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Review of HTC Desire As Alternative To iPhone
Andrew Smith writes "My search for an alternative to the iPhone has been long and frustrating. On paper, the HTC Desire is the first serious challenger to the iPhone's reign as king of phones. But how does it compare in use? There is much good and much bad. (This review is primarily for UK readers as HTC's new handset, the Incredible, will not be available [in the UK].)"
Yeah, the article didn't dispute that either. The reason people want alternatives (inferior as they may be) is Apple's tyrannical control over the platform.
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Beautiful screen, Exchange integration works perfectly (even with the exotic configuration I have at work) and the widgets available are really cool.
Battery life is acceptable. Better than my last smartphone (N91).
There are some fantastic apps: Layar in particular is not only technically cool, it actually has a practical use.
Downsides:
1. Not all alls in App Market are available, including goodies like Google Earth. Though I hear that this'll be solved soon enough.
2. Keyboard is terrible when you need to write in multiple languages (in my case dutch & english). For English alone it's fantastic.
3. SMS, twitter dms, emails aren't integrated into one app. I'd love to see a single 'messaging center' for all apps (even if its just via a notification API or something). No idea if the iPhone / Palm can do this btw.
"The problem, you see, is that the iPhone is close to perfect. It feels solid, it looks pretty, and its screen responds to the slightest gesture."
Followed by..
"But it is hobbled by Apple’s super-tight approval process that...."
Don't you think, that the reason iPhones are close to perfect, is because of the super-tight approval process.... Not only in the App Store, but also in the build and design of it. Where other manufactures make something just good enough to sell, Apple go one step further.... The touch screen has to work perfectly, it has to feel solid, and the Apps that are available for it, better not let the whole experience down....
That's a rather subjective observation. My Android phone broke the other day, leaving me with my work phone (iPhone) as only phone for a week.
I wouldn't swap my Android for an iPhone if you paid me big bucks to do it. And that was true as of my first (1.5) Android phone. Slow as it was, I still instantly preferred it over the iPhone.
Luckily, both exist and people can pick the one they prefer.
...however, take a peek at the N900. The screen is way better than a 3GS, Skype & IM integrate seamlessly, and there is no sleazy attempts to keep you from doing anything with your phone. Meamo 5 may be only, say, 75% done, but it's better than only being able to use 50% of the phone!
!Equality through palindromes semordnilap hguorht ytilauqE!
That they have excellent hardware but their long term software support is as miserable as the rest of the industry.
Usually you get the phone, and as soon as you are out of the store, they dont see you as a customer anymore.
If you are lucky you get one quick bugfix update, and then you wait for ages and if you are lucky you get another software update.
The classical example this time is the HTC Hero, the top phone from them until January.
The Android 1.6 update was promised, than they said, they were going for straight 2.0 in january, then february March etc...
Now they have released the HTC Legend which is almost the same as the Hero except for the sensor instead of the trackball
and the aluminium casing, it has Android 2.1, well the result was to protect their Legend sales the Hero update again was postponed
to June. However in May Android 2.2 will be released.
All I can say is avoid this phone like the plaque go for the Nexus 1 which will get the software updates in time for the forseeable future unless you are willing to hack your phone open and use the community as software update center.
Actually the Hero will be my last non google branded phone. HTC has pulled the same stunt back then on the touch, and I should have been warned, now they are pulling the same stunt again with the Hero.
As for me I will run the Hero until the end of the year and then will go straight for what Google has to offer (hopefully a non HTC Nexus2)
"Why don't you go by Michael?" - "Why should I change? He's the one who sucks!"
Tsunami -- You can't bring a good wave down!
Review of HTC Desire as alternative to Apple iPhone
My search for an alternative to Apple’s iPhone has been long and frustrating.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve walked out of a highstreet phone shop, disappointed by devices that promised so much but turned out to be flimsy toys with sluggish software and unresponsive touchscreens.
Anyone who has similarly quested an escape from Apple’s grasp will know my pain!
The problem, you see, is that the iPhone is close to perfect. It feels solid, it looks pretty, and its screen responds to the slightest gesture.
But it is hobbled by Apple’s super-tight approval process that, for example, blocked Pulitzer Prize-winning work by satirist Mark Fiore, and kept customers waiting an astonishing 20 days for the popular Opera web browser to be allowed on to the device.
(Fiore’s work was eventually approved after much public outcry, while Opera rocketed to the top of the iPhone app chart with more than one million downloads in 48 hours.)
The latest, and most enticing alternative to the iPhone comes in the form of the Desire by Taiwanese mobile phone specialist HTC.
With HTC’s announcement on Friday that its next handset, the Incredible, will not be launched in the UK — and presumably not on the Continent either — it is likely that the Desire will remain as the iPhone’s main European rival for some considerable time.
Hyped as the world’s first superphone, the Desire is fast, beautiful, and its touchscreen is every bit as tactile and responsive as that on Apple’s handset.
