kevwright's Blog

Nope, was very close to buying one, but held off, yes I know that is hard to believe but it is true :-)

Frustrating day actually, and worth telling the story, if for no other reason to remind myself how good Apple are at this sort of thing.

Now, some of this is my fault, as I failed to check the O2 and CPW websites well enough before leaving. So, went to O2 in Lowestoft, nearest town to where we are staying, had one on display, and it was working, so a good start. Only problem was, its in a hard to move security device, so it was quite hard to use, and impossible to try out portrait mode for example. Still, better than nothing, and the chap started off very well, asking me if I knew much about them, probably more than you I thought, but just said "yes, I likely want to buy one, £399 on PAYG I think", his reply was in the affirmative. So I played with it for a while, doing what I could, and knowing there is a 14 day return on all PAYG handsets from O2, after a while, I said, "OK, lets do it" He returned a few mins later, "ah, there is a problem, we only have contract handsets, PAYG will be a while"

Now, I know these folks are only interested in Contract, but really, do they think we are stupid enough to believe there is a difference, apart from some internal nonsense! OK, sell me one on contract I thought, and asked him to take me through the plans. Now, for some unknown reason, all these people assume that I would ONLY be interested in taking out a plan where the device was free of charge, DESPITE my willingness to hand over £400 only a few moments earlier. It is not just this bloke, it happens to me all the time, and I just don't get it?

So, I said "how about a 12 month contract", well, I thought that perhaps he had heard me say, "can I sleep with your girlfirend", or at least "I am going to kill your entire family tonight" because he looked at me as if I were completely crazy, and said "oh no, we only do 24 months now". Now why do they lie, I know they still do 18 months (and 12 months come to that), and so does he, so why piss me off with this?

So, he suddenly brightens up, "oh, we can do it for £15 a month over 18 months, and the phone is *just* £299. Hrmm, time to leave I think? As a parting shot, I enquire where the nearest CPW is, and he joyfully tells me, that is another pain in the arse he has got rid of ;-)

So, up to CPW Lowestoft, and a really helpful chap tells me they do not stock it, but he knows Gt Yarmouth, 10 miles north has some stock, and yes, they are £429 on PAYG, and no, they will not price match O2. We were going to Gt Yarmouth anyway, so no big deal. Arrived in said location around 11.30am, and called the O2 shop for same town, thinking the other chap might (might, ha) be talking bollocks, and this store may well sell me one, and I can save £30

A girl answered after about 20 mins of trying on and off, and cheerfully told me that they had stock, but "you can't get them on PAYG cos they are like an iPhone and you need Internet" I was a bit taken aback, so enquired as to why this would be an issue, as O2 do some pretty good internet deals, like top up £10 and get it unlimited the following month. "Oh no, you can not get internet on PAYG". WTF? Do I need to let O2 know they have idiots like this in the shop, or would that give a stuff?

I am not often rude to people on the phone, but I ended our conversation with a jovial, "get a clue love" in as patronising and sexist voice I could muster, and went over the road to CPW.

The guy was pretty good, opened one up, enthused about it, quoted verbatim from the Dell rep who had been in a couple of days before, and let me have a play with it, albeit with a non working SIM card, why do they do that, they are a bloody phone shop, have working SIM cards FFS! I had already asked the chap in the previous CPW branch if the PAYG package was subject to a returns period, but I asked again, "yes, 14 days, but the £10 you have to top up today is not refundable", that was OK, so I told him to ring it up.

Then the power went out! 

At this point, given that Apple are about to launch the iPhone 4HD, I really thought this was Steve Jobs way of saying, "come on Kev, you have a bloody Nexus One, you sold your beautiful iPhone, and I ain't letting you make this huge mistake"

But all I actually did was wandered back over to the motorhome and convinced the SO that the car park of CPW was the PERFECT place to have lunch! Lunch lasted an hour, the power cut double that, but it would be worth it, it would be mine soon!

