Simon Hobbs | Site / HTCDesire

2.2 Update.

Were any of the below problems fixed? The answer, is no, and 2.2 is a step backwards in usability. Firstly, there is no visible difference - its like the upgrade never happened. I could find no new features except a torch app, and the WIFI hotspot tool, which I will never use as European Data roaming costs around Ł2000 per GB. There are three things which 2.2 has broken:

Car Mode of Death. When I plug in any normal USB charger, the phone switches itself into "car mode". No one seems to know what this means, but Im guessing it auto answers calls. No one knows why charging your phone at home, or with your computer, should cause it to go into car mode. There is no way to disable this abominable feature, you have to remember to manually switch off car mode very time you charge the phone with any USB charge except the cable with came with it.
Landscape Mode of Death. Many applications now come up by default in landscape mode, even tough I only every open them and use them in portrait mode. Then you have to shake the phone and wait for it to switch back. What a pain.
What, no Contacts? When you search your contacts using "Search People" icon, it doesnt search the company (aka organisation) or other key fields. So they haven't fixed this major bug yet. Anyway, the only solution was to use "contact search plus", a paid for app. however, this doesn't work with the phones contact search, you need to use "Google search" on the phone. the trouble is, contact search plus doesn't search on name! So you have to use one app to search on the contacts name, and another to search by company. The joke is that Google, the search engine company, has the worst contact search ever to appear on a smart phone, leaving you without the ability to find your contacts by any means unless you have a name associated with the company.

HTC Desire Mini Review (see end for review of essential Android Apps)

Pros

Fantastic HW - screen, CPU.
At last - a 3.5mm headphone jack.
Lots of apps on market.
Music is just drag a drop files - What a relief from the straight jacket which is itunes.
Web browser is great, but no tabs.
User Interface is very good.
Its very fast.

Cons

Only comes with 4GB. My 3 year old touch diamond had this much built in. It fills up pretty quick with a sat nav app and a bit of music. I just bought a 16GB card for Ł26 from ebay. Using a PC, I copied the data from the old to new card, and all the apps still work (copilot does a bit of unpacking, but works).
No Notes app included.
Wont sync anything to Mac.
No Todo app included.
No file browser included.
You cant search contacts by company/organisation, only first name or last name. 200 of my 1000+ contacts are just companies. If I want to find and contact one, I cant. There is no way. It doesn't even show it in the list so you cant scroll to it. So many people have raised this as a major defect over the last 2 years, its amazing its not fixed. This is a showstopper for me and anyone who has a company stored in their contact list. So if you want a phone which allows you to see/use your business contacts, you have to buy a 3rd party app e.g.
- Contact Search+. Adds organization to the android built in search, but not notes or email. Therefor useless.
- Star Contact Searches email and notes, but crippled by the T9 input. I.e. you cant type using the keyboard, you have to use number keys. This would be fine for a small number of contacts, but is a disaster with 1000+ as T9 finds too many matches (and I hate T9, by the way - it was fine on 10 year old phones with no keyboard, but has no place on a smart phone).
No task manager - you cant stop any running apps e.g. if you are running out of resources or want to stop the battery being eaten. If you open an app, it will run forever, using GPS, Wifi, CPU, Memory etc. And only a few programs actually have an "exit application" button - e.g. AndExplorer ? and Robo Defense. Give any app without an exit option less than 5* when you rate them. Apparently, Android keeps your last 6 apps running, regardless of the resources they are using (such as memory or gps). However, If you load a 3rd party task manager, you can see a lot more than this running.
Keyboard in portrait mode is difficult to type on - I make a lot of mistakes with characters on the left side.
There is no cut and paste. Well, you can copy, but you cant do anything with it. I fact you cant even select a bit of text. Windows mobile all is forgiven.
You want to call people right? Well if you have a lot of contacts (I have 1000+) finding them is a harder than it should be, and harder than on my old windows 6 mobile. If you are on the home screen and hit the HW search button at the bottom, type in their name, it shows matching names in the immediate results right? Wrong. To find people you have to do something like this:
1. navigate to the home screen ( a couple of swipes left or right)
2. Hit the "people" icon.
3. Now you can hit the search button, but it populates with the annoying auto completion helper, which is looking for dictionary words, not names. I turned it off just because the last thing you want when typing Simon or Andrew is for it to come up with "simple or android".
4. Hit the contact you want.
Lets compare this to windows mobile:
1. Hit the Contacts menu at the bottom.
2. Type name
3. Hit the contact you want.
The supplied mail widget has no support for gmail - you have to go through the pain of setting up the obscure IMAP setting etc. by hand. What were they thinking? There is a separate gmail app which just works, which duplicates all the gmails that the main mail widget has, or you have to have two mail apps, one for gmail and one for everything else.
Photo browsing is far inferior to the iphone. The navigation only really works if you have a small number of photos/albums.
The market is chock full of dross.
Does not come with a screen protector or basic case of any type. You will scratch it by the time your protector arrives from ebay for 99p. What where they thinking?
Browsing on the market on the phone is poor, you cant even sort (e.g. by rating or alphabetically). The Google Market webpage is even poorer - there is no search. How hard is it to make a decent web viewer for market? Finding decent apps is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Most apps write their data and settings to the SD card. This is good. However, if you change your sd card, you lose it all. There is no option in android I can find to backup this data. There are various third party tools which have a go, but frankly testing them to see if they actually work is something I would only do if the only other option was to re-grout my floor tiles.
Stupid facebook/twitter/flickr integration is for kids. It shows this phone is not designed for IT professionals, but their petulant offspring.
Uses a micro-usb connector. What is this about? We had a standard: mini usb that every smart phone, camera and gadget from the last 3 years uses. This micro one is almost the same size as the standard one, only a micron flatter. Now we have to carry 2 cables, 2 car chargers, 2 wall chargers everywhere. This is why we don't have guns, as I would shoot the inventors of new connectors designed to cause the world to have to go out and buy new accessories, filling the worlds rubbish dumps with the old ones, killing the planet bit by bit. However, you can get adapters from ebay at least. I have bought 4.
Poor battery life. You cant really use wifi or surf the web for more than a few hours without charging. I'm charging mine 1-2 times a day. Just using it as a phone lasts a few days which is acceptable. Its probably the same as any phone.
Right now (up to android 2.1), all apps install in internal memory. There is no way to install them on SD card. As you cant easily quit apps you open, your memory is going to fill up quickly if you install a lot of apps. I recommend deleting the ones you don't use much.

