After waiting for several weeks, my new phone, a HTC Desire has finally arrived. I have been a heavy cellphone user since started working as a Tivoli consultant in -98. I bought my first cellphone -94 and have had several so called smart phones both from Nokia and Ericsson.
For the first time I felt that this is more than a phone, for the first time calender integration works, for the first time I can use the builtin GPS, for the first time accessing the web with a phone works, for the first time downloaded software really works.
My favorite apps so far is:
- Nagroid, to be able to view my op5 Monitor status
- FONMaps, find hotspots for LaFoneras
- Car Cast, listen and download podcasts
- MapDroid, to use preloaded OpenStreetmaps and GPS without using any bandwidth. Perfect when abroad because of the crazy price of data roaming outside Sweden.
- HTC Facebook, read and post on facebook
- FON Access, automatically connect to FON hotspots when traveling.
- GPS Logger, logg tracks in gpx format that almost any GPS software understand
- Sipdroid, to connect to my Asterisk PBX using 3G or WiFi
Of cource the device is not perfect, I miss:
- The phone must be ‘rooted’ to be real useful, why? Open the phone so the community and others can develop apps that are real useful. Vendor lock-in always sucks.
- IPSec VPN so I can connect to my IPSec based OpenBSD firewall. The IPSec implementation in the phone sucks.
- OpenVPN, there exists OpenVPN apps but to use the the phone must be ‘rooted’
- Bluetooth modem, it is not possible to use the phone as a modem using bluetooth
- Screenshots, the phone must be rooted or using the SDK to take screenshoots. Why?
I really hope that Google and/or HTC understand and use the power of the community to make the Android even more succesfull by open it even more.
July 16th, 2010 at 1:27 am
Purchased a brand new Desire about a month ago as a business cellphone but am very disappointed , firstly i would have about 900 contacts on my prior XDA and was able to view by business or individual, not so on Desire only by personal which is of no use particularly with no search option either. Android 2.2 is intended to have search facility but not different view option launch date seems to differ each time . Battery pretty good approx 18 hrs medium usage. Bluetooth poor, paired with parrott car kit ok for day or so however won’t connect even by unpairing and pairing new, same issue with wireless bluetooth headset……..any ideas
October 15th, 2010 at 12:34 am
You can do basic search.
1) Press the Phone button in centre bottom of screen.
2) Start typing name or number.
But you can’t search properly, like postcode, business or things like this.
One great thing about the contacts is that if you tie the phone to a google account, all your messages, contacts and calendar info are synced and stored on google servers, so if you lose your phone you still have all your stuff!