Goodbye Apple ... hello HTC??

I've never had an iPhone but have used a number of 3Gs handsets belonging to friends and family.

They're visually nice on the UI side, there's a transition animation for everything, there are no cuts, it's all animation and this nice animation hides the slightly slower pace of iPhone OS.

The Appstore is huge yes but it also has a lot of crap that nobody with a sane mind will want to install. Android is the same but there are more robust and useful applications such as system utilities and system patch apps that build on the Android OS, stuff that Apple ban on the iPhone Market.

Hardware wise there is no contest at all, the Desire wins. I can play my HDTV downloads on my Desire and it plays perfectly with no resizing needed, only transcode the video to mpeg4-asp which takes minutes. I don't know what max video res the iPhone supports.

Flash 10.1 is coming in May via Android 2.2, Google have confirmed this now along with up to the 250% OS performance boost from the updated JIT compiler.

Hardware Flash decoding and double the OS performance alone make an already fast phone even more Desirable :)

If the Wireless chipset is the same as on the Nexus One then we should also see Wireless N being enabled in an update or once rooted perhaps the XDA guys will find a way to enable it earlier.

And then there's the 720p camcorder (and most likely DivX although an app exists that does this anyway) update coming from HTC!
 
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i love itunes, its been a faithful player and media sorter for years but if i had to use something else i would.

wow...just wow, itunes is the biggest bag of **** I've ever had the misfortune of using. You should feel lucky to be moving away, I'm stuck with my work iphone with no chance of getting a HTC :(

MW
 
i demo'd one today instore, not for long but got a good feel for it, seems pretty nice the screen is amazing....im really tempted. will see tomorrow when i get paid.
 
wow...just wow, itunes is the biggest bag of **** I've ever had the misfortune of using. You should feel lucky to be moving away, I'm stuck with my work iphone with no chance of getting a HTC :(

MW

I'm an N1 user but I can't agree that iTunes is a bag of ****. Seriously, what's wrong with it? I've got Songbird and Media Monkey too but iTunes opens much faster these days (it wasn't always the case). Foobar2000 is good if you don't want a podcast aggregator but overall I think iTunes is quite good for the Windows platform.

Personally, the best player I've used as a music player, creating playlists, syncing, and podcast aggregating, is Banshee in Ubuntu and Fedora. But it's not available for Windows :(
 
To be honest, as you love itunes and haven't specificaly said WHY you need an Android device, then I would say just save your money and wait to see what updates come along for it in the next few months (to see if Divx and Flash 10.1 are added as promised) and by that time it will be a) Cheaper and b) you can compare it to the Iphone 4G. That's what I'mn going to do and I may well come back in a few Android updates time as the Desire's hardware itself was very good I have to say. I'd say play with a mates one first and make your mind up. If you really cant think of a reason to upgrade, then just save the money and see what a future update brings then in June make up your mind about the 4G. Just remember that the 4G will probably be $$$$

I personally would not touch an iPhone with a 10foot barge pole - I have an iPod touch which I use for music and apps which works really well. I find iTunes to be bloatware that takes ages to do anything more intensive than copying a couple of tracks. HOWEVER - as a music management app it's brilliant and I have no intention of passing it over for anything else.

I have a Desire and utterly love it, brilliant OS - better battery life than the iPhone and the screen leaves it for dead. That said I come at it from a perspective of enjoying the customisation and freshness of the Android OS - from a more objective perspective the iPhone OS is IMO the singularly best UI that currently exists on a hand held device, capability aside, it's simply genius and what sets the design bar for all other mobile devices. If all you want is a usable mobile device that does any one thing you ask of it (unless it's making calls which IMO the iPhone is pants at) brilliantly well then stick with the iPhone at least till the 4G is out as Totality has said.

If you want to play and have a gadget that will do pretty much anything you throw at it (sometimes a little shakily like Flash- allegedly it's supposed to be resolve in H1) then go for the Desire. The Android platform is only going to get more powerful and tighter from a design perspective.
 
I just recently upgraded from the worst Nokia flip ever made to an HTC Legend and I'm totally blown away. The phone is a little gem and the Android operating system is fantastic. I didn't even consider an iphone after reading some great reviews and seeing the general vibe towards HTC.
 