So, I saw the lights and alarms come back on, and the chap waved me over, (he had been outside the whole two hours!). Just before I got back to the store, an elderly couple pulled in, and just beat me in the door. No issue I thought, the chap will serve me first, he knows I had been waiting 2 hours. Oh no, the old couple bless their £30 Nokia PAYG buying souls, got the first dibs on this chaps time, and the other chap (completely clueless on so many levels) was busy resetting alarms, and from his phone conversation, his biggest concern of the day was making sure the alarms were gonna set OK at 6pm when he left off :-)

OK, I waited, and eventually, the second chap was ready to serve me, the first still explaining that not many mobile phone have huge on and off buttons these days to the old folks......

HIM: "Pay as you go was it?" ME: "please" HIM: "ah, they don't do it on that" ME: "Um, tell me you are joking" HIM: "no, I can sell it to you SIM Free though, same price £429". ME: "OK, that is fine, you said earlier you could not do that and I HAD to buy a £10 top up though" HIM: "no, we can do it no problem"

So, a result you say? Luckily, this is not the first time I would have bought a SIM Free phone from CPW and I happen to know there is NO returns policy. Well, to put it mildly, I blew a frigging gasket, the sheer incompetence of them was stunning.

I then said to him "does contract come with a returns?" "Yes, 14 days" "OK, lets do it on contract, and if I like it, I will return it, cancel the contract and re buy the phone on SIM Free"

"oh, I don't recommend that says he, (all the time chap No 1 is insisting he sold one of these on PAYG just yesterday) it will cost you money for the days you use it", "not a problem to be honest, I will use my old iPhone SIM card, won't cost me a bean" Now by now, I was kinda fed up of the whole saga, and in playing with the phone some more while this was all going on, I decided it was not for me, for some reasons I will details here later one...for now, its iPhone HD time folks.......

Well, I was gonna do a trad review of the Desire, but there are hundreds of those already, so I decided to combine a review, and its obituary all in one long, long post -:)

Now, some of you are going to think to yourselves, "this is Kev, he always does this, so, don't pay too much attention"

That is OK, I can live with that, it is true after all, but before you write off everything I say as Apple fanboyism, do remember I do buy and sell all these things with my own money, with the risks that sometimes entails, and that I am about to write the worst "for sale" advert ever, shortly before offering the Desire for sale.

Now, I will promise up front not to mentions apps after this one mention, as this time I went in open eyed on that score. I knew the Audible App was not ready, and although I say that is a bit of a worry as it has been a while now for such a major app for many people. Rumor also has it that Audible is planning to do a WebOS version before they start on the Android one, and if true, that is crazy (or is it now HP are behind WebOS?)
I think quite a few switchers from iPhone could be disappointed by this sort of thing. Other factors around apps this time for me are the lack of a Squarespace App, which I thought would have been a given TBH, but upon asking, it appears they have not even started one yet.

OK, no more mention of apps (probably!)

The plan if you can call it that is to change my phone now, so I can sell the 3GS for a higher price than I will get when iPhone HD is announced (or even released???) on June 7th. Now I have the iPad there is actually a compelling reason for using something like a Nokia E52 as my phone, and the iPad for most of what used to do with iPhone, and TBH, the idea is growing on me, maybe with something a bit better than an E52 but something that would give me an always ready way to access the web with the iPad, like JokiuSpot for example. But I am so rooted in a large touch device I am not quite there yet, maybe after this?

So, loads of words, and still no reason why I am getting rid of the Desire?, well, fact is most of you already know, and there are a few reasons.

1. The AMOLED screen. Yes, my main reason for not being able to make this my phone is that universally praised screen! So, most reviews of AMOLED screens in general, and the Desire in particular, go along the lines of "the screen is truly amazing, superb clarity, bold colours, and MUCH higher resolution than the iPhone". Now some of the better reviewers will mention the outdoor performance, but it is always after the gushing bit, and somehow never quite gets the billing it deserves. There are notable exceptions to this, such as this quote from the CNET Review. "The Desire's stunningly bright and vivid AMOLED screen definitely has wow factor but, now that the sun's out again, our love affair with AMOLED is turning sour. Indoors, the screen's brightness is blindingly impressive, but the display is almost impossible to see in sunlight."

