SNIP Blog

I’ve had an iPhone for over a year and have to say have had a love hate relationship with it. It’s been like that super hot girl you date who has an annoying personality – you want her you really do, but at the same time something bugs you about her.

If you are reading this and thinking “OMG what a douche how could he do that!” and you are an iPhone user, then you are mostly likely a fan boy who can’t see passed his/her nose tip and this post is probably not for you. So move alone now – nothing to see.

OK as I said, I’ve had an iPhone 3G for over a year, on contract from O2. The deal was t he pretty standard deal spread over two years. I electively decided to trade in and “buy out” of my contract earlier. In one quick pass and a trip into town my iPhone was gone. It did feel like losing a limb but then I knew I would feel like that when I decided to make the move away from the iPhone.

I guess I should explain why I decided to trade out of the Apple universe and swap to a competing handset. Well let me say, I do own a Mac at home. I’m typing this on a Mac right now so I am not a PC fanboy. I found the iPhone to be an amazing well executed perfect pocket computer, but just a lousy phone. I seemed to be plagued with frozen menus, calls that I could not terminate, waiting and waiting before I could reply to some TXT messages, and just when I really needed it to be a phone – it always seemed to let me down.

I did venture into my local Apple store and explain this, thinking a 3Gs may solve my troubles but the Apple assistant stood there and strangely told me “Err … well not really, mine does that .. a bit. Have you tried resetting it when it starts to do it?”

Well at least he was being honest.

The other important thing to state is that I am very fickle when it comes to the world of tech and gadgets, and I should point out that probably after a years time I will be looking at trading in again to a different handset – that’s just me.

So let’s just talk about comparing the experience between the beloved iPhone and the cult like Android HTC Desire.

I will be honest (as I said) there are things about the Desire that I think are WHOA!! Look what I’ve been missing. Just as there are features that are making me look up iPod Touch prices to fill the gap. The two main points so far that leap out at me are:

• Battery life seems awful on the Desire although remember it does auto-task which current gens of iPhone don’t
• Sound quality from the built in speaker are dreadful – infact I may even go back to the shop to check it’s not a fault
• Although the screen is gorgeous, better than the iPhone, it pretty rubbish if not unusable when outside in sunlight

Are these major flaws? Well I guess that they are, at least for my usage.

Battery Life

The HTC Desire is a full on wired up hi-tech device that screams PLAY WITH ME – so obviously you do, and to see the battery power drop almost in realtime is kinda depressing. I used to charge my iPhone daily and that was still with power left, but the Desire seems to be running on empty near the end of the day, and that’s with out making lots of calls. I haven’t had time to research this yet, but at least you can get to the battery to change it, unlike the iPhone. I also find that the battery seems to get quite warm as it charges. My iPhone used to sleep under my pillow overnight as it charged so that I could listen to Music/Podcasts in bed – this was problem free. The HTC Desire however, once nicely insulated, get so hot you start to think – face fire?!?

Sound quality

This is really shocking I have to say. Call quality is OK but put the handset on speakerphone – you can hardly hear what the person is saying it’s so tinny and hi pitched. Music playback is not too bad just seems to lack oomph. Music/podcast playback through the headset is also a little frustrating. Using the pre-loaded music player, when you hit PLAY the first thing your ears are greeting with is an electrical POP as the audio circuit kicks in (I guess). Pnce playing it’s sounds alright, not as good as the iPhone I don’t think but I’m not an expert. The final frustrating thing about audio playback, is that even on the quietest setting, the volume is still kinda loud, I find. Too loud to drift off to sleep with, as any peak in audio volume suddenly wakes you up with a start as its …. well too loud.

Screen

The Screen is, as has been documented, very nice indeed. Sharp, colourful and vibrant. It is an OLED screen which slightly ups it over the current iPhone screen but there seems to be a price to pay for that OLED goodness – It is almost unviewable when outside in sunlight. The iPhone’s screen brightness can be jacked up making the contrast enough for outside viewing. The HTC Desire screen however seems to struggle to compete. Basic operation should be achievable once you know the layout off by heart but more dextrous things like texting and tweet etc may prove to be more challenging.

So am I beating up on the Desire? Am I bitter that I traded out of the iPhone universe, especially on the day that the iPhone 4G was announced?

I’d be lying if I wasn’t a little interested in the new iPhone 4.0. In a slightly cynical way though, apart from the screen quality and  the faster chip-set, there doesn’t seem that much more of an appeal when compared to the previous iPhones’. Sure the design if different, slimmer with a nice hardened back and front, but over I would expect the experience to be kinda similar. The video chat means nothing to me, they can keep the iAds but the multitasking does seem intriguing.

Comparing the HTC Desire to my old iPhone at this stage would seem a little unfair. After running the iPhone for over a year it had become very intuitive. Ignoring the freezes and other idiosyncrasies the iPhone experience was very smooth. Right now, using the HTC Desire feels very clunky at the moment. I feel that I am always messing with it trying to set it up, playing with the options, tweaking the settings, adjusting the levels and so on. Maybe this is because, on the Desire, you can actually do all this. The iPhone is quite locked down, unless you jailbreak it that is, so maybe I would be the same with the iPhone.

I am happy that I swapped devices, sure maybe a little regret, but I feel that in time once the Desire flow is flowing all will be good. There is a learning curve with the Desire, even since I started writing this post I have found some reasons why my battery life was so poor (seems continuous syncing is a thirsty past time), but as a gadget geek that learning curve is what appeals to me. So I guess check back in a year to see whether the Desire is still desirable.