nice desktop - you can scroll left and right from the centre to get multiple screens of information, there are 7 in total. I've got one screen completely empty because I can't think of anything to put on there! Double click on the home button, or pinch to zoom out, and it shows you all 7 and allows you to zoom back in again.
Brilliant linking of applications - connects users email, phone, Flickr, Facebook and Twitter accounts all together in one place, which I like (my wife is on Twitter constantly!)
Camera takes decent pictures, with in-built automatic flash. Different clocks (which I really wanted from my G1!) - I have it set on the homepage with digital clock, showing local weather conditions from accuweather. As a gimmick, when you go to the home page, it animates the screen for the current weather - I have clouds drifting across the screen now, and yesterday it rained (until the windscreen wipers cleared the screen!)
USB cable to PC offers 4 choices - charge phone, HTC Sync, Disk drive, Internet Sharing. So, plug the phone in and it acts as a 3G modem for you - no need for tethering software a la G1.
Video player doesn't play AVI, but the MP4 that I have just copied over is pretty slick - screen is nice and crisp. Have watched youtube and it looks pretty good, as well. I also watched the GP qualifying yesterday on the BBC website, just playing it in flash rather than anything else. Flash plays out of the box - just been to the Flash website and it played fine.
Comes with a load of widgets and programs already installed - including a set of standard sample desktops (with widgets) depending on what you want to use it for. For example, "Work" has your agenda (from google calendar), world time, stock ticker etc.
Internet browser seems pretty good - they have borrowed the idea of pinching to zoom in and out, which is nice.
The Bad Bits
Annoyed that they have moved to a micro-USB cable for charging, though - but I found a cable in Wilkinsons for £7 or so that does it, so I can leave one at home and one in the laptop bag. Also means that I need new in-car chargers - USB to cigarette lighter socket £1 from the Pound Shop.
Group ringtone - I can add a custom / different ringtone to an individual, but to do it to a group you have to add it to each member individually. I like to have a different ringtone for agents, so I know whether to rush to answer the call or not (I have "Tales of the Unexpected" set). That's an Android thing, though, I think - had the same on my G1 so can't expect it to work on this, really.
RSS reader "News" doesn't seem to refresh - I have set it to refresh every 30 minutes, and if I open it and leave it open, it refreshes. However, I want to be able to flick to it and have the up-to-date feeds there automatically, rather than opening it and finding yesterday's news rather than something up-to-date.
Someone needs to write a decent LinkedIn application for Android. Seen the one on the iPhone, which is very slick, but there is nothing comparable that I have found for droid. Would be nice if the friend stream picked up from there as well, but you can't have everything.
Overall - buy / get one.
I have no idea how it compares to a Nexus One (since they don't seem to be too common at the moment!) or even to an iPhone. I've never used an iPhone, but have seen enough people with them. It's been touted as the Nexus killer, and the Nexus was touted as the iPhone killer - I don't know how accurate either of those predictions are (I doubt very, since people that like Apple will keep buying Apple regardless). All I can say is that I wouldn't hesitate in getting one again - although in 18 months I'll probably be drooling over something else.
With the G1, I sort of felt that I had to evangelize it because it wasn't quite as good as I wanted it to be. With the HTC Desire, I have no such need - it's very, very tasty.
, it isn't funny. HTH. LOL.
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