T-mobile Pulse - Android touch phone.

After nearly a week I have to say I love this phone.
It looks good,has a super responsive screen,is nice and quick.
I recommend it to anybody wanting a cheap android phone.
 
Thanks. the decision now is between a contract Hero or this. The thing is, this is £137 plus £20 minimum topup plus £13 unlock. So that adds up to £172. That's still a good deal but is it as good a phone as the Hero?
 
However, hardware wise it is nearly identical to the hero, ie both have the same old underpowered hardware. I can't really think of anything extra of note that the hero gives functionality wise. Just the small additions in the newer versions of android.

Of course the Hero will receive better support long term (although 2.0 is rumored for the pulse)...but do you want to be stuck on a contract phone as underpowered as the hero for 18/24 months?

For me the pulse is a stop gap, does 99% of any other android device so will do until all these superdooper android phones hit the market (nexus one jan 5th etc).
 
CPU wise, the HTC Hero/Magic/Dream are almost all the same (the newer htc magic and all htc hers use a slightly updated cpu but same clock speed). In fact the T-mobile Pulse(Huawei U8220) uses the same processor as the hero. The Motorola Cliq also uses the same processor. (528mhz qualcomm)

Only the Motorola Droid(Milestone) and Motorola Calgary use better processors, using the same one as the iphone 3GS. Don't think you can directly compare clock speeds with above. (550mhz cortex a8, 600mhz on 3GS)

The people that jumped on the first series of android phones like me will be left behind as snapdragon comes, but everything is pretty smooth with current processors. So until more intensive apps come, I don't think much will be missed. Also from what I've seen the iphone 3gs runs very fast on its processor which is probably not much faster than current android phones (haven't tries the milestone yet), and so I'd say programming plays a huge role.

As for RAM, wikipedia is giving these specs

HTC Dream - 192MB
HTC Magic - 192MB/288MB
HTC Hero - 192MB/288MB

so not exactly sure what that means for the 2 newer HTC phones.

From leaked slides, the HTC Legend will have a 600mhz qualcomm cpu (slightly updated version of above) and 256MB RAM. HTC Bravo will have a 1ghz snapdragon cpu and 320MB RAM.
 
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You've clearly never used a snapdragon phone. I used an acer liquid last week and it is so slick compared to my pulse its untrue.

I work for nokia have tested a n900 for past few months, again the browsing experience on a cortex a8 is so much better.

Part of this is due to pure JavaScript processing power, the rest is to do with screen resolution, which of course is quite low on MSM7200 based devices as they dont have the gfx power.

EDIT: And the less said about iphone vs hero/pulse browsing experience the better.
 
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You've clearly never used a snapdragon phone. I used an acer liquid last week and it is so slick compared to my pulse its untrue.

Of course. It is much faster. But in terms of productivity is it better? I'd have to use it to find out.

I work for nokia have tested a n900 for past few months, again the browsing experience on a cortex a8 is so much better.

Yep, its better as you'd expect. How much of that is due to programming and the processor though? Have you tried the motorola droid? Is it as fast? I was wondering if the iphone OS was just very efficient as well as the cpu being faster.

Part of this is due to pure JavaScript processing power, the rest is to do with screen resolution, which of course is quite low on MSM7200 based devices as they dont have the gfx power.

That's interesting to know. I was wondering about that when writing the above post. Do you know if the processor in the new HTC legend has any graphics processing power? Its qualcomm msm 7227.

EDIT: And the less said about iphone vs hero/pulse browsing experience the better.

Is that mainly due to the graphics ability of the cortex a8? If so, I'm surprised again HTC are releasing phones using the old qualcomm processors next year.
 
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I've not used a droid.

There is always a market for cheap phones especially in China, HTC can bang these old tech phones out 10 to the dozen.

My whole point is really the hero is expensive for what it is at the moment, and is because there hasn't really been any competition, but that is in the process of changing at the moment. I'm certainly taking a wait and see approach with my pulse. I mean google could release a heavily subsidized unlocked phone in the uk on jan 5th, certainly rumors out there suggesting such.....my pulse would be straight on ebay.
 
That's a good way of looking at it... similar tech for much less money and a stop-gap while newer phones come out. Looked at that way it is indeed a very good deal and certainly worth considering.

My WinMo phone is dying and I also really want an Adroid device. The Pulse seems like a good option.

The slight spanner in the works is whether it is worth waiting to find out whether the Pulse can get Android 2.0, and also to find out whether the Google rumour is true. My understanding from the T-Mobile store is that the £137 price is a Christmas offer and so will end at some point.
 
I've not used a droid.

There is always a market for cheap phones especially in China, HTC can bang these old tech phones out 10 to the dozen.

My whole point is really the hero is expensive for what it is at the moment, and is because there hasn't really been any competition, but that is in the process of changing at the moment.

Yep, I agree. I think the Droid and Iphone 3GS are the baseline for phones from now on. Both are the best for their respective OSes and are probably on par with each other.

I'm certainly taking a wait and see approach with my pulse. I mean google could release a heavily subsidized unlocked phone in the uk on jan 5th, certainly rumors out there suggesting such.....my pulse would be straight on ebay.

Yep, even though I've only had a Hero for 4 months, I'll jump to a Nexus One if its available cheap simfree to old gmail beta users and has the rumoured specs of having a Snapdragon processor.
 
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That's a good way of looking at it... similar tech for much less money and a stop-gap while newer phones come out. Looked at that way it is indeed a very good deal and certainly worth considering.

My WinMo phone is dying and I also really want an Adroid device. The Pulse seems like a good option.

The slight spanner in the works is whether it is worth waiting to find out whether the Pulse can get Android 2.0, and also to find out whether the Google rumour is true. My understanding from the T-Mobile store is that the £137 price is a Christmas offer and so will end at some point.
I went from a winmo omnia to a pulse, absolute night and day. You certainly would not be disappointed with the pulse.

An Admin on the official t-mobile forum suggested eclair was in the works, hardly concrete, but I ask; what is there in donut or eclair that you want? To me there really isn't a lot extra of any importance which can't be done on cupcake with market place apps... for example my work exchange email runs great on the pulse with roadsync.
 
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I went from a winmo omnia to a pulse, absolute night and day. You certainly would not be disappointed with the pulse.

An Admin on the official t-mobile forum suggested eclair was in the works, hardly concrete, but I ask; what is there in eclair that you want? To me there really isn't a lot extra of any importance which can't be done on cupcake with market place apps.

Well google goggles has greater functionality than Layar. You will eventually get free turn by turn navigation. Better browser, and eventually apps developers may stop supporting 1.5.

android-data_chart.jpg


http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2009/12/knowing-is-half-battle.html

This is data from market place for 2 weeks recently. Comments from apps developers suggest for the time being, they don't want to leave 25% of the market (assuming they develop for 1.5 at the moment). But that could change in the future.
 
Exactly, to me google goggles seems like a gimmick I wouldn't use, I'm quite happy using copilot off market place, and I use the fantastic Dolphin browser free on market place.

By the time devs really start to drop 1.5 support in any noticeable way I'm very unlikely to still own a pulse and there's nothing to say it wouldn't have had an official firmware update by then (they have an unofficial half broken 1.6 build kinda semi working over at modaco already).

So as I said it comes down to things you would really miss....I guess if people see google goggles as something they need in their lives then the pulse isn't the phone for them... at least at present.
 
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