At the heart of the Desire is Google’s Android operating system so it is near-infinitely customisable.
It is also out-of-stock across much of the UK after delivery flights were grounded by the volcanic ash cloud.
On paper, the Desire is the first serious challenger to the iPhone’s reign as king of phones. But how does it compare in use?
Red faces
The failings of the Desire hit you within minutes of first using it.
Its screen is bright and colourful indoors, but almost unusable in sunlight. This severely hampers all aspects of the phone, from sending texts to web browsing, to taking photos.
The touchscreen intermittently remains active during phone calls and it’s too easy to press the on-screen buttons with your ear. I’ve accidentally hung up on people dozens of times.
Sound quality during calls is noticeably worse than the iPhone. Both the earpiece and the speaker produce a feeble, tinny sound with a background hiss.
Used indoors, the Desire’s vivid screen is great for most apps, but when viewing photos or web sites you realise that the screen is severely over-saturated. People’s faces become beetroot red.
Open Android
Web browsing is a joy. Pages render quickly and accurately.
When you zoom in on a web page using the familiar un-pinch gesture, the Desire neatly re-formats text to your screen width for easy reading.
Built-in Google chat is a surprise boon, offering a free and instantaneous alternative to text messaging between friends.
The phone is advertised as a hub-in-your-pocket for social networking, yet support for Facebook and Twitter is incomplete and unreliable, at times missing entire blocks of messages.
Thanks to the open nature of the Android operating system, there is a myriad of alternative apps to replace the standard ones.
Antiquated list-style text messaging is easily upgraded to a free iPhone-style app with familiar speech bubble conversations.
There are superb free apps for Twitter, note taking, reading news feeds, and almost anything else you may want to do with a phone. Facebook apps are thin on the ground and quite poor, although a full-featured official Facebook client is persistently rumoured to
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
I use a Google Nexus, almost equivalent to the Desire, and I can recognize the battery drain. However, after a few weeks, the phone easily holds a day - probably because "moderate; use" is really "let's see what this device can do; use".
Also, some apps are written badly and consume a lot of power when in the background. If you are experimenting a lot with your phone, chances are big that you have installed one of these. There are two solutions:
1) Uninstall the bad apps.
2) Use a tool, like task killer, which can kill the bad apps when the screen turns off.
Additionally, if you are always online, and have enabled wifi, it will consume power. Quick solution: put a wifi on/off widget on your front screen, and keep wifi off under normal use.
Battery life is appalling. With moderate use I have to charge the Desire twice each day.
That's about what I get with my iphone using bluetooth and frequent mp3 playback. Annoying, I'd agree. But I think it'd be far less so in a device where I can just swap the battery out.
Everything will be taken away from you.
I mean, I know I'm not supposed to, but come on...
/. you're not even trying anymore.
oh my god... it's full of stars!
The problem is, no one's actually demonstrated why the iPhone is better either.
Does it have better screen resolution? no. Does it have a better camera? no. Does it have better processor/ram/storagE? no. Is it more open so that you can do more with it? no. Is it smaller, lighter, sturdier? no. Does it have better battery life? no. Is it more practical in allowing you to carry multiple batteries? no.
But of course, you look at the other things- does it look nicer physically, does the software feel nicer, and some people will say yes, others will say no.
So here's the fundamental problem in this discussion- the only areas where the iPhone can be said to be better than most other high end handsets that compete with it are entirely subjective. That doesn't mean you're wrong, but it doesn't mean the GP is wrong either- both of you like the other phone, you don't have to justify it and neither does he. It's simple fact that the iPhone doesn't win on things like those points listed above, and how exactly can he justify the other things? if Android works better for him, then it just does- just as most iPhone fans will tell you that the iPhone just works for them, but that doesn't mean it works for everyone. I for example can't stand any of these new touch screen phones for texting on any platform, be it an Android handset without physical keypad, or the iPhone, when the majority of use I get out of my phone is texting, they're both a massive step backwards. In fact, even full keyboards on phones are a hindrance to me because they're too small to type properly- I can text far faster with Nokia's predictive text on a standard numeric pad than any other phone, because that's just what I've been used to for over a decade.
We all use our phones in different ways, and we all get a different experience as a result. Some of us think differently, not everyone appreciates the UI features that others love. When the iPhone can only stand up to the other handsets based on subjective things there's really little that can be said in terms of proving your point, because you really can't prove something that's so subjective. The GP merely seemed to be making a counter point to this effect in response to the initial post because after all, just because one person says the iPhone is better, it doesn't mean it is for everyone.
Well hello there, welcome to Slashdot: The home of the small group that is the technical elite.
It's true - my sticking to Android is more out of principle than because the actual experience is better...
