New Mobile

[MYstIC G]

unable to charge for a few days (I'm thinking camping, festivals, photography trips) - that makes the iPhone redundant right off the bat for me.

Why? Because you're unable to simply turn a phone off for a few hours? That allows any make and model of phone to overcome your suggested obstacle

 

[old.user4556]

Fuck that, a phone should last more than a couple of days without having to pace it like that. Neither the Hero or the iPhone are up to the task, particularly if you need to use an always-on application such as google maps along with GPS.

Besides, I'm important, people need to phone me .

 

[Trem]

Like G and others have said Apple have marketed it brilliantly but I simply don't understand how 'theres an app for that' is more important than what we have all come to expect from modern phones, i.e a decent battery and camera. It just boggles my mind to pay that much money and then have a really tiny phone-peen when it comes to everyday things.

Meh, each to their own and maybe I am just old fashioned.

Besides, I'm important, people need to phone me .

Only when you are with your sisters

 

[yaruar]

I'm no iphone fan but I've yet to use a phone that works with MS exchange quite so well - i.e. set up and use. It *shits* all over blackberrys for it.

Seriously? I've yet to find anything which works with Exchange as well as the BES/blackberry combination. RIM have lost the plot in terms of OS development though and are going to start being the Netware of the phone world if they aren't careful.

I'm still waiting for Android 2.0 to come out on my Dev phone to experiment with exchange sync on that.

 

[yaruar]

I'd say that is what will put a lot of people off these kinds of phones Trem, I remember my Nokia 6310i - I absolutely loved it for the awesome battery life, I'm sure it was up to two weeks standby time which was awesome.

But now, I've got to constantly worry about topping my phone up - It's a different way of life and I'm getting used to it, I simply put it on the charger every night. The charger from HTC is a two piece affair so you can uplug the wire from the body of the charger and charge the phone from a USB port, so if you forget to charge it, take the wire to work. I also have the car kit now so I can charge it when i'm driving.

Btw I fully charged it at 8am and I've still got two thirds battery left now, so turning off all the battery eating background data tasks has helped a fair bit.



Orange branded mate.

I found with my g1 that the biggest saving i made for battery life was lowering the screen timeout. I once turned it off with the brightness on full and could watch the battery drain in front of my eyes.

 

[GReaper]

- apps don't seem to exit properly, you need to manually kill them off to stop memory being leeched. Bit of a PITA I felt, no quick easy way to do it without (you guessed it) downloading a "task kill" app from the Market

This is intended though, as Android sends signals to applications when they lose focus and when it forces them to close. I know it feels odd, but there usually isn't any need to kill applications. I agree that a force quit is needed as part of the system for the occasional cases you do need it. Memory will be cleared when it's needed, don't assume you're always helping it by killing apps.

I know that some of the positives aren't exclusive to this phone, so I'm sure someone will reply to this and say "ZOMG LOL Phone does it too" - but this is my experience and opinion so far. Oh yeah, any Hero tips most welcome; I read about ROM upgrades and other things on the web, but I don't have time to faff with it that much so if someone could summarise below, I'd appreciate it .

If you aren't running the updated firmware, go update now. Downloads available here, you'll certainly have to backup any phone contacts, SMS messages, free downloaded unprotected apps (or make a list), and various other settings - the phone gets wiped during the update. The various widgets don't update quite so often with it, however it does perform much better.

 

[soze]

Seriously? I've yet to find anything which works with Exchange as well as the BES/blackberry combination. RIM have lost the plot in terms of OS development though and are going to start being the Netware of the phone world if they aren't careful.

I'm still waiting for Android 2.0 to come out on my Dev phone to experiment with exchange sync on that.

Direct Push is better than BES it works on multiple devices and OS and its free. On a WinMo device it shows up more Exchange options than anything else.

 

[nath]

Seriously? I've yet to find anything which works with Exchange as well as the BES/blackberry combination. RIM have lost the plot in terms of OS development though and are going to start being the Netware of the phone world if they aren't careful.

I don't know if it's new to the 3GS but the exchange sync just *works*. Setting it up required entry on the phone of about 4 or 5 fields, very very straight forward. Subsequently the entire email folder structure was maintained, and calendar syncs over the air flawlessly. This was running alongside a clients Blackberry which only gets the latest emails through to the inbox, no folder structure or anything like that. Plus the interface on BB's is just lousy.

