Falling from the fence. Landing on Windows Phone.
|For those of you loyal readers out there I thank you for following me on this journey from my HTC Fuze to my new phone as part of an ongoing series that usually has something to do with sitting on the proverbial fence between the Android and Windows Phone camp. My last post pretty much stated I was going Windows Phone in the wake of the Captivate GPS fiasco as well as AT&T locking down Android phones anyway. At the time I was looking at what would become the HTC Mozart that we now know is only coming to Europe in the first wave of handsets. This leaves me with three choices if you consider that plasticky LG thing to be a viable option. Let me walk you through each handset as it hits my brain piece so you can follow my logic.
Let’s go ahead and put this LG out to pasture before we get started seriously considering handsets. Let me start by saying; What the hell? A four row keypad? Look at all that freaking plastic around that thing. Look at that HUGE LG logo stamped in the middle of the phones face where there could have been screen! This company makes me want to commit mass homicide against LG’s design team. And I don’t want to hear any of that stupid “They’re going after a different demographic” bull shit either. It’s an ugly stupid phone with a small screen and no standout features or software to make it worth considering. In the world of landscape sliders LG is the mentally challenged inbred Monarchial candidate you hope doesn’t succeed the Touch Pro 2. Unfortunately those of us on AT&T should have expected no less of our fruit courting loser of a cellular communications provider.
Next up, we have the black slabbiness of the Samsung Focus. With Samung’s stranglehold on the AMOLED market (being the primary manufacturer) Sammy’s screen superiority is unmatched for brightness, viewing angle, and color quality. So screw your retinar nonsense. Image quality often has nothing to do with resolution and Samsung is stomping on the future colons of unborn iPhones its screen is so awesome. Other than that the Samsung scares me. I’m scared because 3/4 Samsung handsets that I have owned blew. I’m not talking just a little bit either. We’re talking the sort of blowing that happens when a tornado crashes a porn shoot. The only decent model I’ve purchased was the original Blackjack. Classic phone with damn good hardware but a serious lack of features and in this respect less to f-up. My Epix totally tanked on me more than once and Samsung did nothing to help. It was AT&T who reluctantly (after going through 4 Epix) replaced it with my current HTC Fuze. This brings me to a company who isn’t busy looking for something to suck at.
HTC has treated me well. The wide availability of accessories coupled with solid and truly high end hardware have always impressed me. HTC also has a great history or creating worthwhile and useful software improvements to their Handsets which is something sorely lacking in the LG/Samsung camps. For those with CRS (Can’t remember shit) HTC’s note application will be invaluable at keeping track of daily tasks. The inclusion of a decent weather application may also ease the transition to Windows Phone since I don’t have to either scour the market or worst case scenario wait for a decent app to be released. The screen size is perfect, being slightly larger than the HTC Incredible, which is still the best Android device IMHO, and not so large that it requires me to adjust my grip on my phone to touch every corner with me thumb when holding the phone single handedly. Some people aren’t fans of the speakerr but I can see it being something I use. Me and my room mate live in downtown Wilmington, NC and we’re sort of porch monkeys. We sit out and listen to music while drinking beer and making fun of whoever stumbles by. When we’ve been drinking we often forget to bring a larger speaker system outside and sometimes forget its location altogether so we end up using my Fuze or his Droid X depending on who has battery left. I’m hoping speaker quality on this sweet amalgam of form and function are actually worth something. Either way I know I’m still getting kick ass software thanks to HTC and Microsoft as well as reliable hardware.
I’ll have to wait till Nov. 8th to go to pick this sucker up and let you know for sure. For those of you looking to snag one on launch day, head over to your local Best Buy. I pre-ordered mine for 199.99$ AND got a free $50.00 gift card which I used to update my xbox live subscription. Can’t be running around with a silver account one my new handset. Let me know what you guys think of my handset decision making and thanks for following along for the past four months. Reviews and tips to come when I get my hands of this guy. 🙂
Damnit Matt.
Now I need to write an article to pull you out of this trap before it’s too late.
Brian: The Captivate is impressive, just wish AT&T and Samsung didn’t insist on crapping it up with their uninstallable crap including a bad contacts manager. Never heard anything about having to pay up more to access an Exchange server with AT&T. You sure about that? The stock Android email client can connect to an Exchange server directly, to my knowledge AT&T doesn’t somehow filter that kind of traffic. Following Verizon’s lead I guess.
Anyway, the GPS can be fixed according to a bunch of XDA threads. Would you be open to rooting the phone and flashing a custom Froyo rom with the GPS fixed in the process and other happy stuff if I did it first and spelled out every step in an article? Or is rooting a dealbreaker.
Surround is ‘sold out online’ at BB already
Think this one is your best bet, judging by the thread traffic alone.
