OFFICIAL HTC Desire Thread

[dakota]

As a matter of interest - is there a newer model on the horizon for SA soon (like the Incredible) or is the Desire likely to be the flagship phone here for a while to come?

Lol, calm down, the Desire was only released end of March. Going to be HTC's flagship phone until at least October possibly longer.

The Incredible is basically the US version of the Desire. Only major differences is that it has 8GB of internal flash memory (Desire has none), a 8mp camera (5mp for Desire), built for a CDMA network and has 512mb ram (576mb for Desire).

The other big HTC phone is the EVO 4g which is also a US only phone built for Sprint with WiMAX connectivity and a 4.3" LCD screen (Desire has a higher quality AMOLED screen).

Based on the current crop of flagship smartphones I reckon the Desire is the best, but having just bought one I may be slightly biased .

 

[dlk001]

After getting annoyed with low memory, I decided to root my device, installed MoDaCo Custom ROM. Now, I can install all I want into the SDCard.

I must say rooting the Desire is a test of patience compared to installing customs ROMs on Windows Mobile phone. MoDaCo Custom ROM runs smoother than stock ROM.

 

[DAE_JA_VOO]

What kind of battery life have you guys been getting? A few days ago, I had TERRIBLE battery life, I managed about 40 minutes of Wifi based web browsing and my battery lost a GOOD chunk of power. After about 2 days of optimizing, I'm probably going to be getting 2 days out of a single charge

 

[kvi]

everything you want to know about your desires battery

just remember when you first get your phone you WILL be playing with it every spare second you have it, and of course battery life is going to be crazy short. ive had mine a couple weeks now and only use it when i need to and batt life is like 2 days now

http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=669497

 

[armitage]

Well i've had my phone now for about 5 days.
Impressions so far is that its a fewking awesome phone. The best i've ever had. Photos are great, system is very nice and responsive and after unlocking other markets (market enabler app) I've found so many apps that are just plain fun .

Few grips.

Contact setup is a pita. Took me a good 4 hours so far to set up all my contacts and get them linked to their respective gtalk and fb profiles.
App saving to sd card only is a ****ty idea. I had the phone for about 2 days and I was already getting messages that the sd card was full and I had to uninstall apps.
No tooltips. You have to really test everything before you know what it does. There are no info screens almost anywhere to tell you how to do things (linked contacts, upload photos).
Battery life at the moment is a pain. I get about 3 hours of usage before it dies on me Wonder what i am doing wrong.
If you want some peace and quiet the only way to turn off some features like gtalk is to completely turn the internet and wifi connections.
Afrikaans language settings is non existant :/ (It takes me roughly twice as long to type a message in afrikaans than in english since I have to teach the autocorrect that the words I type are not in fact errors).
No easy way to kill an app without using another app.

The grips I have are small and puny though compared to the pluses of it

 

[Fudzy]

All these messages about SD cards being full, how big are the SD cards that you're using?

 

[Mr Feesh]

Well i've had my phone now for about 5 days.
Impressions so far is that its a fewking awesome phone. The best i've ever had. Photos are great, system is very nice and responsive and after unlocking other markets (market enabler app) I've found so many apps that are just plain fun .

Did you have to root your phone to use the MarketEnablerApp??

@Fudzy -4gb micro sd

 

[rorz0r]

It's not the SD card getting full, it's the built in phone memory. You can either root or wait for android 2.2/froyo to get the ability to install apps to SD and then you shouldn't have any space problems.

 

[alt146]

Well i've had my phone now for about 5 days.
Impressions so far is that its a fewking awesome phone. The best i've ever had. Photos are great, system is very nice and responsive and after unlocking other markets (market enabler app) I've found so many apps that are just plain fun .

Few grips.

Contact setup is a pita. Took me a good 4 hours so far to set up all my contacts and get them linked to their respective gtalk and fb profiles.
App saving to sd card only is a ****ty idea. I had the phone for about 2 days and I was already getting messages that the sd card was full and I had to uninstall apps.
No tooltips. You have to really test everything before you know what it does. There are no info screens almost anywhere to tell you how to do things (linked contacts, upload photos).
Battery life at the moment is a pain. I get about 3 hours of usage before it dies on me Wonder what i am doing wrong.
If you want some peace and quiet the only way to turn off some features like gtalk is to completely turn the internet and wifi connections.
Afrikaans language settings is non existant :/ (It takes me roughly twice as long to type a message in afrikaans than in english since I have to teach the autocorrect that the words I type are not in fact errors).
No easy way to kill an app without using another app.

The grips I have are small and puny though compared to the pluses of it

Agree with most of those gripes, but they are pretty small. To get your battery life up, turn off wifi when you're not using it and turn down your screen brightness when you're indoors. There's a power management widget that makes this very easy to do. If you use the phone heavily the battery takes a plummet, but it does seems to get s bit stronger after 3-4 full charges and I'm getting about 24 hours of moderate usage.

To kill an app without using a dedicated app killer, go to to application management in the settings menu and select the application you want to kill. There should be a force close option. Dedicated task killers just make it easier to tell what is using all your memory and kill it straght away. That said, Androids handling of multitasking and memory is very elegant, you shouldnt every have to close apps yourself. Even with the RAM full, the phone still flies and android closes apps in the background on its own when you want to open something new.

I wish you could uninstall some of the apps that come on the phone - limited onboard memory is a bit of a bummer and I really dont need a twitter client, never mind two of them.

