New Phone! New Tech!

Not that I am a sad sad geek, or a sad sad tech-head, but there is little in the world I enjoy more than new stuff for me.  Don't get me wrong, I don't look at something new and think "ooooh WANT!" like most people that are die hard fans of a certain fruit, but every now and then I DO see something and think "Oooh that is veeery nice..."

Very occasionally, I am lucky enough to be in a position to actually wangle said-veeery-nice item into my possession.  December, in fact, was one of those months.

With my Sony Ericsson W995 having done me very well, I found myself wanting MORE from a phone.  I had originally said I wasn't going to get sucked into the whole Touch Screen/Smart Phone craze that was sweeping the land, but the more I looked, the harder it became to find a decent phone of equal power that had actual buttons on it.  I've been a Sony Ericsson fan for many years and have always loved their phones, but their new buttoned phones didn't do it for me, and their smartphones seemed to be lagging behind the rest of the market for power.

So, I started looking further afield... In August or September time, I started looking at the HTC range of phones, and found some really good deals on the HTC Desire.  Powerful, smart, pretty (because, duh, you HAVE to have a pretty phone!) and because it wasn't brand new, some of the deals were half the cost of my current contract.

Then I found it on a News and Rumours site, the HTC Desire HD was about to be released.  So I investigated, and probed, and looked around, and it was even better, even more powerful, and, dare I say it, even sexier.  And, as if it were destined by the very Gods themselves, Kellie - she who was even less in touch-screen than I was - thought "oooh that is veeery nice.."

Of course, brand new phone, we would be looking at paying silly money a month for it, so resigned ourselves to leaving it till the new year before we renewed, see what deals we could get.

By the start of Decemeber - now out of contract - it happened.  One of these third-party companies that sell on contracts offered the phone for £25 a month.  Just over half what we were currently paying.

Within a week, we had them in our hands, drooling over the screen.

So, what can I say?  First off, it's a beast of a phone.  If you're little, it will kill you if you drop it on your head.  For those of us that loom and tower over the rest of the world, it's actually a phone that reaches from ear to mouth.  The screen is as wide as my W995 was long.  Tam has to hold it with both hands if making a phone call.

It's not much different for my poor midget of a fiancee, Kellie.  Bless her.

It's fast - like, REALLY fast - thanks to the memory and powerful processor deep in it's gubbins.  It comes with all the stuff every other phone comes with - the ability to make calls, Bluetooth, Text Messaging and so on - but with everything else on top - Wifi, GPS, the ability to download the worlds supply of applications... And it's customisable - unlike other fruit-type technology, I can edit the hell out of it if I so desire (!!) and, if I cock it up, so be it - all my stuff is backed up online for me - without me having to tell it to back up.

Camera is 8mp, and can record video in HD which is very spiffy - but like most camera phones, night pictures are a bit grainy and so on, so if you're taking pictures, make sure the light is on (unless that will get you caught red-handed taking photos of your fiancee snoring and drooling on the pillow... Grainy is fine if it doesn't get you caught!)

The phone came with an 8Gb MicroSD card which can be expanded up to 32Gb.  Various apps came preinstalled, but they aren't annoyingly in your face.  If you don't like them, don't use them.

Accelerometer stuff is on there too so it knows which way around you're holding it, and there are loads of games you can play with it too.

Honestly, I am so impressed, and for those that are worried about going from buttons to glass, don't be.  I was quite concerned that my sausages would just mush the screen and make typing a mission.  Nope!  I don't know about other phones, but the HTC Keyboard is quite smart.  It's a proper QWERTY keyboard on screen, and you tap each letter as you go, but if you mush the occasional letter - say, typing ENGLISH, you hit ENGKIDH, it still knows you meant English.

Complaints? Well, the battery life sucks the fat one, but then, I DO use it a lot.  If I am out and about and not doing much with it, I have the Wifi, GPS and AutoSync turned off, I get 24hours out of it easy.  If I am sat on the sofa feeling rough and browsing the web, messaging, listening to music or whatever through the Wifi connection, it does need charging by the end of the day.  However, rumour has it that the next version of Android has better battery saving skills, so we shall see.

When on a call, if you tuck the phone under one of your chins, you are quite likely to hang up the call or turn on the speaker phone by accident with a jowl pressing on the appropriate button on-screen - but you can lock the phone on a cal, or just change to a different screen.

There is so much good stuff about this phone it is not even funny.  So many little features and things that it does, I'd be here all day listing them out.  I'm not going to get into a "It's better than the iPhone" or anything like that, because frankly, I don't care.  I've never really used an iPhone, save the Brother in Laws to see a video, and that's not "using" it.  I really cannot recommend this phone enough, and Kellie loves her one to bits as well.  Straight out the box, it is so easy to use.

If you want to see the HTC Video for it, check this out:






So there we have it, my very sexy new phone. And yes, I have a new mobile number!