In my experience (limited to the Milestone...), Android is:
-Less stable
-Glitchier
-Slower
-UI lags
These things don't really bother me, and not having to own anything made by Apple (as well as having a resolution far higher than the iPhone's measly 480x320) is a pretty good reason to stick to Android... however, I can definitely see why prettty much everyone else prefers the iPhone.
Well, *someone* (read: many people) buys the Android over the iPhone, and as it was said, it's not because of "total experience".
Maybe it's because of Latitude, or Voice or any other of the apps the Apple denied? Being against Apple's control is not a philosophical position, it's has real consequences for its users.
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Smartphones are still too thick and heavy. The next generation of phones should be thinner than 1cm and lighter than 100 grams.
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Simple, for power users at least these that travel abroad (and most do at least for a couple of weeks per year), the first thing is how easy it's to change SIMs.
In most (at least European) countries you can get something at least vaguely acceptable (especially for data access) as a prepaid SIM. Data roaming on the other hand is practically never acceptable for usage on smartphone.
For this let's compare the iPhone with the HTC Dream/T-Mobile G1.
First difference, the T-Mobile G1 is available as HTC Dream without lock. OTOH, most people in both cases will probably have gotten the simlocked version.
1.) unlocking experience on the iPhone: 2 days wasted trying to get a jail break going. 3rd day included a visit to a seedy 3rd party phone shop that advertised jailbreaking iPhones. Always in danger of undoing it all via iTunes that persistently tries to offer an upgrade for the phone.
2.) checked that the G1 is really simlocked, bought a 20 unlock code online, used it with my SIM of choice the same afternoon in the office.
Actually, both events happened some months ago, but I cannot remember the details of item 2 (as if the G1 was really locked), while item 1 makes me shudder. (Actually it's as bad that the iPhone got a non-smartphone assigned to cover wheneever the iPhone decides to go dead). OTOH, the G1 unlock did happen when the phone was very recent on the market, while the iPhone 3G jailbreak happened when the 3GS has been longer on the market than the G1 mentioned. And I'm still unclear how jailbreakable the 3GS are.
Next important item on a frequent travelers (that's what I admit is not exactly critical to the majority, but it's an important item about who controls the device that I own) is sharing Internet access. Obviously, a smartphone cannot manage to fill completely an UMTS uplink, so there is no drawback in sharing it's connectivity.
1.) the iPhone started to work as a tether after some months, basically after a couple of upgrades and the jailbreak. It offers USB Windows-only (perhaps Mac too?) tethering and standard PAN Bluetooth networking.
2.) the G1 offers TCP forwarding tethering via USB and after rooting, it offers a standard NAT-ing Linux kernel based router via Bluetooth or WLAN. The USB based tethering I was capable to use easily enough on day 1 to establish a full VPN (albeit TCP based) connection from my laptop. In practice the standard PAN Bluetooth networking is nicest for me personally, but everyone has probably his own favorite.
So I do not think that the iPhone rules the "total experience dept", as it's a total fail on two important items (one of general interest, even if they do not know, but they will when they go on their next holiday), so it's not even in the running for a phone here. (Ah, I learned yesterday why my wife got the iPhone 3G last year, "it was the cheapest colorful toy for our daughter that we could get back then easily and quickly", and "yeah that Motorola Droid looks cool")
Got an e-mail from my host (Pair) saying that my blog had been disabled due to a script problem. But it's just a Wordpress blog. I've re-enabled it and hopefully it'll stay up now. Sorry for those getting 403 earlier, or database failure now :-(
I switched last week. Had pretty much all types of smartphones over the years, and have been running an iPhone 3G for past 18 months. I switched partially because I was getting uneasy about Apple's lock down, partially as my 3G was glacially slow, and partially because I was bored.
What swung it was Engadget riffing about integration with external services like Twitter/Facebook/etc - goes completely against Apple's principles, whereas Android actively works to do this. In the future, I want more of this, not less, and I don't think I'm going to get it from Apple.
Prior to this I'd change my phone every 6 months, so Apple has done well.
I'm not going back. I may be envious when the new iPhone comes out, but the Desire is great. I couldn't go back to a lower screen resolution, I love the OLED display and it's *fast*. You can customise everything, and the phone just keeps on giving with features - case in point: last night I wanted to copy the new Iron Man 2 soundtrack over to listen to in the car. Didn't have my sync cable to hand, so I when to the Android Market, installed ES File Explorer (took about 10 seconds to search and install - it's crazy fast) and used it to browse to the share on my LAN that had the MP3s on. Copied them to the handset - again, crazy fast - and job done.
Downsides? No dock connector. Handset doesn't have that "hewn from a block of glass" feel to it. Android Market smaller. iPhone more intuitive (although you could also say "more Fisher-Price"!) although Android more powerful. No Apple lockdown means differing app GUI styles sometimes. Headphone volume was low until I replaced the T-Mobile ROM with the vanilla HTC one (thanks XDA-Developers!)
Overall, it's a *great* handset. Very pleased.
