Pat's Blog: A Tale of 2.5 Phones III

A Tale of 2.5 Phones III

A week ago I started to look at both the EVO 3D and the iPhone 4s.  They are both great products and both have their good points.  Some history on me before I continue with this.  I have done IT work on the side for most of my life.  I am the IT "guy" for our office and I love it.  I have a MacBook Pro for my mobile computing and a very nice Gateway with Win7 with dual monitors at my desk.  I also have an iPad and got a iTouch because it syncs by Bluetooth to my car.  I am going to sell the iTouch after I figure out how to transfer my Words with Friends to my iPad.  I have built computers and sold computers in the days that you had to set up all the network addresses manually.  That wasn't fun.  So these blogs are being written by a geek at heart.  Just an FYI.

Back to the phones.  There are things on both phones that I wonder:  "What the heck were you thinking?" The keyboard is the best example. 

Keyboards:

Apple: The main keyboard is just the letters of the QWERTY keyboard.  Not ONE special character.  Yes you can double tap the space bar for a period, but that requires a back space with it if you are typing an email or an URL.  At times the phone senses that you are entering an email or URL and gives you and @, but not nearly often enough.  Either the predictive text is better or the keyboard is better for my fat fingers, but I think I type a little better on the iPhone.

HTC: WHY OH WHY did you get rid of the cursor or arrow keys that made it so easy to navigate?  Ok..sorry, just a little rant.  Back to what it has.  You can get a number or special character by holding down a letter key like the numbers on a regular keyboard.  There is a dedicated period and comma key on the main keyboard.  It is a bit frustrating in the sense 3.0 phones to add text to the bottom of a picture, but that could be a function of my hand size.  So only a guy issue.

Contacts:

Apple:  Integration with the cloud seems amazing!  That is the last good point.  Another instance of, I wonder what they were thinking.  There is this cool alpha bar down the right side of the screen, NOT!  Even my 2 year old nephew's fingers are too big to hit that accurately.  And for all those that are over 45 and have your readers on to find the search button.  It's the thing above the A on the bar to the right.  GOOD LUCK HITTING THAT THE FIRST TIME!  Also the integration with other apps isn't as well thought out as on the EVO.  You have to go to the top of of text message stream to get the call/facetime options, which if you have many texts is too much of a pain.

HTC:  The People/Contacts functionality is one of the best thought out parts of the EVO and I still think I am learning new ways to use this part of the OS.  First because the EVO has more than one button so it can have a dedicated search button, you can always search the screen or app you're in.  I think Apple may have opted for form over function on this one.  You know that bank or service that keeps calling over and over and over?  The EVO has a setting in contacts to send calls from that contact directly to voice mail.  If you hold a finger down on a contact it gives you about 8 options, block caller is one of them, and you can do these things w/o even opening the contact.  However, I can't show you this because you have to root the EVO to get it to take a screen shot.  (Chalk one up for Apple on that one) I don't ever root my phones.  If you get a text from someone in your contact book you can hold your finger on their name and call them, open their contact information and more, a funtion that I was shocked the iPhone didn't have.  And it is a step less to text a contact from the call log for the EVO.  

Camera:

Apple:  Camera is basic and seems to work well, but is missing many of the features that I am used to on the EVO. (idit .. you can zoom by touching the screeen. This phone really needed a manual!)

HTC:  Great feature.  I will not include the 3d as that is more of a pallor trick than anything that I will ever use.  There is a zoom slider right on the screen and I can't even figure out how to zoom the iPhone.  There are all the settings that you use on your regular camera for light and back lighting to make this a usable camera for real estate. People get all confused on mega-pixels.  They don't determine quality, but size of picture.  They quality is determined by optics and color pallet and they seem pretty good on both cameras, but you have much more control of the EVO.

Sync:

Apple:  iCloud!  I don't really need to say more.  I will talk more about iCloud in next blog when I talk about Siri too.  It seems amazing and flawless, almost.

HTC: This functionality is why I got the iPhone. The only area that HTC/Google really needs to work on.  If you are not interested in doing it with Google, you have issues.

Battery/Charging:

Apple: No way to change the battery.  I really use my phone and I have gone through 3 EVO batteries in a day.  I have to constantly find a plug for the iPhone.  Get in car and ADD boy has to remember to plug it in or be sorry.  I wonder if I could get Siri to remind me to do that?  The iPhone does take a charge quickly.

HTC:  Both phones have reasonably priced extra batteries that you can have charged and ready to change out at a moments notice.  That is also good because all devices like this need an occasional reset and it is built-in if you change out batteries.  You can also get an extended life battery which lasts my broker most the day.

Both companies...Why can't you figure out the inductive charging like Palm did before they died?  That was the best system yet!  No plugs and no hassle and it even worked in the car.

Other quick thoughts.  My brother Michael, the CIO, has a great analogy (and has the iPhone) the Driod phones are like the Wild, Wild West with the lastest and greatest.  The iPhone is the tried and true companion, always there and very reliable.  The iPhone restrictions on things like downloading over the cell network and making you wait till you have a WiFi connection are all based in this stability and some find frustrating.  Cosmetically, the EVO has the ability to have widgets on the screens, so your intial interface is more interactive.  Unless I'm missing something, all you get are icons and folders on your homescreens.  I love the time and weather widget on my main screen of my EVO.

Next Blog will be devoted to iCloud and Siri and the voice commands on EVO.  But, I have to run now my iRon is calling.