 

[alt146]

Did you have to root your phone to use the MarketEnablerApp??

@Fudzy -4gb micro sd

There's a link in the official android thread to the app. No root required, but it doesnt seem to work for everyone.

 

[HapticSimian]

Few grips.

"Gripes", maybe?

App saving to sd card only is a ****ty idea. I had the phone for about 2 days and I was already getting messages that the sd card was full and I had to uninstall apps.

I'm sure you mean to phone memory only...

No tooltips. You have to really test everything before you know what it does. There are no info screens almost anywhere to tell you how to do things (linked contacts, upload photos).

Agreed, but rather figuring stuff out myself than having constant annoying popups once I've got to know everything inside-out. As an aside, the phone's full manual is on the SD card in .pdf. Came across it by starting the PDF Viewer on the phone, and then seeing an unfamiliar PDF on the SD.

Battery life at the moment is a pain. I get about 3 hours of usage before it dies on me Wonder what i am doing wrong.

Keep phone on GSM in areas with bad 3G reception - I find the constant hunting for 3G reception at my office a huge drain. Also, keep WiFi & sync off unless you're actually using it.

If you want some peace and quiet the only way to turn off some features like gtalk is to completely turn the internet and wifi connections.

You can go into 'Accounts and Sync' in 'Settings' and deselect on a per-account basis what should & what shouldn't be syncing.

Afrikaans language settings is non existant :/ (It takes me roughly twice as long to type a message in afrikaans than in english since I have to teach the autocorrect that the words I type are not in fact errors).

Aye. I also don't want my dictionary flooded with Afrikaans, though. So if I need to bomb a moedertaal-sms I just switch off error correction on the keyboard - it's a couple of clicks in from the little gear-button, bottom-left of the keyboard layouts.

No easy way to kill an app without using another app.

...and there's no need for killing apps in Android - it's bright enough to handle the task itself. Things like navigation apps and bigger games that would be a major drain on the battery even in the background do have menu options to exit them.

The grips I have are small and puny though compared to the pluses of it

Abso-friggen-lutely.

 

[Stefan!]

I have not yet set up my vodacom internet and mms settings. I have only been using wifi.

For some reason my weather seems to be up to date the whole time??

Where does the info come from? I am sure my internet setting has not been set up since i cant send mmses yet. On 3g watchdog it says i have used like 31Kb?

 

[Ecco]

I have not yet set up my vodacom internet and mms settings. I have only been using wifi.

For some reason my weather seems to be up to date the whole time??

Where does the info come from? I am sure my internet setting has not been set up since i cant send mmses yet. On 3g watchdog it says i have used like 31Kb?

You can turn the automatic updates for the weather app off.

 

[Ecco]

Anybody found a good pouch for the phone? or Screen protector?

 

[Stefan!]

You can turn the automatic updates for the weather app off.

Yeah, what i meant is: If my internet settings is not set up and i am not connected to wifi where does it get the weather update?

 

[rorz0r]

Anybody found a good pouch for the phone? or Screen protector?

On bidorbuy there's one of those silicone type covers that covers the back for R55.
I've ordered the full body invisibleshield from invisibleprotectors.co.za.

 

[Ecco]

On bidorbuy there's one of those silicone type covers that covers the back for R55.
I've ordered the full body invisibleshield from invisibleprotectors.co.za.

I have an invisible shield on my Nintendo DS. It does the job, however i am not overly impressed by the finish - its a bit orange peel like.

Please let us know what your thoughts are once you get it.

 

[lanman]

How long do you guys think we will get froy update after hopeful release date of 19th? Maybe if we flood Leaf with emails demanding it we can speed things up? Heard some Magic users waited a LOOOOOOOONNNNNNGGGGG time for updates.

 

[larkia]

On bidorbuy there's one of those silicone type covers that covers the back for R55.
I've ordered the full body invisibleshield from invisibleprotectors.co.za.

I am not too keen on the silicone type covers. You tend to get dust etc caught up in-between the phone and the cover that could scratch the phone. I didn't want to wait and got quite a nice leather pouch that fits the desire perfectly. MTN R150. It slides in from the top and has a drawstring approach to pull the phone out again.

@rorz0r - The invisibleShield seems a bit pricey but would like to hear about it one you get it

 

[armitage]

Anybody btw found a good website that compares the different roms that you can get for android 2.1? Woke up yesterday with the phone in the bootloader screen and thought it GSOD (Google screen of death) on me. Piqued my interest to get the phone rooted.

From what Ive read its not that complicated to get your phone rooted. You have to do a few things in the right order but shouldn't be that hard.
From there was thinking of using a backup program that I found (can't remember name now) once the phone has been rooted so that I can just get all my settings and info on an image which I then restore once the new rom is on.
I doubt HTC will update the desire quickly with the new android version once its out (think they took quite a while to update the hero to 2.1 if I remember correctly), so having the phone rooted and rommed would be the first step to quickly jump on the new android version once it comes out.

G-Mote is an awesome program Oh and the novelty factor of Google skymaps and the barcode scanner programs is well worth it


Current favourties.
G-Mote
Widget to turn off wifi, gps, 3g and Intenet.
Advanced task killer.
Opera mini, though its not as good as I hoped it would be.
Talk for google is awesome since all my friends only use that exclusively.
Maps since I get lost a lot

The friend stream is .... awright. Not that great methinks. Feels very much like a gee wiz app that they just made to show that the integration with fb or other social sites.


p.s. Soz about the grips spelling