 

[Aada]

Oh aada - sorry for the last comment; it's just that any thing you like cannot have any fault. You rave about things you buy like no one could possibly hate them.

Didn't i list 2 things i didn't like about the iPhone? camera/battery?

Comon dude ;/ i can't be anymore honest then that can i?

The best thing is you flame me for it!

Damned if i do and damned if i don't come to mind

The iPhone for me is the best phone for what i need it for and that's the net i constantly use it for work so when i'm on the train the sites i need to use are book marked on the home screen and ready to go at the tap of a button i've had a few phones where first i need to load up the web then go into another menu to select bookmarks then another menu to find my bookmarks. If you constantly use the net on a phone every day then after a while things like that begin to really grate on anyone's nerves.

Don't worry though i know there are a number of people who refuse to look at the iPhone just because Apple made it? i don't care who makes what phone as long as it does what i need it for and does it well simple as that buddy.

 

[yaruar]

Direct Push is better than BES it works on multiple devices and OS and its free. On a WinMo device it shows up more Exchange options than anything else.

Activesync is great, we've had a few oddities with iphones though, such things like deleting all personal contacts for no apparant reason and not synching calendars properly. I really didn't like the iphone email inteface when i was testing it though. + touch screen keyboards are teh suck compared to a full qwerty hardware one.
In terms of corporate usage though i'd definately argue that there is more security to be had with BES as you have the ability to have complete control of the devices and connections.

 

[yaruar]

I don't know if it's new to the 3GS but the exchange sync just *works*. Setting it up required entry on the phone of about 4 or 5 fields, very very straight forward. Subsequently the entire email folder structure was maintained, and calendar syncs over the air flawlessly. This was running alongside a clients Blackberry which only gets the latest emails through to the inbox, no folder structure or anything like that. Plus the interface on BB's is just lousy.

I can't remember but have apple got round the problem of pre 3GS phones being unable to work with encrypted activesync with the last os upgrade?

 

[Zenith.UK]

I still have my 6310i

I agree I think its at least 10 days before you have to charge it.

Nokia have gone shat for battery life nowadays though.

So do I!
My 6310i is my fallback phone in the event of all else failing.
"It Just Works".

However, this XDA Orbit 2 is holding on well. The Xperia X1 got sold in July to get Mrs.Zenith a HTC Magic which she adores. So I'll be using her contract upgrade to get the HTC HD2 in a couple of weeks. It's more of what I'm used to, faster, with a bigger screen. Considering satnav is my secondary use after phone calls, bigger screen wins the day.

Android is lovely to use, but I like my TomTom on WinMo. It's simply what I'm used to.

 

[nath]

I can't remember but have apple got round the problem of pre 3GS phones being unable to work with encrypted activesync with the last os upgrade?

I've no idea - how is the iphone linked to activesync in any way? I thought it was just software for syncing WinMo phones.

As to the randomly deleting contacts - yeah, AS does that because it takes complete control of the items on your device. If you sync up your contacts from one computer then remove that partnership it will delete all contacts/calendar entries attributed to that partnership and on this you have no choice. This was a pain for me when I wanted to sync up my contacts one time only and not have it do it every time. I got around it by syncing on two computers at once, on my laptop and desktop and keeping the partnership alive on my laptop. That way the phone doesn't delete contacts when you remove contacts syncing from the other partnership. It's a ludicrous way of doing things and it's been like this for ages.

 

[MYstIC G]

Fuck that, a phone should last more than a couple of days without having to pace it like that. Neither the Hero or the iPhone are up to the task, particularly if you need to use an always-on application such as google maps along with GPS.

Besides, I'm important, people need to phone me .

My iPhone did just that, maybe I didn't make that very clear from my earlier post but it went 2 days, no charger, no problems

 

[soze]

Activesync is great, we've had a few oddities with iphones though, such things like deleting all personal contacts for no apparant reason and not synching calendars properly. I really didn't like the iphone email inteface when i was testing it though. + touch screen keyboards are teh suck compared to a full qwerty hardware one.
In terms of corporate usage though i'd definately argue that there is more security to be had with BES as you have the ability to have complete control of the devices and connections.

I will give you that actually the nuke button and ability to delete synced mail centrally has come in handy a couple of times.