I would just change the quote slightly, by taking out two words "almost" and "sunlight" as my experience shows it is quite impossible to take a video in any kind of outdoor setting, even a fairly cloudy day, and see the screen. I have a shocking video to show you all, but at 73mb (only 3mins on an N95!) I will have to wait until I have better than GPRS to upload it.

I think, but can not really remember that this is possibly the worst screen ever outside, but the logical part of me suggests it's can't be that different from the Nexus One I had?
It surprised me just how much stuff I do now with my phone involves using it outside, or maybe the dark days of winter just hid it well. Because I am away on my hols, and wanting to take video and photos fro family back home, this issue really has come to the fore here, and until Super AMOLED screens start to appear in these phones, I hope sensible manufacturers keep on using older technology, are you listening Apple!

Of course for me, I can sell this and not really have an issue, and most of you reading this will convince yourselves that you can live with it, we all compromise somewhere to justify our choice to ourselves and others, I continue to pretend for example that I don't really miss widgets on the home screen on the iPhone, when in reality I would love that. The people I feel sorry for are the normobs, the poor people who will buy the Desire, the Legend and others on a two year £35 a month contract, and be completely stuck with it for ages, all the time not being able to video or shoot photos outside on anything other than the darkest days, well, at least not see what they are shooting, you can of course point the lens and hope!
Now enough about how bad it is, what about the great resolution and fantastic brightness and vivid colours indoors? Well, I have to admit there is something nice about the higher res compared to iPhone, but really, in day to day use?, I don't think it is a huge deal. I will try to post up some photos to highlight this, but I would say subjectively that the iPhone is still 30% brighter, and for whatever reason, does not suffer from tiny font syndrome like the Androids. I think that as the screen res grows, the devs forget that some of us have failing eyesight, and just use tiny, tiny non selectable fonts. Now if you are young and have great eyesight, skip forward a few lines, but for the rest of us, it is a real issue. The photo at the start of this post shows this well, in that Google's choice of background colour and font makes the Desire much harder to read (to me) than the 3GS.
The other issue I have with this is that colours are certainly vivid, but not not very realistic, more cartoonish, with reds in particular looking very odd. TBH its not really a big deal, just that even the good bits of these screens are not quite as amazing as they are often made out to be,
I think it is clear that the new iPhone will have a higher resolution screen, most bets are on exactly double the current res to allow easy use of pixel doubling for existing apps to work as on iPad, but one can only hope that Apple use an IPS screen as per iPad, or indeed, apply a bit of Apple magic to AMOLED and deliver one that is usable outdoors. I am confident actually that Apple, love em or hate them, would never deliver a screen with all the issues of the Desire!

2. Build Quality

The build quality on the Desire is not as good as the Nexus One, Tim Salmon has it bang on in his review on this issue. The back cover is disappointingly thin and leads to little creaks here and there. It is a shock coming from iPhone, as, say what you will about removable batteries (and geeks aside, who carries a spare anyway!) but building them in does allow you to make a much more stable device. The rest of the build quality is pretty good however, and a blatant copy of the iPhone factor.

3. Battery Life

Looks like this could be quite poor. I left if until it had been charged about 18-20 times before posting this, so it should be conditioned now, but yesterday for example, it was 100% full before I left base, used it for about 25 mins, Twitter, email and the like, and then plugged it into van for Sat Nav journey about 1.5 hours. Was charging all this time, but upon arrival at new base, it was at 14% warning just an hour or so after arriving, in which time it had done about 20 mins more surfing, and a couple of mins of video testing for this article. So I am guessing that full screen and GPS uses more power than the van supply can put in, which is pretty worrying. In day to daynuse for the last week, it has consistently run out of power a couple hours before the 3GS, which is on full screen brightness, and is over a year old, and apparently has terrible battery life!
On the days I used this as main mobile, only 2 days to be fair, it did not ever make it through the full day, it always needed topping up, compared to the 3GS which routinely (just) makes it through a day).

