HTC HD2 : First Impressions
April 1st 2010 11:29
I've had a fairly long string of phones which haven't provided much other than grief. This started witht he Palm Treo 750 and then the Sony Ericson Xperia X1i (Australian Market models).
My predominant reason for these particular phones....
Decent sized screens and access to a cheap and useable Zooming program I could purchase for $15. Having a vision impairment means I need to be able to enlarge the font on my primary method of portable communication, the SMS. Since this is not normally natively enabled I need external software.
Enter the HD2.....
It's BIG
Following in the difficult to follow footsteps of the iPhone from Apple HD2 has included a whopping 4.3" screen and it is beatiful. Surprising though is the actual thinness of the device and despite it's large size it fits quite neatly in your hands (although I do have large and long fingers to begin with). The screen is lovely to use (it's capacative not resistive).
Sense-less
Sorry but can't say I liked Sense.
I dumped it 2 hours after purhcase and moved onto SPB Mobile Shell 3.5 which in my view is essentially the best User Interface for Windows Mobile currently available.
Although Sense shars many features with SPB Mobile Shell it seems somewhow counter intuitive. The need toa ccess multiple panels simply became annoying when compared to SPB where you can centre everything that's important in an easy to access way that suits the user.
Big really is better
HTC messaging marks the first time I have seen the ability to modify text size natively within the messaging application. For me this has really bee a godsend and I'm very grateful to HTC for this feature. It probably seems less important to most people but for someone who has struggled with the frustrations of reading mobile phones for many years it really does put icing on the cake.
Capacative Screen
I must say my typing accuracy sucks a bit on the capacative screen. It is a completely different approach than a resistive screen. It is extremely sensitive so you often end up pressing things twice. My main complaint here is that the underlying WIndows Mobile system, despite having support for Capacative screens has difficult handling the inaccuracy of using your fingers when compared to the pin point applicability of a stylus. This can often cause issues when devling into settings that use the older Windows System.
My favourite aspect of this is that zooming by multitouch pinch is active in a number of applications including your photo album which is wonderful for zooming in on photos.
I really don't have anything to complain about at this stage.
I'll look at more features in depth later....
My predominant reason for these particular phones....
Decent sized screens and access to a cheap and useable Zooming program I could purchase for $15. Having a vision impairment means I need to be able to enlarge the font on my primary method of portable communication, the SMS. Since this is not normally natively enabled I need external software.
Enter the HD2.....
It's BIG
Following in the difficult to follow footsteps of the iPhone from Apple HD2 has included a whopping 4.3" screen and it is beatiful. Surprising though is the actual thinness of the device and despite it's large size it fits quite neatly in your hands (although I do have large and long fingers to begin with). The screen is lovely to use (it's capacative not resistive).
Sense-less
Sorry but can't say I liked Sense.
I dumped it 2 hours after purhcase and moved onto SPB Mobile Shell 3.5 which in my view is essentially the best User Interface for Windows Mobile currently available.
Although Sense shars many features with SPB Mobile Shell it seems somewhow counter intuitive. The need toa ccess multiple panels simply became annoying when compared to SPB where you can centre everything that's important in an easy to access way that suits the user.
Big really is better
HTC messaging marks the first time I have seen the ability to modify text size natively within the messaging application. For me this has really bee a godsend and I'm very grateful to HTC for this feature. It probably seems less important to most people but for someone who has struggled with the frustrations of reading mobile phones for many years it really does put icing on the cake.
Capacative Screen
I must say my typing accuracy sucks a bit on the capacative screen. It is a completely different approach than a resistive screen. It is extremely sensitive so you often end up pressing things twice. My main complaint here is that the underlying WIndows Mobile system, despite having support for Capacative screens has difficult handling the inaccuracy of using your fingers when compared to the pin point applicability of a stylus. This can often cause issues when devling into settings that use the older Windows System.
My favourite aspect of this is that zooming by multitouch pinch is active in a number of applications including your photo album which is wonderful for zooming in on photos.
I really don't have anything to complain about at this stage.
I'll look at more features in depth later....
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