There's way too much ice on the W14 pavements to make it worth going for a walk today and I'll go to the gym after work tonight so I've been messing around with my new phone.
My 18th month O2 contract ran out last Monday so I upgraded on Tuesday from my rather tired looking Nokia 5800 to the highly regarded HTC Desire. It's my first non-Nokia phone since joining the mobile age in July 2000 and all I can say is WOW!! It's an amazing bit of kit with so many features and I've been taken aback by the sheer number of applications that can be downloaded to increase functionality.
Of course there are social media apps, mapping apps, alternative web browsers and music clients that are well publicised but I've also downloaded emulators and games that make my phone think it's a Gameboy, Megadrive and SNES! I've had emulators on my PC for years but didn't think that I'd get them for a phone. I've also added the quintessential smartphone game, Angry Birds. It was one of the first things I downloaded and is totally addictive. There are just so many levels!!
The only downside with the upgrade is the change in contract. Out went unlimited data, the ability use my inclusive text allowance to send both texts while abroad and photo messages and in came having to pay a fiver a month for 500MB of data and text charges for things that were previously free.
My line rental is £25 so it's £30 a month in total with the additional fiver for data. I previously had a £35 a month contract with a 30% discount through an offer at Sarah's work but sadly they have changed their mobile provider to Vodaphone so I couldn't get a discount this time round.
I'm quite lucky that I can claim my phone line rental back from work as long as it's below £25 so up to now it's been covered entirely. I have heard that I may be able to claim up to £30 now so I'll give it a go and see what happens.
The loss of unlimited data is a real negative though. Especially as the HTC Desire (like all decent smartphones) has so many apps and widgets that need a constant web connection to make best use of them. The unlimited data I had was wasted on my 5800. It was the phone Nokia brought out in response to the iPhone but didn’t have anything like the functionality to make use of the luxury of unlimited data. I mainly used it to check football scores, not exactly data intensive!
When I’m at home I hook the Desire up to my wireless network (to be fair the 5800 could do this as well) so I think the 500MB a month limit will be OK for when I'm out and about. I can also use BTOpenzone and The Cloud wireless hotspots, although there seem to be some issues, so I should be pretty well connected wherever I go. If we had a wireless network in the office it would be perfect but there's no news of one being setup anytime soon.
One thing the 5800 did excel at was being a SatNav. Nokia snapped up Navteq a few years ago and rolled out OVI Maps to all users with a compatible phone. I have installed Google’s Navigation app so only time will tell how well it compares. I’ll test it out on the drive up North later this week.
Just as long as the battery life holds up, these smartphone really do use up a lot of juice!
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