4. Keyboard.

Yuk, yuk, and more yuk. I just don't think I can ever adapt to this keyboard, but in theory, it should be the same as the iPhone right? Maybe it's just me, but no matter what I tried, Better Keyboard (it isn't), Smart Keyboard Pro, and various other keyboards, just did not do it for me. I am not gonna dwell here, as I am now typing so much on iPad and iPhone that I suspect it is mainly down to familiarity with the Apple system that makes me hate on the Android so much. Only of concern to iPhone switchers I think.

5. Infrastructure.

Here is the section you need if you are looking to just say "ah, Kev is a fanboy, we can ignore him" because already convinced yourself that you can not possibly use an iPhone as Apple are evil.

I should probably make this my last ever Android phone. I am now so into the iPhone OS system, it is hard to ever leave. It's OK, I am very comfortable with that situation really, but having several apps already which I know will work with future devices, and having a few docks with the 30 pin iPod connector on, plus endless car, and mains chargers that fit the iPhone, and iPad, plus the add-on battery pack that just slips in the pocket to give a boost to my nasty non removable battery device. Once you take this lot into account, you have to ask, why would I even WANT to change to a new system?

And the answer is....well, I think that is why you are reading this nonsense, and I am writing it -:)

Written, and edited and uploaded to blog 100% on iPad using Evernote and Squarespace iPhone App.

Oh, I almost forgot.

Desire for sale, immaculate, unlocked, unbranded, and fully boxed £350 plus delivery and any Paypal fees -:)

UPDATED 26/4/10

Got one now, called all the 3 shops in the North West, and found one at Lancaster (they had 2 in total), and they knew all about the new pricing Matrix just sent on the internal computer system, and thus were happy to sell it to me on PAYG. In fact, they seemed amazed that I was willing to pay £350 for a phone, but were surprised when I told them people were paying up to £450 for these off Expansys. Imagine the extra surprise when *I* told *them* it was most likely unlocked and unbranded (it is).

------------

Ok, time to tell you all about how hard I tried and failed to buy an HTC Desire (on my terms, it would have been easy to just buy one!) Am I being silly here, I would welcome any thoughts.

So, I have my iPad, and my iPhone, and if I am honest, I only want a Desire to play with, the iPad is giving me my iPhone OS fix for now, and I would still like to sell the 3GS ahead of the new device due out in June (which may or may not look like the leaks this week, I think it is the real deal myself)

So, a nice Desire would tide me over well, so I set out to buy one. I could not simply mail order as there were stock issues and I was about to come away on holiday, so could not have not have it delivered. So we left Ipswich on Thursday and were headed for the Lakes, so I thought with some major towns to go through I should be able to get one easy. I was aware of the Carphone Warehouse offer on PAYG of £409 including a mandatory top up of £10, and this was close enough to the general online price including delivery so it was this I was aiming for. Now, an important factor here is that most if not all of CPW's handsets are unlocked, so this is clearly an advantage as it save the hassle and £15 or so of getting the unlock code.
I was also aware of a cracking price of £349 with no top up required from 3 and it was being reported that these early units were also completely unbranded and unlocked. The issue with this is that there are also reports that 3 shops are holding on to stock to sell to contact only, and to be honest, I am not adverse to taking a contract provided it costs about the same overall, which with these horrible 24 month deals now taking over is not ever the case.
T-Mobile also have these in (stock is generally very easy to find if you want contract) so these were on my list as well.

First CPW attempt was actually with my local store, Thursday afternoon I was able to save the Desire to a basket at £409 and proceed to checkout. I had noticed a "collect from store" option, and this looked a great way to go, so I was just about to put my debit card details in, and thought it was a bit odd the way it was worded "which store do you want your ordered delivered to" or similar. I cancelled the transaction and some research lead me to the fact that CPW collect from store is nothing like you might expect if used to the ones from PCW, Currys, Comet, Jessops....err just about the rest of retail in fact.