I've no idea - how is the iphone linked to activesync in any way? I thought it was just software for syncing WinMo phones.

As to the randomly deleting contacts - yeah, AS does that because it takes complete control of the items on your device. If you sync up your contacts from one computer then remove that partnership it will delete all contacts/calendar entries attributed to that partnership and on this you have no choice. This was a pain for me when I wanted to sync up my contacts one time only and not have it do it every time. I got around it by syncing on two computers at once, on my laptop and desktop and keeping the partnership alive on my laptop. That way the phone doesn't delete contacts when you remove contacts syncing from the other partnership. It's a ludicrous way of doing things and it's been like this for ages.

ActiveSync is the Direct Push system on the Exchange server that lets the iphone work.

 

[Fast]

What about the N900? Linux based. Sounds so much better than the turd that is the N97.

Maemo software | Nokia › Nokia N900 mobile computer

 

[yaruar]

What about the N900? Linux based. Sounds so much better than the turd that is the N97.

Maemo software | Nokia › Nokia N900 mobile computer

I'm always a bit wary when a maker (usually nokia) ring out special phones with special OS's on them, it's all a bit experimental and potentially a development dead end.

 

[Panda On Smack]

This thread gives phone sex a whole new meaning

 

[old.user4556]

It's been mentioned in the thread already, but it looks fantastic.

HTC - Products - HTC HD2 - Product Tour

HTC - Products - HTC HD2 - Photo Gallery

Windows Mobile puts me off - should I let that bother me?

 

[nath]

Windows Mobile puts me off - should I let that bother me?

Yes, yes a thousand times yes. It's awful and God's own software development team can't polish that turd.

 

[old.user4556]

Is it that bad? Can you quantify the badness?

 

[nath]

The problem with 6.5 is that they've gone to extensive lengths to try and cover up the shitness. Speed, interface etc, but it all pokes through. You'll find yourself stumbling on to windows that require a stylus.

To be fair, this is from my experience of 6.5 from a modded older phone but I've yet to see a *single* windows mobile phone that isn't utter gash so if this one isn't, I'll eat my left nut.

 

[old.user4556]

Now that would be amusing to see .

 

[dysfunction]

It does look quite good. Very quick interface etc...

YouTube- HTC HD2 full review | Techblog.gr

But I'm with Nath on this one. If it's windows mobile I am steering well clear of it!!
Pity they havnt gone with Android...

 

[DaGaffer]

The problem with 6.5 is that they've gone to extensive lengths to try and cover up the shitness. Speed, interface etc, but it all pokes through. You'll find yourself stumbling on to windows that require a stylus.

To be fair, this is from my experience of 6.5 from a modded older phone but I've yet to see a *single* windows mobile phone that isn't utter gash so if this one isn't, I'll eat my left nut.

Actually, my work phone is a Motorola Q9; which is basically a Blackberry clone. Because it has a QWERTY pad, you have none of the stylus issues normally associated with WinMo, and so it doesn't grate as much. In fact its not an unpleasant experience at all when used in this way and integrates with my desktop and Exchange perfectly; doesn't feel sluggish either. Would I have it for a personal phone? No, not at all, but in certain circumstances its fine.

 

[soze]

Is it that bad? Can you quantify the badness?

As a user of a HTC running winmo 6.5 with Toch Flo over it in normal day to day activities you will go no where near default windows "that needs a stylus". If you use the phone for emails, text, phone calls, music, videos, pictures ect it is all handled by the UI, in most areas you will need to go about 3 levels down before you touch winmo. On the new versions of Touch Flo (HD2 uses 2.5 or Sense UI which is the same as the Hero) even the settings has been replaced by a HTC settings option.

 

[Fast]

Looks a lot faster than the Hero from that clip. It could of been even better with Android2. This week I am mostly thinking about waiting for the Sony

 

[MYstIC G]

No, it "might" have been better. There's no certainty Android2 would make it so.

 

[soze]

As HTC offer a free upgrade from 6.1 to 6.5 for phone released close enough to 6.5 release have they defiantly ruled out a free upgrade to Android 2 on the Hero?

 

[Dark Orb Choir]

they are working on the android 2 verwion for the hero, it should be out soon, they annoucned it on the htc twitter page


HTC Hero to get Android 2.0 upgrade | IT PRO