Conclusion:

Don't buy this if you have a Mac, or want to use it as a PIM/Organiser - it really sucks a that.
I hate to say this, as I am a hater of all things Mac (I have one, unfortunately), but the iPhone is better.
If Google included the basic essentials, such as notes, todo list, file manager and task manager app, added cut and paste to the existing edit menu, and synced to the mac, it would be a winner. I was shocked that this functionality was not included - I assumed it was so didn't check. If I had known at the time, I would not have bought this phone.
I expect this is currently the best Android phone on the planet. I bought it to piss-off Steve Ballmer (who is mad) and Steve Jobs (who is an evil genius bent on world domination). However, I have shares in both just in case.

Android Apps I have used (free unless price indicated).

Apps I recommend

WiFinder ? - decent access point locator. However, dont join networks using this - it doesnt seem to ever except the password. Instead, go to the system settings (by hitting the menu button when on the home page, then wireless & networks, then Wifi networkss, then "add wifi network", select your network and enter the password. This then works.
Robo Defense ($2.99 for full version, free only has one level) Fun tower defense game. Tips:
- Start with swim lanes of gun turrets.
- Use slow towers every 4 squares or so.
- Upgrade rocket towers to anti aircraft missiles by clicking on the missile tower. You will need a lot of these in the flight path of the aircraft, along with slow towers to hold them longer.
- After each game, go to the "spend reward points" in the main menu. Upgrade your staring cash first.
- As soon as you can, buy traps with your reward points. To use these, build a slow tower, then upgrade it to trap. Then click on the trap and pay 5 to arm it. You will need to re-arm it after each mine explosion. I use3 of these before the exit to protect against jeep rushes.
AndExplorer ? - decent file manager.
Android System Information. Shows memory, cpu, SD capacity, network info, running tasks/Apps, kill tasks/Apps, log viewer.
Oxford Spanish Dictionary ($25). Comprehensive dictionary, but not as good as the much cheaper Collins Spanish dictionary for Windows Mobile. However the Collins Spanish dic for Android is total pants. When I bought this, they gave me the wrong Key. took 2 days to get it working.
Retro Camera If you have heard of lomography, get this. Its a bit basic, e.g. doesn't remember what camera you were using, but some funky results.
ConnectBot Brilliant SSH terminal client. Supports multiple sessions (Swipe left and right to switch), short cuts to fav. servers, uses track ball click for CTRL and ESC. Has basic port forwarding (although not full tunneling).
eBuddy - slick IM client which supports msn, icq, facebook etc. No skype chat though :(
Thinking Space - Mind map tool which works really well on Android. Saves to image or .mm file for emailing. Does sync with their website, for basic file backup (with revisions). .mm files are compatible with freemind app

Apps I tolerate.