So comments like yours and from the article are really only from YOUR opinions. Now brace yourself for another shock, people have different opinions!
Here's another opinion. As someone who _had_ an iPhone and went back to a $50 Nokia I'll tell you the iPhone is junk. It's shiny, polished junk.
* The battery life was woeful when you're actually using it as intended. I was lucky to get a day out of the thing and I used it as an ereader for about an hour during my daily commute and a phone casually.
* It's not compatible (enough) with earlier iPod connectors/interfaces so my iPod capable car stereo won't work with it. A lot of other iPod capable stuff either failed or whinged at me. The phone quite often whinged too. Here's news Apple - if you use a "standard" connector on the thing then support it; don't change the damn internals and then tell the phone to whinge the thing on the other end is too old.
* It's locked down - you can only buy applications that Apple approve. If you jail break it you lose warranty, and on 3GS models the ability to reboot the fucking thing.
* There is no pr0n (well there is, but Jobs is in denial that Safari can be used to access pr0n).
* It crashed and froze up more often than not.
* I couldn't save anything in it that Apple doesn't want me to. That includes the videos/photos of my son that came attached to a series of MMS. They were forever trapped in the phone and I had to ask the sender to email me instead.
* I can't send files via email/MMS that Apple doesn't want me to. I can't send that hillarious video that I just received to anyone else because it _might_ fuck over some record company somewhere.
* I was stuck using iTunes to sync the address book and calendar. What kind of shit is that? Some people actually don't want to use iTunes. Apple won't expose those things in a standard way so I can't just use SyncML or something similar.
* The app store is full up with absolute garbage, low quality apps. There's an app for everything where "app" is defined as half-arsed P.O.S and "everything" is defined as {lim x->0 (1/x)}. Finding good quality software was difficult. A lot of the apps blatantly lie about their capability and you don't find out until you've paid for them.
* Apple is reportedly known to stiff app developers.
* Glass screen is uber-fragile; I know of several people who have managed to break them even when being mostly careful. It's such a common occurrence that a lot of insurance policies won't cover it anymore.
* Bluetooth is a joke. Can't even transfer files with it. Apple's answer... use email or MMS. What if I'm sitting right next to the person and want to save some data charges? Nope. Use email or MMS.
* Apple seem to pander to the big telcos about ripping out features. For example it wouldn't let me download large (>5M) files over my data plan, even though I paid for a certain amount of data and wanted to use it as _I_ saw fit, not Apple. What if I need a 15M file right now this very instant and I'm nowhere near a WiFi connection? Nope, I'm S.O.L just because Apple says so.
* No VoIP... what's with that? It's my phone, and if I want to use VoIP over my carrier's IP network then so be it. Don't tell me I can't. To top it all off, my carrier was a Skype partner and I could use Skype quite happily on their network (they encouraged it). Nope. Can't do that on an iPhone because Apple said so, even though my particular carrier is ok with it.
* Did I mention the battery life sucks?
* Apple doesn't seem interested in fixing any of the shortcomings that practically no other phone has, because they are all shortcomings that force you to reach out into data and call charges land even when you really don't need to.
The three things I don't like about my $50 Nokia are the lack of a QWERTY keyboard (a standard addition to many smart phones now), small screen size (again, fixed on modern more expensive phones) and the fact it's slow and limited in memory (also fixed by every other smart phone). Other than that, one of the cheapest non-smart models of phone kicks the shit out of an iPhone any day as far as I'm concerned.
I drink to make other people interesting!
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I am finding that the biggest issue with the N900 is that it is being bought by people who think they are technically knowledgeable and are then finding that, basically, anything non-Windows is difficult. I went for it because it can ssl into my servers, and because the multitasking lets me run certain background applications that would never be accepted by Apple (they are our remote management tools.) So for me, as a developer, the N900 is a tool for which the iPhone could never be a substitute.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
To be honest, as a Desire user, I think this review is overly harsh.
While I do agree with the screen complaints (the OLED screen is all but unviewable in direct sunlight) and the battery life isn't great (although I find it'll last the day with moderately heavy use (and thats before dicking around with sync settings and other various battery-improving tweaks)), the other complaints I diagree with - for example I much prefer the chat system on the Desire to the bubble-style conversations of the iPhone although obviously other people will prefer things the other way (and they can install Handcent or one of the myriad other progams that will bring that functionality.
He complains that on the iPhone there is a button to bring up the menu for any given app - this is true, but there is no guarentee it is in the same place or clearely labelled on each program - with the Desire you always go to the same place allowing for a more consistent experience. Personally I find that the phone has just the right number of buttons, even if it is a few more than the holy iPhone (home, menu, back, search and then power and volume keys
The standard keyboard is a bit tricky to use in portrait mode due to key size (especially for me - I'm 6'5 and fairly stocky) however what it does offer is *choice* - quite apart from the landscape mode keyboard (which I believe iPhone now allows globally?) there are two other portrait keyboards you can use instead - compact QWERTY (each key has two letters as with some blackberries) and then a Phone keypad. One feature that impressed me is that if you have accidentally added misspellings to the dictionary (which I have done more than once) you can delete words individually rather than just resetting the user dictionary (which is certainly what you used to have to do with the iPhone, but I must admit my info could be out of date here.
