Nov 19 2010

I’ve had this brilliant phone for a good couple of weeks and I have to say it’s brilliant. It’s much bigger than many phones, but not chunky – it’s because of it’s huge 4.3 inch LCD screen. The colours on it are brilliant and it is lightening quick. It comes preloaded with Android 2.2 (Froyo – which is an american shortening of frozen yoghurt, which is basically ice cream but not as tasty), all the features that comes with it, and is topped with a sprinkling of the much improved HTC Sense UI.

I have to say the htcsense.com website is a bit rubbish at the moment – the phone locator doesn’t work at all so I’m not relying on that if I lose my phone, and I tried remotely locking it, and that didn’t work either. None of my contacts were synced, and the messaging features didn’t work either. I have to say, it’s a brilliant idea, and if it actually worked would be a brilliant free rival to Apple’s MobileMe service – again if it actually worked and they introduced a bit more services for it.

But still – the phone itself I can hardly fault. As I said, the UI is responsive, there is all the apps you need on the Android Market – although I don’t install that many apps as I simply don’t have a need for 250,000 apps that are on the Apple App Store. Even Android Market’s latest figure of 160,000 is more than plenty apps than I will ever install, let alone need.

Those who know me know that I’m supposedly anti-Apple, but I’m not. I’m anti-their huge prices, although many Apple users justify the price with quality. But I really do think the HTC Desire HD is good value for money. It’s at least on par with the iPhone, and I’d possibly risk at saying it’s better, especially for the price. It’s not a cheap phone by many accounts – around the £470 mark but only a small dent in your wallet compared to the Apple  iPhone 4 32GB which costs a whopping £681 (prices quickly pinched from a quick Google Product search).

The only quirk I’ve had with it is that after a few days of running it does slow right down to a crawl, and I’ve not figured out which app is causing it yet, but a restart fixes that no problem. Restarting the Desire HD isn’t even a problem as compared to my HTC Magic, which took a good 5 or 6 minutes to restart, the Desire HD probably takes less than a minute, so I hardly even notice it.

Well worth my money I think – I’m on a £30 per month contract on Vodafone via Phones 4 u who were probably the quickest to get it in stock, and I also got half price line rental for the first 3 months or something making it even cheaper! I highly recommend this phone to anyone looking to get a new smart phone but can’t stomach the high (and in my opinion unjustifiable) contract costs of the iPhone 4.

And before anyone thinks it, no I wasn’t paid to write this review, this is my honest opinion!

Nov 2 2010

Since last Wednesday (my last regular blog post), it feels like a million years, it’s been so busy and we’ve done loads of stuff. Thursday I made some home made “schnitzel”. I say that in quotes as I suppose it wasn’t really schnitzel, it was just flat pork with breadcrumbs. It was yummy anyway, I should probably put the recipe up!

Anyway, my Aunt Juli and Uncle Kevin came down to see us (but mostly Freyja), and Sam and Collin and the children came over too and we had a nice afternoon of all 4 children making a mess (that’s Freyja, Finley, Amelie and Uncle Kevin…) of the living room. In the late afternoon after Sam and Collin left we went out for a lovely meal at Water Margin in Portsmouth which is always a winner in my book – I love Chinese food and “all you can eat” Chinese is even better. After we came back and put Freyja to bed I helped Uncle Kevin with his new site, which we managed to smash through his list in a couple of hours with a couple of drinks…

Sunday was nice, we went to the Tenth Hole with Leila, Pete and friends. Hannah absolutely loves this place, but I find it far too busy and I’m really not sure about it. The cakes are nice, but I don’t think they’re that amazing. Still, Hannah enjoyed it which is good, but Freyja does get irritable after a while there because she can’t really run around much.

