Moving from iPhone to Android - HTC Desire

Well my iPhone battery finally gave up. Given my iPhone was jailbroken so I could use a different carrier SIM I didn't want to swap it at an Apple store so I thought I would replace the battery myself. Mistake - dont ever try this at home. To cut a long story short I found myself at the Apple store to get a replacement, which they would not give me without my contract o2 SIM. Ooops I dont have one, I'm on Vodafone.

So I decided to go and buy a new phone. Getting an iPhone is impossible without getting a new contract (which I didn't want) so I decided to go back to Android. A trip to the Voda store to pickup an HTC Desire was not successful. They would not let me buy one from them, even at SIM free prices. Apparently they are only for new customers. Same for the HTC Legend.

I have news for you Vodafone - I have 15 company SIMs and this was an appalling way to treat a good customer. My company will be leaving you for another network as soon as our contract runs out.

Anyway I finally got an HTC Desire from Phones4U. My experience with moving from iPhone back to Android was interesting, and to be honest a bit disappointing.

Why can Google not make a keyboard work as well as on the iPhone. On my iPhone I could type as fast as I could on my old Blackberry, it was great. Two weeks in with the HTC Desire and its rubbish with constant mis-typing. If you want Android to be a success get a grip and get this right.

The speed of the UI is wonderful on the Desire but it just lacks the ease and sophistication of the iPhone. Everything seems to be more awkward and take longer.

I am starting to believe in Apple's multitasking and closed app approach. Apps in the Android store are generally poor quality in my experience. For games this has something to do with not being able to use the SD card, but for everything else none of the big developers have bothered to rock up and do anything. The most important third party apps to me on my iPhone were Streetcar and Addison Lee. Neither of which are on the Android platform. There are another 8 or so important apps to me and none of those are there either.

The app store experience is frustrating. Every third entry is an app with nude/bikini girls. There seems to be no discipline/rules about where these get placed so you have to wade through them when browsing for new apps. A very low rent and annoying experience.

Android seems very powerful with the level of customisation, apps, widgets etc. However in my experience if you use any widgets or background apps your battery is dead very quickly. Its all a bit pointless.

Why on earth should I have to install a task manager and killer on a phone - I dont want to have to worry about that. Without it however its not a viable phone once you start using any apps.

The reason the iPad is going to be a success is because people dont want to have to worry about all the baggage a full blown OS brings. Its about convenience and appliance computing. Android goes in the opposite direction and makes it more complicated. Honestly it feels like a graphical, touch version of Symbian Series 60 in that respect.

Anyway on to the hardware. It is lovely. Except for three quite big problems:

The screen glass. Seriously its permanently smudged. My iPhone was never like that, how hard can it be to put the same coating Apple use? After day 3 it already had more scratches than my iPhone had in a year. Why use such substandard glass?? And lastly the AMOLED is beautiful until you try and use it outside when it becomes unreadable. Pointless.

The on button. Its on the top so I have to 'reach up' then swipe down on the screen before I can do anything. It feels 3 times more awkward than the iPhone and yet the thing seems to manage to unlock itself accidentally very frequently. This has to be easy to sort out, so please do so!

The battery. Its runs out very quickly unless you start turning features off. I can deal with that but there is something more worrying. With the included mains charger the phone can use the battery quicker than the adapter can charge it is you happen to be using it at the same time. I had the phone plugged in for 6 hours on the first day and used it for probably 5 of those hours. At the end of this the phone only had 7% more charge in it than when I plugged it in 6 hours earlier. Terrible! I am using a Nokia micro-USb charger from my Carbon Arte and that does the job fine. Just be aware USB charging from a laptop or exterior battery is likely to only slightly trickle in or possibly only slow the rate the battery is being used.

On the plus side Google Navigation is great, I quite like some of the HTC Sense widgets, the speed of the handset is pretty amazing and I can see potential. But the platform badly needs more apps and a decent keyboard. And HTC need to sort out battery sizes, battery consumption, charger and screen glass.

On balance I am not totally unhappy, but I know it is very much second best to the iPhone.