I do not see any of the complaintes about the sound quality of the phone - the earpiece is typical smartphone (which is to say good enough but easily beaten by the old dedicated phone handsets) and the speaker is pretty loud. Of course you'd never want to listen to music with it, but its good enough for spoken word stuff (audiobooks and stand-up comedy in my case).
I don't agree with his complaints about the trackpad either, although to be fair I've not tried to use it with wet fingers so I can't comment on that, however I have seen no unusual behaviour with it either (and to be honest I don't use the track pad much anyway, It's served more use as a camera shutter button than it as as a navigation device - while its nice to have the choice I find the touchscreen is just much easier.
To be fair there are some things that do annoy me with the phone, but its all minor things - for example in the media player I would like that in the media player it was possible to navigate back up the tree, but thats not always an option (for example if you pick a track from 'first principles' (ie fire up app, select artist then album then track) you can do it, but if you just tap on the media player widget it takes you to the currently selected track but if you want to change you have to navigate from those first principles again (with the exception of pickig a different track from the same album.) but its a pretty minor complaint, and the other things that annoy me are all little things as well.
One thing that is an issue currently is that a lot of pay-for apps are as yet unupdated for Android 2.1 and are just not there in the app store, which is really irritating to be in a position to download say a 'free' (whether ad-supported or somehow limited) version, want to buy the complete version and its just not there. Lack of Google Earth is particularly annoying.
That's a rather subjective observation. My Android phone broke the other day, leaving me with my work phone (iPhone) as only phone for a week.
I wouldn't swap my Android for an iPhone if you paid me big bucks to do it.
Luckily for me, I don't have to pay you the big bucks. All I have to do is break your Android.
His point was this is a technical site.
He only paraphrased parent on the "elite" part.
Regardless of how it's worded, we on /., cares about wether a system is vendor locked or not.
Most of the regulars anyway.
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
You claim that the iPhone (in your opinion) is worse than Android, and yet give no reasons why you feel that way.
Off the top of my head (I have both):
You may not care, but many people do. And these aren't just obscure geek-issues.
As a Desire owner who's also played with the iPhone a fair bit, I think I'm pretty well-placed to judge this. It's fairly simple: the Desire is the better phone in almost every respect.
Additionally, I think the author of the article may have a faulty handset. Many of the problems he mentions having with the Desire are not an issue at all on my device. The supposedly oversaturated screen looks beautiful (put it side-by-side with an iPhone and see the difference), I've never had the touch screen remain active during a call, and the "tinny speaker" sounds great to me, giving far greater call quality than I've experienced on a iPhone. He's right that the screen can be difficult to see in bright sunlight, but I solved this problem by living the U.K.
iPhone pros
50/50
Desire pros
Some of the above will be added in the new iPhone OS, indeed I'm sure the hardware will catch up with (possibly overtake) most of the above too. So if you're a real Apple junkie it might be worth your while waiting for the summer. But if you're after the best smartphone available right now, I don't think there's really any competition.
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This link is still working.
http://www.meejahor.com/2010/04/23/review-of-htc-desire-as-alternative-to-apple-iphone/
So do "normal" people! Cases in point I've been asked about THIS WEEK:
"Huh? My PC died. Why can't I copy the music off it to another?"
"Huh? Why doesn't it work with my new car's head unit? I got the top of the line VW one with phone integration?" - no decent bluetooth control, and no remote SIM support, and no chance of a fix
Yeah! The networks are quite right: their inability to provide the services customers pay them for is the fault of the customers, for actually using said services instead of just paying for them.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
(Wow, the Apple fanboy and marketing moderation squad is out in full force again. Therefore, I'm just going to repost this. The parent asked what problems some people see with the iPhone and I answered what problems I see. I'm sorry if that causes you discomfort.)
You claim that the iPhone (in your opinion) is worse than Android, and yet give no reasons why you feel that way.
Off the top of my head (I have both):
You may not care, but many people do. And these aren't just obscure geek-issues.
Are you really putting forward the argument that everyone wants an iphone, but not everyone can get one, so enter android? Seriously? I've watched this iphone saga play out on /. and it's been agonizing. A group of otherwise intelligent and discerning users tossed all decorum out the window and salivated at the iphone. Frankly, I don't get it. I've had a smart phone since before anyone called them that. My old ass busted Treo 650 does everything modern "smart phones" do, and it did it 5+ years ago. Granted, you had to be pretty good at hacking up the phone to make it do half of it, and the other half only worked as a technology demo, rather than a productive tool. However, I'm not sure when, but somewhere along the line, it went from being a really productive tool, to a flashy bauble.
