Tag: HTC-touch

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Phone Fun IV: A New hope.

In our last episode of phone fun I had got an HTC TOUCH , Well…… That didn’t work out so well. Exactly 360 or so days the HTC touch Starting having issues with the screen and Calls.  Now, from trials and tribulations with sprint I learned the last thing you want to do is call *2 on your phone.  Doing that is like crank calling the deathstar while its in orbit around your planet.  Sprint Over the phone support basically told me I had to buy a new phone. Which I don’t have money I can magically pull out of my ass.   So I did the next best thing, I headed down to a sprint corporate store.  Since I pay my phone bill locally by walking into these stores I figured I’d get a better idea of what to do. After a short talk they sent us down to Boxboro Massachusetts.  They have a repair depot up that way, anyways  after a 30minute drive and a 30 minute wait they told me the phone was shot(radio was damaged).  After a short wait they sent me on the way with another HTC Touch(#2), After getting that home with-in a few hours the audio on that phone sounded like a cat barfing in your ear.   Called *2 and sprint offered to send out yet another HTC touch(#3). They shipped it overnight which was very nice and it arrived on monday.

I had that phone no more than 48hours when the phone would just lock and gave a screen of death, Now I am fairly careful with phones and use screen protectors and such. After wasting 3 of them I was not exactly happy.  That Phone went back to sprint. To make a long story short, I’ve gone through alot of HTC touches and as Far as my last post about this phone in 2008 . How does the phone rate up?

A bit of a learning curve which kind of surprized me but none the less I like it so far. As far as my requirements for a phone

Requirements for a Phone

  1. to make calls
  2. The Phone is configurable
  3. good battery life
  4. add/make ringtones
  5. Applications that don’t cost a years pay for a small 3rd world country
  6. Durable

Well… After a year with one phone and 1 to 2 months on 4 others.

1 The phone defiantly passes on. For a refurbished HTC-Touch that is debatable.

2. Again you can’t knock the touch on this, its extremely configurable once you figure out the interface.

3. battery life… That is actually pretty good.  Although using the GPS Or other intensive options I would recommend a car-charger.

4. You can make ringtones till you puke with this thing rather than jumping through hoops trying to convert soundfiles into strange formats.

5. As Far as applications go, you can find most of the common apps you need on the phone although I’d recommend downloading Google maps. With enough looking you can find pretty much any app you want for the phone but, this is where i’d give the Iphone or palm pre a small advantage with an “app store” for centralized buying of applications although the Iphone is more like Locked into the app store which I believe you can not install any 3rd party apps w/o jailbreaking the phone.

6. Lastly durability I seriously question, as the phone did make it One year. as Far as the refurbished HTC-Touches.. Those sucked ass.. there’s not enough swears in the English language to say what shit the HTC Touch Refurbs are. I may of run into a bad line of them but that is hard to believe that i’d of gone through that many phones.

as far as my current phone, Sprint has offered me a HTC Diamond,  Again i leave this post open till the next time I come back to phones.

As far as sprint is concerned – It seems they are OK as far as support as long as you get the right person.

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Phone fun III: there is No spoon edition…

After all the fun with the two Samsung phones that had battery life shorter than a 1meter marathon and several billion calls to sprint, to which they were very helpful about my problems and have been overall very good to me.  The problem I Have is due to where i bought the phone .. radio shack it makes dealing with sprint a little bit crazy, Since the phone was purchased at radioshack sprint doesnt deal with the phone  till its 30 days old, and as far as choice of phones at radioshack your fairly limited to what you can pick unless you know what your doing.  Also dealing with sprint because of having previously swapped my phone, which the last call to sprint helped me the greatest in not getting stuck with a phone that was like trying to power your house with a AA battery.

At Radioshack you will spend a little less to ALOT less on the phone, but as I said before its very slim pickings, they will generally have 5 or so phones to choose from in a store. After dealing with the 2 samsungs , I decided to take a more detailed online search for phones. Looking at the radioshack website shows alot more phones than are instore, but if you look carefully it doesn’t have the little warning of “you have to online only sucker.”

But, I did notice something, Different radioshacks Stock different items. So i went around to a few different radioshacks, and the radioshack closest to me which is at a mall thats not a mall anymore, its what malls look like when they die, there was a phone that caught my interest. The HTC touch , compairing it feature-wise to the M520 they were very alike in features, the only thing missing was the GPS feature (so I thought). I had also looked at the samsung instinct, but the killing factor to that phone was the fact i’d have to change my plan massively in order to get it and paying 25$ more a month for the same features i get now doesnt really float my boat. I did not want a crackberry because the stupid services you have to get.   For me to get an instinct I’d have to get an “everything” plan, which is already close to what i have now, I have data , text and unlimited data for 45$ a month. the cheapest “Everything plan sprint has is 69$ a month….. Do not want… Anyways.

I Wondered if this would be a nightmare returning the phone because I was told you are allowed only so many swaps, So I made sure and called up sprint customer service (*2 on sprint phones) and explained my plight, To which I got a very understanding person on the phone and they put me on hold a bit and than sent me to there hardware tech support, I explained my very issue with the phone and told them where i purchased the phone and they said that it was “ok to bring the phone back to the retail store and they would mark the information in the computer so i’d have no problems returning the phone”. I brought the phone to the first radioshack and explained what i was told and that i had seen a phone in a different radioshack that had my interest.

The HTC touch is an interesting phone,

A bit of a learning curve which kind of surprized me but none the less I like it so far. As far as my requirements for a phone

Requirements for a Phone

  1. to make calls
  2. The Phone is configurable
  3. good battery life
  4. add/make ringtones
  5. Applications that don’t cost a years pay for a small 3rd world country
  6. Durable

It Definanatly meets #1 , as far as numbers 2,4,5,6 it seems to exceed that greatly, Number 3 though will be the test, i’ve only owned the phone for 3 days. but, a sign of hope was when i got the phone i never charged the battery and it lasted 3 days.  As far as the learning curve on the phone, which logic wise you’d think it would be just something you could just pick up the phone and use. with the HTC touch there are 2 buttons and an omnidirecitonal button, if you make a call you need to pay attention to the touch screen at first because if you just assume where buttons are you are going to end up making a mistake. About the GPS with the phone, the phone at it default settings from the store does not have a GPS, but if you update your phone with the most current ROM file from HTC You will have GPS enabled minding this is sprint only. software installation is fairly simple and does not take alot of time, phone updates are also fairly easy with one drawback, if you update and dont have anything to backup your phone numbers be prepaired to write down all the numbers on your phone or you will loose them.  the touch interface is intuitive , but sometimes it gets in the way. as far as tweaking the phone there are many many things you can do to the phone due to the fact its windows mobile 6.1. I think another few weeks with this phone should tell the tale of this phone..