Friends tried to persuade me to wait for the iPhone 4G or get the 3GS, but I didn't want the overly common iPhone... went for the Desire instead. Eagerly awaiting it's arrival... should be on my doorstep any day now :)
 
Can the Desire do multi touch screen? What's it like to zoom in and out if it cant?

I had to laugh at a mate of mine using someone Samsung thing and trying an iPhone style zoom with 2 fingers, nothing happened lol :D
 
Can the Desire do multi touch screen? What's it like to zoom in and out if it cant?

I had to laugh at a mate of mine using someone Samsung thing and trying an iPhone style zoom with 2 fingers, nothing happened lol :D

Yep - has full multitouch in both the maps and the browser. Works identical to the iPhone.
 
Multitouch in both photo galleries (Nexus One Gallery 3D) and Home as well. It also has Multitouch in CoPilot satnav and several other areas too.
 
for the people saying that android is lacking in the apps department, what apps do you think the iphone has that android phones dont? I'll concede at the moment the games selection is weaker, but I'm not particularly interested in games on my phone, so in terms of useful apps, what's missing? Most iPhone apps seem to just be applet versions of websites rather than actual applications.
 
I'm an N1 user but I can't agree that iTunes is a bag of ****. Seriously, what's wrong with it? I've got Songbird and Media Monkey too but iTunes opens much faster these days (it wasn't always the case). Foobar2000 is good if you don't want a podcast aggregator but overall I think iTunes is quite good for the Windows platform.

Personally, the best player I've used as a music player, creating playlists, syncing, and podcast aggregating, is Banshee in Ubuntu and Fedora. But it's not available for Windows :(

because it grabs you by the nuts and tells you what it can do not what you want to do, all I want to do is copy and paste to my iphone and itunes just adds a layer of ball ache :mad:

MW
 
Yep - has full multitouch in both the maps and the browser. Works identical to the iPhone.

Multitouch in both photo galleries (Nexus One Gallery 3D) and Home as well. It also has Multitouch in CoPilot satnav and several other areas too.

Nice, I will be looking at HTC again when I come to change, as well as the 4G.

I have an O2 Simplicity deal till August and bought my iPhone 3G used.
 
for the people saying that android is lacking in the apps department, what apps do you think the iphone has that android phones dont? I'll concede at the moment the games selection is weaker, but I'm not particularly interested in games on my phone, so in terms of useful apps, what's missing? Most iPhone apps seem to just be applet versions of websites rather than actual applications.

The guardian app is my current big missing in action item, I get my morning newspaper fix from it very effectively, it's far more functional than the mobile site and not available for anything other than iphone.

Eyetv streams TV from the tuner in my PC to my phone over wireless or over the net, works nicely, integrates with the eyetv software on my machine (schedule recordings etc). Again, a iphone only one.

Airvideo is handy (though maybe unnecessary on other handsets), server app (free) runs on my pc and shares my media (mainly video) library to the iphone app, play any video and it transcodes it live so anything at all will play.

There's also stuff like the national rail app which I find superior to the android alternatives I've seen to date. More polished and works really well for what I want.

I do genuinely wish all were available on android so I had the option available about which platform to use...
 
There's also stuff like the national rail app which I find superior to the android alternatives I've seen to date.

I dont even have a National Rail app on my N97, I just select 'National Rail' in Bookmarks and.. the dedicated mobile site comes up? What else would an app do that makes you want to stick with something as out dated as an iphone?
 
[TW]Fox;16461426 said:
I dont even have a National Rail app on my N97, I just select 'National Rail' in Bookmarks and.. the dedicated mobile site comes up? What else would an app do that makes you want to stick with something as out dated as an iphone?

It has a button called 'next train home', it finds where I am, the nearest station and the next train home from there for me. Good luck getting a browser to do that in one click. To me, that's hassle free, it's easy, it makes my life easy and that's it's job.

End of the day I don't give a damn about specs, it's about software and the competitors software isn't up to the job for me yet.

Given you have an N97 though, I'm not sure you're allowed to criticise anything more advanced than carrier pigeons (and when it comes to user friendliness they might have the edge...) ;)
 
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