Something something Desire something

[andrewducker]

I got to play with the HTC Desire last night. I charged it up, activated the SIM and had a play.

Setup was a doddle - it asked a couple of questions and set itself up to synchronise all of my contacts, calendar and email from google. It displays the new emails, texts, etc. nicely at the top of the screen. And so far everything has Just Worked.

The only thing it didn't do was support IMAP push email. Which meant that it had to actively check for new emails every 10 minutes. This seemed pretty silly, but a quick check found me K9, a fork of the basic Android email app that supported push mail. Installing that took about 10 seconds, and I then just had to turn off gmail and the built-in mail app and I was all done.

The only quirk that's annoyed me was that on my old phone I could quit my email app when I didn't want to be alerted any more - whereas on the Desire it looked like I was going to have to turn the synchronising off, which is a bit of a pain. However, the only reason I wanted to do that was so I wouldn't be woken up in the middle of the night. And it turned out that I could turn the phone to silent and the alarm would still make a noise, so that works as a workaround. I need to work out what to do in general though, because I want to be wakeable by a phone call in the middle of the night, but not by emails arriving. I'll have a play with the interface tonight and see what I can find.

I'm sure there will be other annoyances over the next few days, but I guess I'll have to wait and see what they are. Because generally I love it.

Comments

[andrewducker]

It backs up to the SD card on a regular basis.

And I've got it set to sync contacts and calendar to google already.

I've not actually plugged it into the computer at all. I guess I should, and see what I can do when I do that.

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

So if your phone gets nicked, have you got a backup? For instance, do you keep your SD card in the phone or d'you take it out? The great thing about the backup in iTunes is that, if my phone goes missing, I can put the information back onto the new handset.

[andrewducker]

I don't have a total backup at the moment - I ought to set one up.

I do have a backup of my contacts and calendar. And I don't have any photos on it at the moment, so there's not much else that I need to back up.

How does iPhone deal with apps? Can you back them up and then restore them to a different phone?

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

Apps live on your computer. Apps that you buy on the go through the apps store are synced back to your computer when you plug your phone in. And you can sync apps to any of the devices that you own, without limit. The backup backs up stuff like your contacts, your system settings and your text messages. A list of the apps that you had on your phone is saved (although the apps aren't put in the backup folder, they're in your iTunes Library so it shouldn't matter too much). It doesn't save passwords for apps/websites (which is probably a good thing as it prevents anyone who is snooping around your computer getting hold of them, I guess). However, my list of passwords in 1Password was backed up when I restored to a fresh handset after dropping my old one, IIRC (I didn't really pay attention to what had gone missing and what hadn't!) so I'm not sure how much of the settings or data from each app are saved. It may vary from app to app, I don't know.

[andrewducker]

Aaaah, having it all on the computer makes a certain amount of sense. Whereas the Android model seems to be to have the phone be the prime object - but there's the problem there that if I lose it (or upgrade) then I'm not sure whether it's possible to backup/restore apps.

Time to do some digging!

[andrewducker]

Aha! It's linked to my Google Checkout account - the apps will be downloadable again provided I use the same Google ID on the new phone.

So the only thing I have to worry about is my app data and my photos. Looks like I need to back those up every so often. Mind you, there's probably an app for that...

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

This is why I don't understand the feature Google recently announced, of buying stuff on your computer and your phone downloading it. Why bother? Why not just download it from the phone? It seems to fly in the face of what they've said they're aiming for from the Android OS and also doesn't make anything any easier for anyone. I can understand it as a "we can do it so we might as well do it" feature, but not as a feature unveiled in the 2.2 announcement....

[andrewducker]

Not seen that, but it does seem odd. I like that I can open the app store on the phone, choose an app, and have it running 10 seconds later. I'm not sure what putting a computer in there will add to the process.

(I also understand the iPhone way of doing things, which seems to be safer in many ways. It's all swings and roundabouts).

I'll have to go off and see what they're suggesting, and see if I can make it make sense to me...

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

I can have an app running in 10s, too – it's just that God looked at the apps and deemed them worthy before I browsed them. :P

I am all in favour of a controlled ecosystem, but I am not in favour of an censored ecosystem. I don't like that certain apps don't get through because they're pornographic. Although I have absolutely no desire to switch to Android (srsly love my iPhone), I'm glad that Google are encroaching on Apple's markets because I am hoping it is the kick up the arse that His Steveness needs to actually stop censoring the apps in the App Store and start just monitoring for malware/serious bugs (which I think, on a phone that backs itself up to your computer, is something that's worth doing!).

[andrewducker]

You can install apps when you're not at your computer? I thought that you had to have iTunes, etc.?

I'm totally with you on the feedback between the two systems. I want Apple to kick Google into making Android better, and Google to kick Apple into making the iPhone more open. Competition is definitely good for the consumer!

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

Yeah, you've been able to install apps on-the-go since the introduction of the App Store. And for the moment, the only way to buy books is through the iPhone/iPad app. You can't download apps that are larger than 20MB in size unless you're on Wi-Fi (presumably AT&T set that restriction).

[andrewducker]

Do they then synch to your PC the next time you connect to iTunes?

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

Yes, they do. Same with updates to apps – you can download them on-the-go but large files require Wi-Fi connections.

[andrewducker]

Cheers - that makes sense now!

[andrewducker]

Aaaah. I think I get it.

I can use the marketplace app to buy stuff, but the virtual keyboard isn't as fast as using a real keyboard, and having multiple windows open to compare things is clearly not as useful as, say, having 6 tabs open in Firefox.

So having a web-based store that then links to the phone and triggers it to download things is useful as an additional method.

[johncoxon.livejournal.com]

I guess that's useful, but given that Android has wireless syncing (or did I make that up?) it still seems a bit surplus to requirements.

[andrewducker]

It's not vital, certainly. I added the "Edinburgh Bus Tracker" app while I was standing at a bus stop, for instance. It would be nice to have though, when I'm raking through dozens of apps to find the one I want.