HTC DESIRE HD

marine1 said:
@Enigma, thanks Maybe I must look at this phone as opposed to The bold 9780 just had many HTC's and hated using the stylus
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Makes me think of the days with my SonyEricsson P990i. If you lost the stylus, you were screwed. :(

But that was three years ago. Now we have touch screen phones. Hooray!
 
marine1 said:
@Enigma, thanks Maybe I must look at this phone as opposed to The bold 9780 just had many HTC's and hated using the stylus
Click to expand...

No worries - it was a limitation of technology at the time.

I've got a normal Desire & the wife's got a BB9700. The only benefit of the BB is, as I'm sure you'll know from experience, BIS. In every other respect 'berrys are blown to teeny tiny bits by any number of other real smartphones.

I will confess that the touch-screen only interface had me a little worried at first, especially coming from an HTC Touch Pro II with a full keyboard, but after 6 months of use I don't think I'll easy go back to a phone with a QWERTY keypad again. When a touch-screen is as good as they've become, I personally find the much bigger layout of an on-screen keyboard so much more comfortable than the BBs'/Nokia E-series'/etc minuscule buttons.

I must also add that it has taken days' worth of reading the forums over at XDA Developers to get my phone to the level it is now - a lot of hacking and tweaking and flashing and modding and whatnot. However I believe HTC have learnt from the few less-than-brilliant elements of the Desire and have incorporated a number of improvements on the DHD. It has more internal memory, an 8mp camera as opposed to my phone's 5 etc. That being said HTC phones really only come into their own once you start modding the carp out of them as per XDA mentioned earlier.

My phone now runs a Desire HD ROM & thinks it has 2gb internal memory for apps instead of its original ±130mb. For all intents and purposes my 6-month old phone, old hat in tech terms, is now a Desire HD. That's pretty cool if that kind of thing appeals to you...
 
kingrob said:
They said they're getting more stock in a week's time. My best guess for an ETA is middle of December.
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Eish, MTN :sick: When my contract expires I'll be moving my number with them over to prepaid. No more THEM controlling the bills :rolleyes:
 
Zenbaas said:
Eish, MTN :sick: When my contract expires I'll be moving my number with them over to prepaid. No more THEM controlling the bills :rolleyes:
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I honestly don't know what happened to MTN in this country. It seems they're becoming more mediocre by the day.
 
kingrob said:
I honestly don't know what happened to MTN in this country. It seems they're becoming more mediocre by the day.
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It's more like people are only now discovering that they have been mediocre all along.
 
Some impressions

Phone design
The phone has a really solid design. I've read somewhere on a forum/review where the guy made a huge fuss about the screen border standing slightly proud of the screen itself, making it awkward when you slide your finger and it "hits" the side of the screen. No such thing! My only slight complaint is wrt the protruding camera lens at the back. This, together with the curved back of the phone, makes it wobble when lying flat on a table and you're busy with your finger on the screen. Compared to the iPhone design, I regard this as a drawback. But I suppose the phone was designed with best handheld comfort in mind. I would also have liked to see a cover for the camera lens.

Screen
I have absoluely no idea what type of screen the phone has, and I doubt if we'll ever know... So suffice to say it's a very impressive screen (how's that for quantative assessment!? ;-). See pic below which I've taken of my trusted old Touch Diamond side-by-side with the DHD - both screens set to max intensity.

attachment.php


I've been a good stylus slave with the Diamond and must say I've missed it somewhat when first starting to use the DHD, but then quickly adapted to the super smooth Sense interface. I still get some miss-types when using the on-screen keyboard, but should be improving with time, otherwise I'll get myself a capacitive stylus as back-up. Anybody knows if it would be possible to get Swype on the phone??

Battery
Mmmm. Way too early for me to comment on this since I'm still knee-deep in the exploration phase (first Android phone etc), installing every other app I can lay my hands on and fiddling with settings and so on. From keeping an eye on the XDA forums there is clearly some division on this topic. I guess I'm from the "school" that will treat the device as a "laptop" and have it plugged in most of the time when either close to a PC or a wall socket or a car. That doesn't bother me since I'm never too far from any of these for too long.

