HTC Desire - First Impressions

When you first switch on the phone, it begins singing to you, "I'm afraid of the dark, 'specially when I'm in a park, and there's no-one else around".  Oh no, sorry, thats the HTC Des'ree.   Hee hee.

Those of you who bothered to read my blog will know the hassle I'm had to go through to get this phone.  In the end following the collective fuck-up of both Orange and DPD (which must surely stand for Don't Promise Delivery), I went into the Carphone Warehouse, spoke to a lovely lady and purchased myself a handset only HTC Desire.  Admittedly more expensive in the short term, but once my Orange contract expires and I move to a Sim only option with another provider, it'll work out cheaper in the long run that extending my contract with Orange to get this phone.  I also purchased a 16gb Micro SD Card and a protective case - I have a horrible habit of destroying or scratching touch-screens, so I thought it a wise precaution.

Initial impressions?  A small box for a mobile phone with no manual other than a quick start guide - the full manual can be found online.  A USB charger and plug - Micro B unfortunately, so I haven't got dozens of them around the house unlike Micro A.  Earpiece and built in remote control - haven't tried this so can't vouch for the sound quality and finally the phone itself.

Sim switched from other phone, charger plug plugged into wall, USB cable into bottom of phone - Phone switched on.

It takes a fair while to start up - a good twenty seconds or so, with a very noisy introductory tune.  You calibrate the screen and gives you a quick skippable tutorial of how the onscreen keyboard works.  So far, so straightforward.  Then it lets you connect to your gmail, facebook, twitter and flickr accounts, and will happily import the contacts from each of them.  I set it to import from all so suddenly my phone book is dramatically larger - every one of my facebook friends who has their phone number on their profile suddenly has a phonebook entry with accompanying photograph.  Impressive.  Only a little bit of manual intervention was required to tidy some of the data up, but overall an incredibly easy process.

Importantly, the phone is fast.  A 1 GHz Snapdragon CPU is really put through its paces - web browsing is fast, and with the free Dolphin HD Browser available through the Android Market place, is intuitive and simple too.  Multitabbed browing on a portable device?  Brilliant.

I've only had a day to play with it so far, so I'll update this in the near future when I'm more familiar with it.  I've only really mucked away with the 'toys' in it so far (other than a serious moment when I set up an email account to connect to our works server - simplicity itself).  The toys are fun; Google Goggles lets you take a photograph of something, and it'll recognise it and give you a link.  A test in the pub gave a 100% success rate, recognising the Banks's Logo, the logo off a packet of Mayfair cigarettes and the logo on the side of a pint of London Pride.

In all honesty though, probably wise not to pay too much attention to this review.  You'll remember I initially liked my n97, and after a few months that turned out to be a dreadful phone.