Nice article! 🙂
I am going to go another direction and go with the Samsung after having three HTC devices in a row. HTC has dropped the ball many times in my relationship with them. They make some crazy decisions, like the lack of a standard headphone jack. Please don’t get me started about how their latest ROM update on the Tilt 2 totally hosed the device. I soft reset 2-3 per day now.
I am going with the Samsung and I think it’ll be a pretty safe bet. Microsoft has been pimping this thing everytime they demo and I think it’s in the commercials that they’re about to unleash. Microsoft had set some hardware standards so some of the issues that people have had in the past won’t be an issue any longer.
I like that I’ll be able to pump up the memory in the Focus. I **love** the screen and I saw a video where this version of AMOLED has some baked in scratch resistance. I’m not sure why that’s not getting more coverage. The only thing that worries me is that I’ve been a hardware keyboard user forever with the HTC’s. Times do change and I think I’m ready to jump to 100% virtual keyboard.
The one thing that I’m pissed off about with ALL the WP7 phones is that none of them have front facing cameras meaning we have no chance at video phoning like the Android and iCult crowds.
Continue to be very disappointed in AT&T’s offerings no matter what post/blog I read. Been using their HTC device since the 8125-a slide out keyboard is a must for me. By all accounts from folks who have actually held the device, the LG Quantum is a piece of plastic crap, with the smallest screen size of any WP7 offering. I don’t get the HTC-speaker feature at all-who cares about a slide out speaker really? Don’t know what I will do because I don’t want any of these 3 devices.
…damn you all. Now I’m rethinking the Focus. That’s a couple or 3 of you saying you’ve had bad experiences. My husband has a Sammy Eternity and has had no problem. Maybe the featurephones are okay and the smartphones blow?
Isn’t the Focus coming out, then the other 2? I don’t want to wait! I want shiny!
I am a long time Fuze user who went Captivate…yeah, I had to pay $40.00 for a decent Outlook sync but I am really digging the phone…mostly. The GPS issue is a mess, email is quirky and if I don’t get a straight answer soon on the GPS, I will for sure go WP7, which is what I always wanted to do. I am a huge Zune fan and really like the Metro interface but my aging Fuze caused me to upgrade soon…here are the only things holding be back from getting the WP7 from AT&T:
1) The store manager at AT&T approved me for upgrade price without renewing my contract. I don’t think that will happen again with the WP7’s. Would like to ride contract free for a while.
2) No VPN/Remote Desktop or Citrix app for WP7
If the latter could be verified, I may try to get as much out of my Captivate on EBAY to get a WP7 without contract…The Captivate is a near perfect phone…Froyo and GPS fix may make it even better.
@DavidK – Pre-order in store to avoid online stock issues. Plus no 50$ gift card online.
@JD – Fuze and Touch Pro’s lack of headphone has to do with AT&T’s flavor. All other Touch Pros had headphone jacks. And yeah, don’t trust ROM choice to anyone but yourself. Plus you’re not going to have to worry about that going forward since Micrsoft will be in control of your ROM destiny no matter what phone manufacturer you choose. Good luck with the Focus.
@MartiM – HTC Surround is a Best Buy Mobile launch exclusive. The announcement everyone keeps referring to about only the Focus being available at launch was made by AT&T CEO and only applies to AT&T. Don’t let that hold you back from getting a quality phone and a 50$ gift card. 🙂
Well, I use just Outlook at home (not Exchange) and wanted my notes, tasks, and contacts to sync without using GMAIL, so I purchased CompanionLink to work with DejaVu. I do use my work exchange with email and it works pretty good…not as good as my Fuze though.
I am open to rooting as I often did the ROMS on my Fuze…just been waiting for a good 2.2 to appear on XDA. Is there a name/link to the 2.2 and GPS fix on there?
Lucky for me my contract isn’t up yet. Gives me time to watch what happens. If a replacement for my Tilt2 shows up in time, I’ll try WM7 (or whatever we’re calling it), but I am not laying out any bucks for the meager offerings I’ve seen so far. No way am I paying AT&T for an early upgrade to ANYTHING. And if that doesn’t happen in time, I’ll just slap myself upside the head and jump to “the dark side”. There’s plenty of things and issues and concepts I hate about the iPhone, but I’m getting to the point of wanting a phone that just works. And all apologies to my tech idol, Doug Simmons, I just do NOT get you Android people. I am just totally uninterested.
@David You have a point there. I want a phone that works…despite my distaste for iTunes, if IPhone had a 4″ screen, I would have gotten it over the Captivate because it has a lot of working, useful apps. And if WP7 gets some enterprise apps like I mentioned above, I may consider it. I like my Droid as it is but I’ve always been wary of Google’s data mining…
I’m still leaning Quantum, although I wasn’t impressed at all with the Focus vs Optimus video comparison (Samsung totally destroyed the LG)..
I think I’ll hold off final judgement until I can handle them in the store..