Apps
I'm having great fun exploring as many I can from the the AppBrain and HTC Market. Still too early to say what is essential and what not. I rather like the LauncherPro interface (compared to the stock HTC Sense one) that can also be seen in the image above. My device also "permrooted" now with VISIONary+. All the Adds that are part and parcel of the stock Froyo are quite a nuisance. Not too long before I will try out something like Leedroid. HtcSense.com works except for the "phone location" part that others have also reported on - seems that we will have to wait for the SW to mature.

Summary
This is by far the best phone I've ever had. OK, must admit that's not saying a lot! The huge screen is absolutely amazing and well worth the wait (compared to normal Desire). Performance is mind-blowing. Resources are huge. Style is awesome. O, and by the way, the telephony part also works....
 
jkoekemr said:
Phone design
The phone has a really solid design. I've read somewhere on a forum/review where the guy made a huge fuss about the screen border standing slightly proud of the screen itself, making it awkward when you slide your finger and it "hits" the side of the screen. No such thing! My only slight complaint is wrt the protruding camera lens at the back. This, together with the curved back of the phone, makes it wobble when lying flat on a table and you're busy with your finger on the screen. Compared to the iPhone design, I regard this as a drawback. But I suppose the phone was designed with best handheld comfort in mind. I would also have liked to see a cover for the camera lens.

Screen
I have absoluely no idea what type of screen the phone has, and I doubt if we'll ever know... So suffice to say it's a very impressive screen (how's that for quantative assessment!? ;-). See pic below which I've taken of my trusted old Touch Diamond side-by-side with the DHD - both screens set to max intensity.



I've been a good stylus slave with the Diamond and must say I've missed it somewhat when first starting to use the DHD, but then quickly adapted to the super smooth Sense interface. I still get some miss-types when using the on-screen keyboard, but should be improving with time, otherwise I'll get myself a capacitive stylus as back-up. Anybody knows if it would be possible to get Swype on the phone??

Battery
Mmmm. Way too early for me to comment on this since I'm still knee-deep in the exploration phase (first Android phone etc), installing every other app I can lay my hands on and fiddling with settings and so on. From keeping an eye on the XDA forums there is clearly some division on this topic. I guess I'm from the "school" that will treat the device as a "laptop" and have it plugged in most of the time when either close to a PC or a wall socket or a car. That doesn't bother me since I'm never too far from any of these for too long.

Apps
I'm having great fun exploring as many I can from the the AppBrain and HTC Market. Still too early to say what is essential and what not. I rather like the LauncherPro interface (compared to the stock HTC Sense one) that can also be seen in the image above. My device also "permrooted" now with VISIONary+. All the Adds that are part and parcel of the stock Froyo are quite a nuisance. Not too long before I will try out something like Leedroid. HtcSense.com works except for the "phone location" part that others have also reported on - seems that we will have to wait for the SW to mature.

Summary
This is by far the best phone I've ever had. OK, must admit that's not saying a lot! The huge screen is absolutely amazing and well worth the wait (compared to normal Desire). Performance is mind-blowing. Resources are huge. Style is awesome. O, and by the way, the telephony part also works....
Click to expand...

Thanks for the update! :) I was also been wondering about swype. I have it now on my nokia 5800 and i love it. Works great. So here's to hoping that we'll have it as an additional "app" on DHD sometimes in the future.
 
now I am the proud owner of a Desire HD (Purchased from Vodacom 4ways yesterday), does anyone know where I can get screen protectors, covers etc for it?
 
now that most of us have ordered ... i really really hope they dont jack another shipment of the phones!!!
 
jkoekemr said:
Thanks Zoner, but not really. All I can ascertain is that the Swype company is having a LOT of growing pains at the moment and that the Beta programme is closed for new applicants. Anything I'm missing? What are the swipe alternatives, if any?
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Theres and app called "SlideIT" available on the android store, just as good as swype ;)
 
well looks like im the only poor sod who is still waiting. applied twice on line with mtn and still no call back from the guys and still no sign of the stores getting stock, FML
 
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