Comments on: Telstra HTC Desire Social Review ‘Hands-on’ Kick-off!

By: Phill

Phill — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 11:57:11 +0000

Why do they put the speaker on the back of the phone?
It really annoys my that everyone within a few meters can
hear the person that I am talking to on my phone. Damn that
p*sses me off!

By: Tanya

Tanya — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 09:13:36 +0000

I’ve only had my HTC a week or so. Have photos that i want to use as “contact icons” but when I go to the picture then set as contact icon the search always comes back as no matches found… How do I add pics to contacts???

By: Eduard

Eduard — Sun, 18 Jul 2010 02:00:02 +0000

Had this great phone for bit over a week now. Many mention battery life and initially, it was bad. I now installed ‘advanced task killer’ and bought ‘juice defender’ ($3 US) battery life became acceptable and easily lasts me through a day now.

I have juice defender switching on Wifi (or 3G if needed) every 5 minutes and then turning it off again when the phone is on standby, so I still get all the updates / sync regularly but that saves quite a bit.

Other awesome apps I installed (as some of you also have):
handcent – replaces my sms conversations
swiftkey – very fast predictive keyboard that learns from you
agenda widget – widget to display your calendar(s)
action complete – getting things done / task list
netcounter – keeping track of your wifi / 3G data use to avoid nasty surprises

By: Dave M

Dave M — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 04:17:30 +0000

The battery life is appalling. Until HTC fix this I cannot recommend this phone at all. With everything off ie WiFi and 3G no email or GPS just a phone I only get a day max. Also takes ages to charge whereas my old Nokia got enough in about 1 hour.

Great phone but no good till the battery life is much better.

I even asked the question about battery life at the telstra shop and was assured it was as good as an Iphone ( i hate Iphones)

By: Greg Lamb

Greg Lamb — Mon, 31 May 2010 03:09:06 +0000

Haven’t had any issues with Exchange Activesync since changing the APN. The APN that was set up with the phone out of the box was telstra.wap. After changing it to telstra.internet, all was good.

In regards to battery life, I seem to have struck a good compromise. I’ve set the check frequency of all my apps to a moderate setting and get pretty much a days use out of it. If I do to much web surfing, I have to charge it mid-late afternoon.

This weekend just gone all I did was send a bunch of SMSs, a couple of calls and check incoming emails and tweets (non peak check of emails is 1/2 hour). Battery came off charge at 10:30am Saturday and I still had 35% Sunday night 11:30pm (airplane mode from 10:30pm Sat to 11am Sun….had some well deserved sleep ins).

I’m not so much of an (so called) Apple ‘Fanboy’ as I used to be but I think I agree with a recent comment by a reviewer elsewhere regarding Android. It’s a great operating system but when coming from (and comparing to) an iPhone, there’s just something missing. It’s the little things that are just that much easier on iPhone OS and Android needs just that little bit of extra work to manage. In time, the UI might be just as easy to use/manage. Having said that, for a technical person, the phone is great.

I would like to have the opportunity to turn off built in apps so that I could use my preferred apps ie Messages vs Handcent, Mail vs any other number of apps. If I don’t use them, they still run and if I kill them, they just relaunch.

As stated by many other people, I’d also like the option to remove HTC/Telstra apps that I don’t use. I’ve pretty much reached my limit of apps I can install and without FroYo, I have no option but to either delete apps that I may want but need others more.

By: Ratzbool

Ratzbool — Sun, 30 May 2010 09:33:25 +0000

Thoroughly enjoying these reviews, though I’m wondering if any of the reviewers have experienced the widely reported problems with ActiveSync.

I’m this close to getting a HTC Desire, but the exchange server sync issues reported for the Desires native ActiveSync would be a deal breaker for me.

By: Andrew Gillett

Andrew Gillett — Mon, 24 May 2010 03:37:28 +0000

I posted on my Tumblr over the weekend about my frustrations with the Sense UI continually crashing, and how problematic this might be for a non-tech user.

Turns out it was (seemingly) a corrupted Scene I had saved. The upshot was having to delete all data from the Sense UI (including all the setups I had saved in Scenes), which fixed the crashing problem, but left me having to reconfigure the device to the way I had set it up.

You can read all about it at http://digitalbirdy.tumblr.com/post/624948283/frustrated-with-desire

By: Michael Konarzewski

Michael Konarzewski — Sun, 23 May 2010 21:44:07 +0000

Here’s a video I took in the car over the weekend:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FpZ5g1VDCIg

I had a look at how the lens was able to handle changing light conditions (dark inside the car, light sky at dusk).

Wasn’t too bad actually. 480p looks acceptable.

Shame about uploading – have to do it over Wifi, not over NextG.

I’ll be posting up a review of how the phone went over the weekend this evening after work.

By: Michael Wheatland

Michael Wheatland — Sun, 23 May 2010 21:15:17 +0000

Having not received my HTC desire for review yet, I have decided to do a review on the systems of the HTC Desire (Android) vs the Apple iPhone from a global community and competition point of view.

http://blog.wheatland.com.au/2010/05/iphone-vs-htc-desire.html

By: Graham Mitchell

Graham Mitchell — Sun, 23 May 2010 08:16:13 +0000

I applied to take part in the ‘social review’ and was rejected. As someone over 50, I strongly suspect ageism may have played a part or is that just sour grapes?
I’m not particularly impressed with what I’ve read about the phone to date; the battery life would drive me insane! At least my four year old Motorola lasts for four or five days between charges.
I’m greatly looking forward to the next iphone; will it knock HTC of its perch…?