The last phone I bought was a Legend...and I'm still rocking it. It's my daily use, so it's been dropped, forgotten places, thrown around, banged around, kidnapped by a dog, you name it. Sure, the specs are dated and it's only running 2.2. But I walk around with my laptop, so all I need my phone for is calling, texting, emailing and tethering, which it does easily. The styling has even held up; it gets a look or two from iPhone users and their ubiquitous rectangle.
All this is to say, I'm in the market for a new phone and haven't really come across anything that makes me want to retire this thing. Mostly too big, too "cheap" feeling, too expensive; just too much going on in general. But based on my experience with this phone, if HTC can do something impressive with the software, I'll buy again. Hell, having a decent DSP is enough.
I also own a Legend, and it's indeed a very solid phone. I dropped it on concrete 3 times and only have a few 1mm scratches on it. I've also spilled a whole glass of water over it, and I just shut it down immediately and used it the next day without a problem.
When I first held an iPhone 4, I was completely unimpressed by how it feels. It felt like I'm holding a glass in my hand, and I'd better not drop it or it will smash into many pieces. The Legend feels a whole lot better in hand and more solid. Even the LG Optimus Black feels more solid, and it's made out of plastic. But I'm hoping more manufacturers will start using metal or some very solid material in their phones, because it will be hard for me to use something that feels significantly weaker and cheap.
That being said, the Legend is the worst HTC phone from that period, software wise. It's one of the most locked down phones ever. It took me like 7 hours to get to root it and install a custom ROM on it, because I had to jump over a ton of hoops to be able to do it and the process was very complicated. It only took about an hour to root and put a custom ROM on an LG Optimus One, considering these both times are the first time I've ever rooted a phone.
You're right. My phone and I need a bond with the Universe such that I can predict every unfortunate thing that happens to it both from inside forces (forgetting it) and outside ones (dognapping).
Look. I care for my phone (Bionic), but there's a reason it has a case around it, and there's a reason I have insurance. Accidents happen. With a rugged phone, those accidents csn be less detrimental.
But those events are the inevitability of having a phone you carry and use 12 hours a day. I know they shouldn't happen, and I try to avoid them, but alas...
My point wasn't that this phone was superior to any other phone in that regard. Just that I haven't been able to kill it yet, and I certainly don't baby it.
I have an HTC Desire which I used to love because it was fast and easy to use, however that all changed about few months back when the latest version of Sense got auto installed.
Now, if you want to unlock the phone instead of just swiping down on the screen, you have to put your finger over a "ring" and drag this up past a certain point on the screen and then let go. At this point your homescreen will come into view by doing a 360 degree spin which last about 2 seconds (there is no way to skip it).
Then once you have unlocked it if you want to navigate between screens you have a compiz cube style effect which seems to really slow the interface down.
Not to mention that when you get an incoming call you are back to the "ring" interface and you must drag and drop the ring onto answer or reject. Of course if you want to reject a call and you drop the ring even a millimeter shy of the reject button it will answer the call.
Oh, and there's no way to turn these features off or go back to the previous version of sense..
The problem can be mitigated somewhat by installed the "widgetlocker" program, but the answer issue can't as far as I can tell.
I really have no idea why they would decide to ruin the UI like this! If they hadn't messed this up I would quite happily have bought another HTC when I was looking for a new phone, but after this there is just no way I could recommend one.
Yeah, I agree, I really dislike the new Sense unlocking screen. Worse yet it limits me since I cannot use a 3rd party home screen application (like LauncherPro) as the extra buttons in the unlocking thing don't work with it.
Luckily though HTC does provide bootloader unlocking tools on its developer site so that you can install your own build of Android on the phone (and get rid of Sense).
Acquiring and dealing isn't building. This rings of the acquisition sprees that RIM and Nokia went on in the run-up to their dramatic declines. It's embarrassing to read Extremetech dress up the Beats acquisition as something of a coup - their industry reputation is somewhere between Monster and Bose (ie competent if unimpressive technology with overbearing marketing).
