Background:
So I was an original iPhone adopter and my last phone was an iPhone 3gs. On its release day, the HTC incredible was listed on amazon for $99 so I went ahead and bought it and switched over to Verizon. My frustration with apple and its product policies has just gotten to the point where I refuse to own any Apple products (Once I get rid of my iPod, this will be complete).
I’ve had the phone now for about a week, but I didn’t really start appreciating it till I got a micro SD card a couple days ago and was able to fully utilize a lot of the phone’s potential. Two essential apps that I was referred to by friends are Ringdroid and Wallpaper Set and Save. I made my first custom ringtone using Ringdroid in about 5 minutes and have since loved my droid incredible.
Media:
Setting up the micro SD card for my media was a piece of cake. Ringtones are stored under “/media/audio/ringtones/” and the notification alerts are stored in “/media/audio/notifications/”. I store all my music in “/media/audio/music/”. On the root of the SD card, there is a folder named “wallpapers” with all my wallpaper images. The micro SD card is upgradeable so you can opt to have as much storage on your phone that you can afford (while the phone itself has 8gig storage internally).
Apps:
And now down to the bread and butter of smartphones, the Apps. Like I mentioned earlier, Ringdroid is probably one of the best ringtone editors I’ve ever used and you can do it all from your friggin android phone! Wallpaper Set and Save is also awesome for customizing your home screen. I’m still messing around with this app called Handcent which is basically a wrapper application for text messaging and offers some options and customization that the native messaging app doesn’t. Advanced Task Killer is also another must-have app that helps you maintain your running processes. Barcode Scanner is also a mobile must-have for when you need to check out those Q-codes that are getting popular now on mobile sites.
Gripes:
Ok, so it’s not 100% perfect. I’m not sure if it’s just my previous iPhone history, but the onscreen keyboard takes some getting used to. It’s definitely different from the iPhone. City ID is an app that came pre-installed on my phone and CANNOT BE UNINSTALLED. This fucking sucks. This app is pure bloatware (and I’m tempted to classify it as malware because of its shady business practices). I’m not really sure who to blame for that one (verizon, htc, city id developer), but having shit on my phone that just tries to scam money is NOT KOSHER.
Conclusion:
All in all, I do like this phone. I’ve already determined that it does surpass my iPhone 3gs (at least for me) in terms of functionality and ease of use. I just hope that Yelp updates their android app soon to support check-ins. Hopefully this brief review helps some of you.
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I was actually going to ask you for the synopsis. Why the sudden disdain for Apple? You knew what they were about when you purchased your first Iphone and then again when you bought the 3gs. You have also had a plethora of ipod’s over the years, so you are familiar with the itunes requirement.
I’m just curious, why now the sudden change?
Yea, it’s true. I knew what I bought into. I guess as time went on, my needs from my smartphone were changing. And with the iPhone, it became just a series of iCan’t. The notion of having to jailbreak the phone to get the most out of it also irked me. And this wasn’t sudden. It was a gradual dislike of Apple through certain policies and attitudes that have occurred through the years. Like I’ve said, the iPhone is still a good phone and Apple can make some quality products. I’m just not going to support them anymore.