At some point, we as consumers need to step back from the glossy black surfaces, and sleek lines, and realize that the tools we buy should be stylish, but they should be functional first. I won't be using an iphone, ever. Because I ONLY use platforms that are extensible by the user. Because I want function. What is it you are shopping for?
Exactly why I'm running a cheap touchscreen Nokia powered by Symbian. It is a great communications tool and personal organizer, and the plan it runs on is inexpensive. It won't win any beauty contests nor will this particular phone offer stellar performance as a portable entertainment device.
Differing needs fuel demand for different devices. Its why Blackberry will be around for the foreseeable future, why KIN will probably take a lot of the market feature phones held, and that simple candybar and flip phones still exist.
http://www.aaronrogier.net
I don't know why this has been modded troll because it's a valid point.
The reason why I wrote the review in the way that I did is because I've been using an iPhone for around 18 months and for the last year I've been looking for an alternative. So I wanted to write a review for people in the same situation -- people who are happy with the iPhone but not happy with Apple, so looking for an alternative phone.
This wasn't a review of the Desire. It was specifically a review of the Desire as an alternative to the iPhone.
Precisely.
The difference is that geeks care about such things in advance because they can imagine where all of that leads, while normal people concentrate much more on what it does right this minute. But that doesn't mean they don't end up running into trouble later.
Then it seems that the real source of those issues isn't the one that gets the blame. Instead the blame goes on computers or tech in general, and some friendly geek/tech support is asked to deal with it.
I think the big issue is the whole 'functionality before hype' argument. Electronic toys are all fine and dandy, but so much about the iPhone is based on hype, rather than on how good it is. This is why they can't give the iPhone away in Japan, because without the hype, the iPhone isn't really all that great compared to the competition.
Principle.
As a long-ago Apple fan, let me give you this bad analogy:
Let's say you're in love with this beautiful, intelligent, creative woman (slashdotters, use your imagination). She's just want you need, what you want and you adore her. No other woman is nearly as perfect.
Now let's say one day she says to you, "From now on, I'm going to charge you for sex. When you want to hold my hand, you've got to pay. When you want to talk to me, you've got to pay."
Now for a while, you might go along because you love her so much, but as some point, you're going to start feeling like a trick. You may finally decide that some woman who's not quite as perfect is a better match for you, because she doesn't make you feel like a trick.
Apple makes me feel like a trick. To be locked-in to AT&T makes me feel like a trick. To be locked in to the app-store makes me feel like a trick. To be told by Apple that certain apps are "off-limits" makes me feel like a trick.
iPhone/iPad users are still paying. That's their choice and I can understand it. I'm happy with the woman who might not be perfection itself but with whom I feel like a boyfriend, not a trick. Plus, she's up for an occasional dirty sanchez. That's my Android.
I hope this clarifies things.
You are welcome on my lawn.
> People accept that, so why is a phone any different?
Music, Movies and Books have never been a "proprietary console" experience.
Consoles have always been proprietary because CODE tends to require higher compatability barriers than DATA.
Of course Apple is happily encouraging the confusion that Microsoft helped to start.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
> Yeah, funny that. Not everyone requires their phone to be extensible in order to be "functional".
No. Apple users are just used to "doing without" and then making excuses for themselves.
It applies equally well to proper Macs. It's just a lot easer for a "geek" to modify a Mac so it's more flexible.
The problem with the Apple fanboy idea of "usability" is that you also have to cripple the device in the process.
You need to hide all of the scary details (even the filesystem) lest the frighten the end users you want to keep
ignorant and dependent.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Google Voice was denied by Apple, from what I remember. However, I don't recall the reason–don't know if a reason was ever given. That is Apple's fault.
Google Maps with Navigation, that is Google's fault. They are the ones that have denied iPhone users that opportunity.
On a slightly different, but very related issue, it is funny how the people here often rail against Apple's managed platform, but not against Google's very aggressive collection of user data, for their own uses with Android. Very interesting and very funny to me.
What are you smoking? Judging by the mod of 4 and 'insightful', it must be a group water pipe, filled with some really good shit.
http://erictric.com/2010/04/23/iphone-market-share-in-japan-surpasses-72/
The iPhone has 72% of the smart phone market share in Japan. However, even I take that with a grain of salt, because the definition of a 'smart phone' is even more confused than it is here. However, the iPhone has 4.9% of the total market, and growing.
However you cut it, seems to me that they are doing quite well in what may be the toughest mobile market in the world. A place that has destroyed attempts by others do the same thing.
People accept that, so why is a phone any different?
Phones are semi-critical part of peoples everyday lives. I'll agree that nobody would die without a cell phone, but voice and data communications have become almost necessary for many people to communicate with friends, family, and coworkers. I think people are more willing to accept restrictions on purely entertainment devices (especially since the usefulness of the device is contingent on its ability run new software in the future). We don't accept that on phones because we feel that we need to control how we use them and what we can use them for.
