New adventures of the red fluffy pouch - the early years.

The HTC Desire is a few weeks old now and I thought it would be good to write down some of my initial impressions before I forget them.

Using the phone - I am getting better at typing onto the touch-screen and usually use it in the vertical mode (with smaller key "pads") rather than using the horizontal mode when the pads are bigger. It just seems more logical and even with my large fingers, i'm not making so many typing mistakes. I've not had to read the instruction book yet and no doubt there are great tips and tricks, but the phone is very intuitive. My previous phones have all been Symbian phones that required batteries to be removed usually once a week to correct hung up firmware. I haven't seen any glitches or had to remove the battery.

The call quality is great and the software has some nice touches.

I found out how to disable the regular updates (settings/Accounts & sync/Background data, un-tick the box) and extend the battery life and then enabled them again because like the regular updates; I just extended the period between each application update.

Camera - It's great. Easy to use. Example above. Not tried the effects

Applications
Supplied in the phone - Messages, weather, news and HTC Calendar are all great. I haven't got the hang of Footprints yet and there are many more to try.

I haven't purchased an application from the app. store yet. All the stuff I've donwloaded (and sometimes un-installed) has been free so far.

My current favourite applications -

• Seesmic for Twitter; I like to be able to check both personal and work twitter accounts. This is the best free twitter app (so far) to do this. I find that uploading photos to Twitpic in poor signal areas takes a while and contacted Seesmic about it. They replied within 2 hours. Great service. Better than the supplied Peep application only because Peep can't support two accounts.
• Google Translate and Google Sky Map. Both excellent applications.
• Goggles - strange one this, find photos on the net that are similar to phone photos. Great fun on a night out to find that your colleagues are matched with spaniels or Selfridges.
• Places Directory is great to find places (strangely enough) like restaurants and car parks anywhere.
• Urban Spoon is ok, but couldn't find a Chinese restaurant in  Ayr that has existed for 20 years, presumably because it's a subscription service?
• AG News collects a great list of UK and foreign news papers, handy for me because I'm learning French.
• Facebook for Android app works.
• Games - Robo Defence is addictive and Toss It passes the time nicely.
• Remember I'm learning French ? I'm currently trying French Flashcards. Excellent.
  
• beebPlayer - a great unofficial iPlayer app
• Barcode Scanner is great fun to play with but haven't put it to great use yet.

Other apps have been un-installed usually because they didn't work as well as advertised.

The music player is excellent quality and simple to use. Nothing else to add. Adding files is easy; no software is required.

Purchased extras - I replaced the screen protector I purchased from Amazon, which was expensive rubbish. Now this one, a Vikuiti DQC-160 is excellent and worth the money. Point to note is to ensure that as you apply the screen protector you are at the top of the Desire screen and aligned with the edges, not over the edges.
I won't put up a link to the bad screen protector I wasted money on, in case someone purchases it.

The famous red fluffy pouch, if you remember was purchased because of the un-availability of official phone carriers and also if I'm honest an opportunity to add colour to my otherwise dull life. You can get one here BTW.
It is still wonderful and excellent value for money.
The red fluffy microfibre material is still reasonable clean and I have discovered several more benefits:

1. If placed on a fabric car seat, it does not budge even when negotiating the tightest corners.
2. When placed inside a jacket or shirt it does not fall out easily, if one bends to pick something up or just to enjoy the feeling of bending over.
3. If removed from lined pockets, it most likely brings the lining of the pocket with it, leading to the recovery of loose lost change, receipts, unwanted gold and random pocket fluff.
4. It will not protect against a fall from 1m onto concrete. You'll just
   have to take that one as a prediction though as my new HTC is too
   precious to test it.

The only problematic part of my HTC Desire experience so far is the headphones/mike set they give you with the phone.
I must have small ears, but I find it difficult to keep the earphones in my ears. Other than that they're fine with the on-the-cord buttons for stop/start previous/next tracks working fine.

More later...