Monday we were planning to go up to my Grandparents (a.k.a “the Gy Gys”), but alas this was massively delayed by a completely dead car battery. Thankfully a very helpful chap saved the day, first by helping us jump start the car (which failed), and then by taking me to the nearby garage to get a new battery. We are ever so thankful to him, and I doubt he reads this blog, but thank you for your help! Anyway, we made it to lovely Kingsbury Episcopi and had a lovely day and yummy scampi & chips there, and were sent home happy.

Tuesday Phil came over and we typically had Two for Tuesdays pizza night and watched Robin Hood on Sky box office (although not in HD as annoyingly it wasn’t on until 3:30am…?!). It’s not a bad film, but it wasn’t as good as I was hoping. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves really set the bar high for me and I think I was hoping it would be as good as that, but it failed to deliver on my expectations. I suppose as an entirely separate film (which, in fairness it should be) it was good. Worth a watch, but maybe wait until it comes on regular Sky Movies HD if you haven’t seen it yet.

Wednesday I cooked a nice Sausage and Tomato sauce type meal – very simple to do (again, I should probably put the recipe up…) and it was very tasty so Freyja will be having that for dinner tonight – hopefully she’ll like that. I also ordered my new phone, an HTC Desire HD. Unfortunately Thursday morning I was informed it would be delayed… anger ensued… Anyway, Friday they said it was dispatched so I didn’t have to wait too long as it arrived on Saturday morning, woohoo! It’s very shiny.

Saturday, Hannah’s mum came down and I went to see a friend about a website for a bit then ended up in the pub until about 2am… urgh. I felt really hungover Sunday, and I’m not sure why, I didn’t even feel drunk and I had only had 4 pints… so I was pretty useless for the whole day, and really didn’t feel like going out that evening. However later, after a rather overly chillified Pumpkin and Chilli soup, I perked up a bit, and went out with 3 zombie girls who all looked fantastic in their makeup and everything. A fun night was had by all however, and I’m sure you’ll see the pictures on Hannah’s facebook.

Yesterday (Monday), was again knocked out by hangover pretty much and I spent most of the day playing Angry Birds, which I’m addicted to… however Hannah surprised me with a copy of Fallout: New Vegas when she came home from work so I got all excited and may have given it a hug and maybe more… So after I’ve done a bit more of my client’s site tonight I’ll be getting on with that and stealing the telly from Hannah. That brings me up to now, and I should really get some dinner on because I’m hungry.

Until next time my friends…

Sep 10 2009

Came across this video (via The Register), and being a father of a 5 month old beautiful daughter, this video really hit home for me.

Seeing the lifeless infant after the accident, the motionless stare, was just horrible to watch.

Warning: This video is not suitable for minors!

This video is just a dramatisation, but is a realistic representation of what could happen if you use a mobile phone whilst driving. Watch it, and maybe you’ll think twice…

Jul 24 2009

Sometimes I have the need to get on the internet using my laptop instead of my lovely HTC Magic. To do that, I’d have to get mobile internet, which is yet another expense I don’t really want. Before I go ahead, I’d like to strongly discourage doing this on a regular basis. Vodafone’s “unlimited” internet is 500MB fair use policy, which when using a laptop can be used up really quickly – so proceed with caution! In addition, I do not know your contract to confirm that this will not void your warranty or violate your terms of service. You carry out these steps at your own risk and are provided here for informational purposes only. Basically, if you mess things up and Vodafone (or whoever your carrier is) comes knocking on your door, I’m not being held responsible. Read the rest of this entry »

Sep 23 2008

A while ago I posted about the Open Handset Alliance, Google’s initiative to promote open source software on phones, as well as to help develop it’s own mobile device platform, Android. The Beeb announced today that Android will be first used on the new T-Mobile G1 handset.

I’m not sure if it’s direct competition to the new iPhone platform, but I really wouldn’t be suprised if Google had a good try at it. In fact, I really hope they do, and I hope it’s ten times better than the iPhone. If it is, I might pull myself away from Orange and get some T-Mobile action with the Google Android fun…