Plus, the American public has had a long history with monopolistic telecommunications companies telling consumers what services they need. Remember, ma bell used to own the entire infrastructure; you leased a telephone that they serviced inside your home. Granted, Apple doesn't own the pipes. But I think I can understand why I wouldn't want the phone manufacturer dictating what services I can use on my phone.
I hope this clarifies things.
Since all girlfriends cost you money one way or another, the question is in which case you have to feel like being tricked. ;-) Let's say there are offers for free sex that we would both gladly turn down, no matter how honest they might be.
Personally, I would feel tricked by Google into a supposedly "open" world where most code was written by other people than those charging me for the phone and where the currency I actually pay in is worth more to me than money: it's my personal data. If Android phones contained no proprietary code and I could download/modify anything and put it on my phone without sending any data to Google, then it'd be truly open.
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
is smoking crack. I am a multi-published developer and tech guy who's been in the industry since the days he was using a Sun 3/50 all-in-one 68k machine with SunOS loaded from DC600 tapes. I'm not tech-incompatible.
I spent days and hours frothing at the mouth because "in theory" the Palm "should" be able to do X, Y, and Z or because the Palm was "so close" do doing what I needed... and yet with all the hours and evenings spent trying to "just make it do this one little thing" that would make my life easier, the Palms always fell short. I always fell back into "well, what are you going to do, those are the trade-offs of mobile devices" thinking.
That has never happened to me with iPhone. I have spent damned near zero time configuring, syncing, hacking, installing, manipulating, and maintaining. It has just worked from day one and I have never found anything that I wanted it to do that it didn't do with a minimum of fuss and an almost stunning lack of impediment.
And anyone who says that Palm or Windows Mobile is more extensible than iPhone is smoking crack. Maybe you can put a bigger MicroSD card in a Palm, but there's damn near no point in filling it up with anything but music. And beyond that, there's no real extensibility there. You have half a dozen "usable" shareware apps to choose from (most of them $50-150 to register) and a whole world of utter, utter app crap in the Palm and Windows Mobile spaces.
iPhone on the other hand has excellent apps that universally cost less than $10, most less than $4, and that don't require registration, configuration, or tethered installation... not to mention that not one of them has yet caused me to go into spontaneous reboots, data loss, and other things requiring a factory reset and restore from backup, a regular occurrence with Palm that was a strong disincentive to actually install apps and try to make use of that "extensibility."
Basically anyone still arguing that there is nothing new with supersmartphones like iPhone or Android and that all of this could have been done before, and that people are just responding to "hype" or "shine" or whatever... Well, such people have far too much time on their hands to dick around with gadgets, and far too few real needs for those gadgets to actually work, or they'd know that previous gadgets in fact didn't, by and large.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
His argument was crap. His argument didn't prove or demonstrate anything except for the idea that he's bought into mindless hype and the crowd mindset.
This is in stark contrast to something like "safari can't handle a simple page with 3 frames" properly.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I just recently got a Nexus One at about the same time my girlfriend got an iPhone. I don't know about the Desire, but I know that Google got fed up with other companies not implementing Android well, so they made their own phone as they envisioned it, and that's the Nexus One (it's the only phone they make, www.google.com/phone). It's very similar in design to the iPhone, but has a ton of stuff that I would prefer any day over the iPhone. Intimate integration with all google services, voice recognition, and an open app market make it much better in my opinion. Most other interactions are very similar to the iPhone, but to me it seems more polished.
If you want to see true Android, get a Nexus One. At least most people on Slashdot will find the feature set much more desirable than the iPhone, and it's overall price is actually slightly cheaper than the iPhone.
What swung it was Engadget riffing about integration with external services like Twitter/Facebook/etc - goes completely against Apple's principles, whereas Android actively works to do this.
I've been reading up on the Desire for the past couple of days, and funnily enough this is what really swung me against the phone. I don't want lots of social network integration. I don't want lots of integration with Google's cloud services. I deliberately avoid putting lots of data in the cloud and relying on third party services normally, so why would I want my phone to do this?
I want a phone that, first and foremost, makes calls well (good quality mic/speakers, simple controls for things like muting and conferencing people in). It also needs to handle messages well (good keyboard, good management of past messages, easy and ad-free integration with my e-mail systems) and manage contacts well (good address book, speed dialling).
There are plenty of other PDA features I wound find useful on a mobile device, but I want them to be generic and open. I'd like a calendar/alarms, but it's not worth much if it only syncs with MS formats and Google Calendar. Apps to do things like time zone conversion would be useful in my case, and a web browser is a useful addition and completely generic, but I don't need the bloat of lots of preconfigured apps on day one that tie in with specific services I will never use. (I appreciate that others would find this useful, and the right phones for me and for them will be different.)