Unbelievably they actually ship the item from the web store and just use the shop as a collection point, despite the fact the local store had stock of the item! What an incredible waste of resources this is, and to top it off, in my case it would have be a disaster, as I would have paid and not been able to go back to collect the order!

The one thing I took from this is however I could have ordered and sent it to the Kendal shop, and it did occur to me, I just thought that with over £400 to spend I should be able to just pick one up.
So off we went and first stop was Chesterfield on the way to our first overnight spot, and the CPW store on the edge of town. I went in and sure enough the Desire was on display in three separate places with the offer of £399 (plus top up) so I said I would have one please. "why are you buying on PAYG, it's cheaper on contract" says the Salesman. "ok, happy to buy on contract then, show me" says I, happy to help. "£30 a month and a free phone" he quips, "but that is a two year term and that is £720" close to double the price of PAYG" , "yes but you will spend that difference and more on topups"
At this point I did not know if I should be impressed or annoyed thatch knew so much about my usage patterns that he knew for a fact I would spend over £300 on top ups for this phone, so I settled for just saying, " no thanks, PAYG is just fine"
It was at this point he said he can not sell it on PAYG as "it's not on the computer"' nor did he know or care when it might be. So I suggested he should remove the advertising in the three different slots in his store, to which he basically shrugged and said it would be available soon so they could stay. He did come up with a compelling offer of £449 SIM free, and was a bit offended when I suggested that to pay £40 more to NOT have a SIM card and £10 credit would make me as stupid as him. He then reverted to basically spinning some bullshit about the stock being different for PAYG compared to SIM free, which I know for a fact is a complete lie.

So, fail number 2 for CPW, but hang on, Chesterfield 3 store were on a list I saw on the 3 Blog as having stocks of the Desire, so I gave them a call. Yes we have them, no we can not sell on PAYG, and no, the fact you already know the stock is identical (they tell you this on the blog FFS) will not stop us lying though our teeth and saying we only have contract ones in stock.
In hindsight, I really should have walked into the 3 Store there and then and called them out on that, I would have likely as not gotten one, since several people have reported getting various 3 store to sell them at £349 on PAYG, a bit of a bargain if they are indeed unlocked.

To keep this to a sensible length, the above was repeated in two separate CPW shops in the Trafford Centre the next day, and at Kendal yesterday, although I thought I had cracked it at Kendal since I got as far as the till before the girl even realised she could not process the paperwork, but after that her attitude really sucked. Two more 3 shops also lied to me about stock being different for contract and PAYG.

I do have one other option, the Phones 4U chain have stock of Orange ones at £379 SIM Free, which is technically true, but these are still locked to Orange (and have some of the usual Orange crap on them) so I am reluctant until I find out if I can easily flash a generic firmware, which I am sure I could.

The search continues...

I had a comment from someone asking if I had any further thoughts on these phones, and realised I had not really told you guys I have now sold the Nexus One, and am back full time on the 3GS!

The reasons are really the list of things in the last post in this series, the apps I need right now, and if I am honest, with the way HTC are spitting out devices at MWC this week, it was a strategy to make sure I did not lose too much money on the N1.
In the end there is not much wrong with the N1, and it is a tribute to it that it came very close to unseating the 3GS as my only phone, but almost is not good enough.
I must repeat again my mantra that this is a 3GS and a Jailbroken one at that, my conclusions if I were using a 3G, or even a stock 3GS would have been different, and I would have chosen the N1 in those circumstances.....well, that is not strictly true, I would now make that the HTC Desire, subject to it not being a dog when it gets released in April.
The Desire is effectively the Nexus One with HTC sense, which I think would be a very complete phone, as it replaces the rather nasty touch panel buttons with real hardware, and I was surprised how much I missed Sense from the Nexus One. I think also, the Desire being a mainstream European device, as opposed to the obvious US slant to the N1, we may get much better voice recognition and maybe even some decent navigation software by then.
Of course, very soon, (possibly even March 14th I heard) iPhone OS 4.0 will get released, and I think this again will change the game somewhat.

Kev