I am very happy with my HTC Desire. It does everything I want it to do (in addition to, you know, making calls). On it, I can check my email, update my online calendar, surf the Web, watch videos, listen to music, play games, take photos and record video, and a whole lot more. But I wasn’t able to do all these things on the fateful day that this beauty first arrived in the mail back in April. No, I had to set some things up first.

Boxed Desire

First and foremost, I had to sell my soul to Google. Struggling with this decision was one of the reasons it took me so long to hop on board the Smartphone Express. In the end, the decision wasn’t as evil as I had previously thought. I mean, Google is no Apple! Their operating system is open source (this is very important), it’s free, available on many different phones, and their motto is, “Don’t be evil,” for goodness’ sake. So I took the plunge and painstakingly migrated my online identity to Google. That meant moving all my Yahoo emails and contacts to Gmail (Google Apps). And then I had to move all my contacts and calendars from my Palm Pilot to Google, which again was no trivial task. And then I had to import all my Facebook contacts into Google. And then came the enjoyment of manually merging all multiple contacts. But when I was done, I had one master online repository that would stay synced with my phone at all times. Yay!

The screen on this puppy is gorgeous. Its 3.7-inch touchscreen is bright and beautiful. It makes videos, photos, games, and Web pages jump out at you. And it’s just the right size for watching TV shows while still small enough to fit in my pocket. Very pretty.

The Web browsing capabilities aren’t anything to write home about. Well, except for the fact that I can access the Web from anywhere! That’s pretty cool. But the experience itself isn’t quite there yet. Speeds are far from blinding and many pages just don’t look quite right on a pocket-size screen; but I never imagined that a hand-held device would rival my home box for Web surfing anyway. But hey, at least I’ve got built-in Flash support! I don’t really surf that often from my phone save the occasional Wikipedia, YouTube, or Facebook trip.

What I do use my phone for on a daily basis is a portable media player. I watch videos on my phone. Lots of videos. My favorite part of going into the office is the one-hour commute, during which I can catch up on my series. The Daily Show and comedies in the morning and dramas in the evening. The image, sound, and framerate of video playback are great and I never have to worry about converting my massive library of DivX or MKV files into some dumbed-down lossy(er) file format. Thank you, RockPlayer!

Unboxing My Desire

The Desire plays music – and I’ve got a bunch of music on it – but I don’t listen to music very often on my phone. If I’m traveling, I’m watching video. If I’m stationary, I’ll listen to music via the PC. The standard Android music player isn’t the best I’ve ever seen but it gets the job done.

The same goes for the camera: it simply gets the job done. No more, no less. The flash tends to bleach out most subjects and low-light photography is never an option with any camera phone. If I want to take a decent photo of something, I’ll use a real camera. If I don’t care about the quality, why am I really taking the picture in the first place? But if you’re not carrying a real camera, this phone will do. I do use the camera often to compare things before I buy them by taking quick snaps of all my options, like sneakers, bicycles, or snowboards.

Video recording is pretty good but the audio is flat. It can record at 720p, which is awesome, but then it lags a bit if you want to play it back on the phone.

The biggest surprise advantage of this phone over many other (non-Android) phones? It can serve as a Wi-Fi hotspot. This has come in handy on many occasions. I’m on holiday, lounging poolside with my laptop, I want to write a blog entry to make you all jealous, but there’s no open Wi-Fi? I just flip a switch on my phone and BAM, my phone is wirelessly feeding the interwebs to my phone. I’m in the dressing room of the theater and Joey wants to show us a raunchy music video on YouTube before we go on stage, but there’s no open Wi-Fi? BAM, we’ve got filth.

The one thing I would change about the HTC Desire (and pretty much every smartphone, for that matter) is the paltry battery life. If you’re using it as just a phone, you can get through the day (maybe two!) without a problem. But if you’re using any of the features that make the phone worth having in the first place, you’re gonna have to recharge it every day. Or, if you use it like I do, you might have to plug it in more than once a day. It’s an inconvenience, but by no means a deal breaker. And like I said, all phones are pretty much the same here.

And finally there are the apps. The meat on my phone’s bones. It is so nice to be able to choose from any app that I want. Any app there is a need for. Any app that someone wants to develop. Without worrying if some babysitting overlord will approve the app first. I’ve got a plethora of apps to both help make the most of my time and apps to help waste my time. Which ones are my favorites? I’ll have to write another entry to cover that.