Unfortunately, almost anything running Android seems (unsurprisingly, given Google's involvement) to be heavily biased towards lots of on-line working that I don't want. The iPhone is a non-starter because of Apple's closed system and their apparent willingness to append their own marketing to messages (hardly a professional image for a work phone!). So I'm back to looking at the established PDA brands again.
That's too bad, because the screen on the Desire looks really impressive, at least for those who don't want to use it in bright sunlight. It seems like small format mobile devices are finally pushing the envelope for high resolution full colour display technology in a way that only things like high-end medical imaging have done in the past. When they make a 24" widescreen version of that AMOLED screen, sign me up. :-)
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
The difference is that geeks care about such things in advance because they can imagine where all of that leads, while normal people concentrate much more on what it does right this minute. But that doesn't mean they don't end up running into trouble later.
For my two cents i can never understand why normal people do not want to be able to carry a spare battery. This will always be the deal braker for me with an iPhone. Why do I have to send the whole unit back to apple for this? My Sony Walkman I had in the 1980's let me change the batteries when the old ones ran out, why can Apple not master it now?
I have no objection to it being a proprietary battery that costs a fortune either. They can even sell me an additional charger that allows me to plug and charge batteries directly without the phone. I will probably even then leave my spare battery on the charger for weeks until I know I am going to need it, thereby giving a lifetime of a few months before memory effect kicks in and I have to buy a new spare battery. I swear they will get a small fortune out of me.
Just please, please let me have the option so I can go away for a few days and not give a crap about there being a plug socket of the correct format for a hundred miles. I also like travelling light so am not keen on always carrying a charger and universal plug socket adapter.
Especially when even with these things I have to leave my phone stationary and plugged in while it charges. If I am out and about I am terrible for forgetting to do this before I crash out, especially if alcohol is involved (or a women, but that hardly ever happens).
I dont read
The interface on the Android is VERY similar to the iPhone. The only thing the Android base experience is missing is a bit of polish on the interface widgets, and if you get an HTC phone they've replaced those as well. There's certainly no difference in the way they "hide" the filesystem, or any other major paradigm differences from the iPhone. The difference is, if you're a geek and WANT to mess with those, you're able to.
There are also several 3rd party launcher replacements available on the app store that let you swap out the home screen if you want a different experience. Try doing THAT on an iPhone. Or replacing the dialer, or the photo picker. Apple is fine if you want to do things exactly the way they've accounted for. Thing is, that's not necessary to get a consistent out-of-the-box experience. The same is true of any Android phone right when you open it, but there you aren't prevented from replacing things if you want to.
Finally, you said the Android has a slow time getting traction. Everything I've seen indicates that they're picking up market share (and developer activity in their app space) faster than the iPhone. Yeah, they're a bit new to the party, and the first couple versions of the OS were more like a beta than a full release. The recent pace and quality is starting to pay off, though.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
I researched long and hard before I bought my iPhone a couple months ago. I had been using some form of Palm device for about 15 years; the last two of which were a model of Treo. The bottom line is that I needed NON-EXCHANGE-TYPE access to calendars on mail servers. Specifically, I have a Zimbra FOSS mail server for my family, and a Zimbra NE server at work (which handles 2 companies). I didn't want either server to be "canonical," so I refuse to use ActiveSync and let it "take over" all of the PIM functions of the phone. For calendars, I use CalDAV, and the iPhone has KILLER CalDAV support. (I use a Funambol server at home to sync contacts, and the Zindus plugin to make them work with Thunderbird, though SyncEvolution works almost as well with Evoltion.)
Neither the new WebOS-based Palm phones, nor any of the Android phones I can find, have any support for CalDAV. At all. How this situation exists, I have no idea, but I don't care. The iPhone has been great. However, I am one of those people who has used Linux on the desktop for about 11 years now, and I'm watching and waiting for an Android phone that will integrate with my collaboration servers as well as an iPhone. When this happens, I'll give the iPhone to my wife. Heck, I'd pay an early-termination fee to switch providers if the Sprint Evo could do it!
Acts 17:28, "For in Him we live, and move, and have our being."
With Google you find out after the fact that she was filming your sexual activities and selling them on the web as porn. And she didn't pay you or offer you a cut of the proceeds.
Very often, people confuse simple with simplistic. The nuance is lost on most. - Clement Mok
I'm not sure why people say this.
I recently purchased my first android phone. People say that it is 'open'. But, people say a lot of things.
My phone isn't open. It's very much locked down. If I want to delete an application like 'Sprint Nascar Cup' - I can't. It won't let me.
If I call up Sprint customer support and ask them how to delete it, they tell me it's impossible. I know, because I asked. It can't be done.
'Rooting' the phone is possible; but it violates your warranty, it forfeits your right to customer service, and comes with some risk of bricking your phone. If you are willing to take that risk; how is that any different from what is available with the iPhone?