[Tech] Out with the iPhone 3GS, In with the HTC Desire

Last week my iPhone 3GS started to play up; it would drop calls mid conversation and 50% of calls wouldn’t actually reach me, with some going straight through to voice mail. As I am working from home at the moment it’s imperative I have a fully functioning phone and can’t take the land line as my wife uses that. So, with that in mind I made my way to CEX and traded in my iPhone 3GS (I got £217 store credit) and some DVDs, and picked up a mint HTC Desire for £305. Thanks to the sale of the iPhone and DVDs I didn’t have to fork out even a penny for the HTC Desire, and even got Toy Story 3 on Blu-ray as well!

HTC Desire

Let’s start with the problem first, and here it is: It stays connected to the Wi-Fi with no problems but when I go to use the phone after it’s been ‘asleep’ it doesn’t receive any data. What I do then is switch the Wi-Fi on and off on the phone – this breaks the Wi-Fi connection and connects with a new one – then it’s fine, that is until I let the phone sleep and then when I wake it up again, same problem. My laptop and iPod Touch have no such issues and my old iPhone didn’t either.

This issue has been raised on forums and HTC themselves and I’ve tried factory restores and data clearance, but still the problem. Now this is not a huge burden as the little Wi-Fi reset only takes about 10 seconds – it’s just a little irritating. I’ve been told I could root (same as jailbreaking on an iPhone) the phone and flash a ROM, but I’m anxious of ending I with a brick if I do anything like that. So for now I’m living it with it, but only because the advantages are so good. Just what are those advantages I hear you say?

Speed of Web Surfing
When the Wi-Fi is connected ok, or when using mobile data to surf – it’s lightning quick. As much as I thought my 1st generation iPod Touch was slow compared to my iPhone 3GS, well that in turn is slow compared to my HTC Desire. It’s an absolute pleasure to surf the web and brings up rich content in a flash.

Camera
It’s so nice having a decent camera on a phone again, and with a strong flash too. I didn’t realise how much I’d missed this until I took a photo indoors in a dimly lit room at night and the result was a very good quality photo.

Music as Ringtones
It’s like going back 10 years when you first got a phone that you could use any bit of music you’d loaded on as a ringtone, and that’s something you can’t do on an iPhone – no idea why. So after loading on my music, by mere drop and drag I must add, I chose You Give Love A Bad Name by Bon Jovi.

Aesthetics and Feel
It’s a really nice looking phone with a fantastic screen (bigger than my old iPhone) in a slim and light package.

It works as a phone
That might seem like a strange statement to make but my iPhone wasn’t a great phone. Quite often people couldn’t hear me or I couldn’t hear them, no such problem with my Desire. My boss has already commented on how she can hear me properly now.

Auto-correct
The spell checker and auto-correct is light years ahead of the iPhone and doesn’t change my typos into ridiculous alternatives that I’d never use. It also offers me several suggestions to choose from, all of them sensible.

There are plenty more advantages, like not having to sign in when grabbing a free app and being able to increase storage should I want. However, the iPhone does still have the advantage in a few key areas.

Music Player
I suspect I need to download an app but out of the box the Desire doesn’t offer me a great iPod alternative. I also need to find out how it handles podcasts as that’s not obvious straight away. The speaker is also quite tinny and there is no graphic equaliser to let me increase the bass.

User Experience
The Desire is 95% there, but it’s still not quite as nice an experience as when using an iPhone. It maybe because I’m still very new to my Desire but the iPhone felt like it was made for me where as the Desire feels like something I need to learn about.

I had to get rid of my iPhone due to the missed calls, and I’ve long wanted to play with an Android phone so I’m glad I made the change. My contract is up in June of next year so I have 7 months to decide whether to stick with an Android phone, or change to an alternative like Windows 7 or back to the iPhone, in whatever form iPhone 5 appears.

As a newbie to both the Desire and Android OS – any hints or tips would be gratefully received and appreciated.

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