Smartphone review: HTC Pure
So my Palm Centro bit it about a month before I was due for an upgrade with AT&T. (Wouldn't sync, and the screen developed one of those LCD "blemishes".) AT&T was, of course, pushing the iPhone, but I'd been warned away from that. Thanks, jducoeur and alexx_kay. Not that my reasons were theirs: I'm not personally concerned with open-source development, after all. But I did need good POP email and a reliable web browser, a robust calendar and e-reader, the certain knowledge that I could get ePocrates (my drug database, used constantly at work), and other stuff that iPhone doesn't tout, while I did not need the stuff they do push. I mean, my killer app for ordering pizza is called a telephone, and I don't need an app to find a ferret dentist in Istanbul at 3 AM, thenkyew.
I initially ignored the HTC line, since I simply hadn't heard of it, unlike LG, Nokia, Motorola, and the rest. But after some online comparison shopping, the Pure seemed to have everything I wanted and little that I didn't. So, long story short, that's what I finally got.
Setup & Conversion
Conversion was the Epic, Apocalyptic, Monumental Fail. Oh, it got done, but only the Smith-Barney way: I earned it. The Centro, of course, was Palm OS. This is Windows Mobile 6.5. I loved Palm. I wanted a Palm Pre, the successor to the Centro. But that meant switching to Sprint, which was a no-go: we're happy with AT&T, and auntie_elspeth loves her Razr. (Digression: that's like saying "Oh, your cable is Comcast, so you can only use a Sony TV". Ridiculous. For more on that subject let me plug osewalrus. But I digress...). I was told, of course, that you could convert easily from Palm to Win, but I knew a "Bullwinkle moment" when I heard it. So it came as no surprise when the conversion method for my contacts, calendar, etc. utterly failed. And as I expected, I had to enter all the data by opening both the Palm Desktop and MS Outlook (which I'd never used) on my computer and hand-copying all the records from one to the other. That was a fun day %^(.
Learning Curve
It's like playing the recorder: easy to do, hard to do really well. The easy-start guide will get you past turning the thing on, but to do anything useful you have to read the 270-odd-page online manual. Everything is there, but sometimes the "where" part is pretty obscure. Is it under "settings" or "tools" or "personal" or....?
Keyboard
It's a touchscreen, 'nuff said. I've already had to realign it a few times. But I've worked with touchscreens before, and figured the other features of the Pure outweighed it, so it wasn't a deal-breaker. And it is pretty cool, with multiple input options, and force-feedback. I'm getting used to it.
Display
Widescreen, portrait or landscape with accelerometer, so it auto-aligns. Zoom slider for those web pages. Neat.
Phone
Why do they call this thing a phone? The phone is one of my least-used apps, actually. It is a decent one, but takes some familiarization. One negative is that when you get a call, there's a bar with "Answer?" and "Ignore?" with a slider button between them, and (maybe I'm dyslexic, but) it's unclear which way you're supposed to slide. I've accidentally Ignored some of the calls I've received. There is an easily-accessible Speakerphone option, but it isn't very loud, even at peak. Unless I'm missing something. Which is certainly possible.
Syncing
With MS Outlook. The cable's USB, unlike the Centro's unique doohickey. And I had an incident where my contacts went away, and I had to call Customer Service to figure out how to get 'em back. (It has to do with accidentally getting multiple sync profiles -- thank you, Windows %^J -- but I know what to do now).
Calendar
Pretty good. It allows one-shot exceptions to repeating appointments (rather common with me), but not as neatly as Palm did.
Set-up of POP email was mindless and instantaneous, and the display is uber-readable. You're notified (but unobtrusively) when new mail arrives, and can adjust automatic retrieval. What's not to love?
Web
Landscape or portrait with zoom, multiple options for browsers. Nice.
Audio
No headphone jack: you plug a supplied dongle into the USB port, and the headset into that. Oh, the manuals say the headset is "supplied" as well: not.
FM Radio
With the headset acting as antenna, there's an FM Radio app. Auto-loads local stations into pre-sets. Cute.
E-Book Reader
Pretty display. Loaded my Palm format e-books without issue: these converted just fine. (Go figure). But it dims out annoyingly quickly, and I haven't figured out how to adjust that.
Calculator
Surprisingly puny. No percent button, for Heaven's sake? I suppose there must be an after-market app I can download, but I haven't found it yet.
Camera
Robust, 5 MP with zoom, and lots of adjustments (for white balance, virtual ISO, etc.)
More
There's lots more, like easily-accessible stock and weather reports, news feeds, and whatnot.
Overall
I'm bloody addicted, okay? After some initial epic tsuris, it's all good and I'm loving it. It wasn't easy getting here, though.