I suppose everyone (especially Anna) is keen to know what became of the post where I asked for hints, tips or suggestions regarding which cellphone to pick up, and since I’ve gotten myself one (finally!) I thought I should share it - nice as I am!
Now bow, infidels, for I’ve got the Touch! HTC Touch Dual!
This little piece of hardware wrapped around software that’s too bad ass for malware is definately a piece of funware. Yes, I’m laughing.
Initially I got the Touch, it’s little brother which didn’t have a hardware keyboard, and I found I couldn’t really cope with the lack of one. I found that physical acknowledgment that I’ve pressed a button’s surprisingly important to me, so I’m definitely going to skip the overpriced iPhone that everyone keeps nagging about like fanbois in the future too. Maybe I will, some day, enjoy a non-physical keyboard on a cell-phone, but for now I’m going to stick to what I like and feel comfortable with.
What this little baby is is a smartphone, which is loosely defined as something around “Smart phones differ from ordinary mobile phones in two fundamental ways: how they are built and what they can do” which doesn’t say a whole lot other than that it’s a special thing. What it does is offer a neat little home screen where I can access most of the stuff I need (the picture just below to the left). Otherwise I use the Touch Cube that you can see on the big picture there.
It offers an mp3-player, pocketpc functionality ( allows me to read ebooks and surf the net and so on and so on ), camera and so on and so on. I can even mess around and fiddle with stuff just like I do on my normal computer. It’s been on it’s first big trip now, and it’s passed that test with high scores, perhaps with the sole exception of the camera. It lacks a decent light/flash-thing to illuminate the object, and that seriously degrades the quality of the shots. Besides that I’m having loads of fun with it, and it’s incredibly useful.
Synchronizing stuff with my computer is definitely a good thing, and I’m totally in love being able to edit stuff on my computer instead of on the actual phone through MyMobiler. Being able to synchronize my music through WinAmp’s totally awesome, since the WMP solution’s so crappy I’d be bald within a month of use. I doubt it’s as hawt and great as the iTunes solution with simple playlists, but it works for now.
I bought a 2Gb memory card for it as well the other day because the on board space was just far too little, even for my (by then) moderate use. Suddenly I could add music at a rapid pace, and I’m still not even close. Basically I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t need any more music on it since I can just replace it instead of adding.
The integrated mp3-player’s great. The playlists are a bit daft due to them always being organized alphabetically, but since I generally just shuffle everything in the playlists it’s of minor concern. It looks sleek and it’s incredibly nice to use. The equalizer, bass boost and so on is easy to use, and they actually work.
The Photo Album function on the Dual’s sexy as well - giving you tons of neat browsing functions by using your fingers.
The Touch is awesome to hold and even after extensive use by reading and listening to music at the same time there’s no discomfort from i.e. sweat like some plastic would be after holding it for a long time. It’s light and just wide enough for my hands to hold. It could be a bit big for the smaller hands, I wouldn’t know since it’s far too long since I had small hands for me to remember how it was, but I somehow doubt it since none of the others that’s played with it have complained at all. The keyboard is amazing to use, and the stylus is ok enough for the smaller things that you can’t access with your fingers.
One major downside is that with Opera Mini 4 being amazing to use in conjunction with a touch-screen, and the relative ease of browsing the web with it, I think my bill’s gonna be pretty hefty.
Windows Mobile
If there’s one thing I can say for certain it’s that the Windows Mobile UI is disastrous. If you look at the huge success that the iPhone’s had, partly due to it’s streamlined interface and ease of use, you’d think that such an interface would be the most obvious thing in the world. It’s not. Windows Mobile’s been in use for god knows how long, and it’s still a horrible, horrible experience to use, even after having messed around for weeks to learn it’s quirks.
HTC has added some neat functions in the form of TouchFLO, a UI they’ve added on top of the WM UI to make the user experience alot nicer. It’s worked so far, and if HTC continues their amazing work to flesh it out to cover as much as possible we’ll probably be able to see a heavy competitor to the iPhone in terms of UI - although from what I can see there’s alot of other companies out there that’re keen to jump on the UI bandwagon as soon as possible as well.
Perhaps Windows Mobile’s greatest asset is that you can change pretty much everything in the interface. There’re thousands of UI’s out there to edit the functions you use the most, the problem still remains a problem though - once you get behind the nice and easy to use interface (others have made) you’re met with the stark reality of the unimaginative programmers over at Microsoft.
If Microsoft wants to actually make money in the mobile market they need to do what they did back in Win 3.1; bring something awesome to the table that people want because it’s simply awesome, instead of the old and washed out recycling of others ideas (granted that 3.1 was a recycling of Steve Jobs’ ideas) over and over again. (Latest news is that WM 6.1 will bring out some “revamped” (read: copied from theme-writers) looks and functionality).
Did I mention I’m having fun with it? So’s my brother, when he manages to get his hands on it.
Now I’m back from a christmas table (Julebord), and I’ll see if I can dig up some pictures from it.
Anyways, I’ve got a book to read and a trilogy to finish - on my Dual.
And Kinx, thanks alot.
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