Astrid Task list. It has 4 levels of priority, tags, duration, deadlines, hide until, add to calendar, repeat, lots of reminders. However, doesn't sync with Mac or PC, so you cant manage tasks on your computer. There is a web sync option to some proprietary milk related site.
AK Notepad. OK note taker, but no draw feature, and no synchronization.
gtasks. The only task list I can find which will sync with gmail tasks. However, it has almost no functionality, e.g. no priority, no reminders.
Apps Installer. Allows you to install apk files which are in the root of your SD card. Note, it crashes if you are using the Phone as a USB stick.
3banana note taking SW. No mac/pc sync or mac/pc note manager.
Skype. This was available, then they took it off the market for 6 months "to fix some issues". Now its back on, and not great. Firstly, it hangs every other use. You get a black screen when you switch to skype. To fix killing the task does not work - you have to reboot the phone. Secondly, it has bugs. E.g hen you get a call notification, and answer the call, the call notification stays for 2 weeks after - the only way to remove it is to reboot the phone. Thirdly, the call quality is much worse than my 4 year old Windows smartphone which had a processor with .25 of the speed, and both using a fast wifi connection (I dont have any 3G data allowance). The problem seems to be the mic on the desire is quite sensitive - so it makes everyone sound like a dalek unless you mute. Then comes the last problem - the end call and mute/unmute button dont work most of the time - you hit them but nothing happens. So you want to speak, but you cant unmute. You have to wait about 30 seconds while hitting the button every second or so - while the other person is saying "hello..are you still there". Its pretty unusable. There is no option I can find in skype of in Android to turn down the mic gain - everyone can hear everything in the room.

Apps to avoid

Copilot live 8 with European maps. Stupidly, I ignored the hundreds of bad reviews in the market comments (installation problems, crashing and very poor support), and bought this for nearly Ł60 from their website (to avoid using market so I could reinstall later if needed). I followed the very poor installation instructions to the letter, to be greeted by "One or more files could not be unpacked. The corrupted files will be deleted". I have reinstalled from scratch, get the same error. I emailed their support with all the details, but still no answer at all. I have 48 hours to claim my money back. I eventually downloaded a crack of the current version, which installed 1st time. I did not claim my money back, so have a license. The spanish and Grand Canaria maps are terrible - they have so many mistakes and missing junctions/roads that there is no one journey you can make without needing a real map. I complained to Copilot, but they said its nothing to do with them - I have to complain to some 3rd party company in Canada who produce their maps. Yeah, right - problem solved - not!
Nimbuzz chat client Takes over the phone. Had problems with it not login to skype or msn for some weeks. Hangs. Latest update is better.
Collins Spanish dic for Android is total pants, they have left out the most important features like verb conjugation tables. There are only 80k words, and very limited results.
Evernote. Crashes frequently with java errors. It wont even open the "welcome" note. 100s of complaints on the forums about this issue, but no word from evernote.
Titanium backup - This boasts perfect app and setting backup and restore. When you run it, it will ask to install busybox, some kind of linux toolkit. You say yes. Then it gives an error as you dont have root access to your phone. Going back to the site, it seems you have to have a hacked phone with some warez version of Android installed. I'm pretty sure this would invalidate the warranty, and risk bricking the phone. Why on earth is this allowed on the market? When you remove the app, as you have to, it does not seem to remove busybox.

Apps I cant find.

A task manager which synchronizes with the mac.
A note taking app which synchronizes with the mac.
A to do list which synchronizes with the mac.
A free or cheap spreadsheet app.
A free or cheap word editor.

Apps I intent to try out

WaveSecure ? - Security app - uploads thieves contacts, finds their location, then wipes phone leaving rude message.
My Tracks - Lets you track your sporting type journeys, be it running, cycling or walking (or whatever) and then you can upload them to Google Maps and share them.
My Backup - tba
Netcounter - counts GPRS and wifi usage.
GoogleSky ? - to impress girls.
Remote desktop by xtralogic - allows RDC connection to windows servers/computers
K9 Mail
[[https://www.dropbox.com/android]|Dropbox] Like Mozy backup, but with Android client to access your files. Sweet. You get a 2GB account free.
[[http://www.tech-cookbook.com/2010/05/springpad-why-it-is-becoming-my-note.html|Springpad| Supposedly "the best note taking app" with talk of a PC/Mac client. Horay!

Resources

androidandme.com Best Android news site.
Android Market. Rubbish - you cant search or sort.