I'm going to copy and paste a comment of mine from a previous thread. Not 100% applicable due to the difference in the story, but the general idea of the comment is still true.
I think the real headline should actually say "It's time to stop submitting articles from Extreme Tech."
Their headlines never say the true intent of their article, and their article never comes to the conclusion that has been set up through the arguments. There is extreme bias and non sequiturs riddling the entire site.
It's a difficult read because of the logic errors, and everytime an article is posted from Extreme Tech, it seems everyone comes away with a different opinion of what was really meant. This isn't creative literature class. This is not a good way to run a website.
If HTC wants to integrate these services into the core experience of their devices, then they are going to have to manipulate the android source in a substantial way that will contribute to the fragmentation issue. I think these manufacturers are expecting something out of android that it cannot deliver. These "kindle-esque" forks are going to be android's undoing.
We'll have to wait and see, but I think every major manufacturer is going to to try and build a platform/ecosystem similar to what Amazon and B&N have done.
I actually don't think these high-level things are the fragmentation that matter. The fragmentation that causes delays are based on adapting the code to hardware. Things like releasing a phone with an 8MP camera, 720p recording and HDMI out running eclair and then having to rewrite that support the "AOSP-way" when froyo and gingerbread and ics finally add support for the same features to AOSP. That's the part of the "skin" that's the problem not things like widgets and more purely-software things. The challenge is that the market advances hardware faster than Google makes code available. The only way this can be resolved is if AOSP is developed in the open rather than behind closed doors. AOSP has a very strong case of NIH syndrome--but mostly because its impossible for them to share what the Nexus team is up to. Alternatively everyone could just build phones only based on Nexus chipsets and features, (but that's not possible either since the Nexus hardware is also kept under wraps during development and building new phones based on last years model isn't going to work in the market).
The margins on software and services are many multiples greater than consumer electronics hardware.
If they make $20 net revenue per phone sold just imagine if they can make another $20 net from revenue shares by way of Dropbox, LogMeIn, and other ancillary bundled services.
That secondary $20 would double their net per phone which would be transformative for their business.
Additionally, services create data and service lock-in as users move from older devices to newer devices if their platform makes migration within the HTC brand seamless.
This is what is wrong with android. If device manufacturers/carriers want to add shit to the OS it should be done in the form of downloadable applications that are presented as options when setting up the phone. The OS experience is way too fragmented when moving from phone to phone. This leads to older phones never getting core OS updates because they would have to update sense for the 40 phones they produced in the last few years which will never happen.
At the very least, this year we seem to be over the hump and the vast majority of new activations are 2.2 or higher, which at least takes some pressure off the fragmentation debate:
I'm not sure Google expected that there would be so many phones stuck on 1.5/1.6 or 2.1 - I wouldn't be surprised if you can still buy a new phone running a really non-representative version of Android. Can't be good for the platform reputation in terms of UX or security.
Luckily for Android, iOS 5 was playing catchup to 2.3 in many ways and the two platforms are now fairly comparable in terms of core features. However, if ICS uptake remains as slow as its been so far Apple could leap out ahead with iOS 6, particularly if things like TouchWiz continue to defeat Google's attempts to refine the UI.
The last phone I bought was a Legend...and I'm still rocking it. It's my daily use, so it's been dropped, forgotten places, thrown around, banged around, kidnapped by a dog, you name it. Sure, the specs are dated and it's only running 2.2. But I walk around with my laptop, so all I need my phone for is calling, texting, emailing and tethering, which it does easily. The styling has even held up; it gets a look or two from iPhone users and their ubiquitous rectangle.
All this is to say, I'm in the market for a new phone and haven't really come across anything that makes me want to retire this thing. Mostly too big, too "cheap" feeling, too expensive; just too much going on in general. But based on my experience with this phone, if HTC can do something impressive with the software, I'll buy again. Hell, having a decent DSP is enough.
/end infomercial?