Delicious

My time as an official Telstra social reviewer for the HTC Desire has come to an end. Over the last two weeks I’ve been able to test the HTC Desire thoroughly and acquaint myself with the Android OS again. The last Android device I played with was the LG Eve.

Thank You Telstra Social Media Team

Before I go any further I’d like to thank Telstra, in particular, Kristen Boschma, Mike Hickinbotham and Ben Bevins for allowing me to be part of Telstra’s first online social review of a mobile device.

When I entered the Telstra Social Reviewers I said I was interested in geodata and that what I wanted out of it was to know if it was time to upgrade my 3 year old Nokia N95-8gb.

As you can see through my various postings, I’ve had some issues with this phone... individually, I can adapt to them, but together, they really let the ‘phone experience’ down.

I feel like I didn’t review the Desire online as much as others did, but I did have quite lengthy discussions with people at last night’s Adelaide Twitter Meet about the phone! Lots of people at the meet have iPhones and were quite interested to hear about it.

So the Social Review is over, reviewers have spilled their guts about the phone & now Telstra has to deal with it! ;)

I myself thought it was a great experience, and it was a good new way of doing it. We all certainly learnt about the pros & cons of Social Media, but I think it was all handled quite well.

I would also like to thank Mike, Kristen & Ben for putting the Social Review together, and for keeping us in line for the 2 week period. You guys rock!

Well it will continue for me, why because I get to keep the phone. This was the most controversial part of the project by a few very vocal critics. Whilst I was lucky to be on holiday at the time all of that fuss blew up and in some respect over, I thought I would just add my thoughts on that. I knew of some of the reviewers… and I have actually meet some of the reviewers and they are the people I would have gone to and asked about the phone before this came along.

One of the best features of the HTC Desire is the flexibility and the ability to customize your menus to truly make the handset your own thanks to the Android powered HTC Sense UI (user interface). You can customize the widget screens to suit what you want and how you want it but before we go any further, some of you will probably want to know what widgets are.

Introducing the final #TelstraDesire review blog. The official review period is now over so I think it’s time to share my final thoughts on the HTC Desire.

In my last blog I confessed that I was really starting to like this phone. I’ve never been a big mobile user until now though I did envy those who could pass the time during boring commutes, meetings (though I don’t condone those who use them extensively in them), etc on their phones. Now I have become one of them.

Today is the last day of the HTC Desire Social Review. I’ve had an interesting experience, my first product/service review, and maybe more to come. Now talking about the HTC Desire in the workplace, or at University (both for I). I have been using the Android platform for a while now and I can say, the being able to sync your data with a variety of Google Services is very useful and helps me to do things faster, with added ease and peace of mind (my data being in the cloud). I will use Ben Bevins’ headings on this topic, as per his post.

Preamble

Writing up a holistic and fair-minded review of the HTC Desire was actually a much harder exercise than I anticipated.

To begin with, no matter how balanced and unbiased I say I am or try to be, the fact of the matter is that I spend more time with my mobile phone than with any other entity in my life. More than with any single piece of clothing, more than with my wallet or keys, and by a long shot more than with any person. My mobile is with me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year.

The other day I looked at the games of the Android Marketplace and how the HTC Desire stacks up against other gaming platforms. Today it’s time for Apps. Now the App Store on the iPhone has been the one to beat so far but it’s not without it’s draw backs. The Android Marketplace works in much the same way but is a little more lax with that can go up there.

Since my post discussing how the Desire was having a negative effect on my life, I did go for a full day without turning it on at all. I was concerned that I was starting to develop a Pavlovian response to it, evidenced by my twitchy eye that started up every time I even looked at the Desire. So after the 24hrs of respite, I’ve turned it back on, but I’m only accessing things that I have already mastered or that are extensions of such things and are obviously easy (eg the calendar – I have now put an entry in the calendar instead of just using it as a reminder system).

As you may or may not know, the HTC Desire has been nicknamed “The iPhone Killer”, but hasn’t every smartphone with a hint of promise? It isn’t really smart to say anything is a *insert thing here* killer, because there’s always going to be people who prefer one or the other. As an example, look at Microsoft vs Apple – Need I say more?

There’s only two things about the HTC Desire that have annoyed me so far. One of them is most definitely and always will be, the keyboard.

HTC Desire photo in Roma St Parklands

HTC Desire photo in Roma St Parklands

HTC Desire photo in Roma St Parklands

HTC Desire photo in Roma St Parklands

HTC Desire photo in Roma St Parklands

HTC Desire photo in Roma St Parklands