[HD2 General] sn0rg:
Hi Guys

I've had my HD2 for about a week now, and I *really* want to love it, but I'm struggling to bond with it, here's why.

Don't flame me just yet - I'm not an Apple Fanboi. Up until a couple of years ago I used Nokia phones, and I was happy. Then, by chance, I happened to be in New York (I'm from London) when a mate called me and said that iPhones were selling for upto £500 on eBay, and you could get them in NY for half that price. It was a "no-brainer" - I went to the Apple store and bought 4, came home, sold 3 of them and kept one out of curiousity. I'd never had an Apple device of any sort before this, and wasn't a fan - I'm a Windows bloke. (my day job is as a Windows Infrastructure Architect for large businesses). I hated Apple, and the approach they had to the control over their devices. The device was also the first encounter with a decent touch screen - my only encounter before that was an iPaq 4150 + stylus.

So I had this iPhone 8GB, and I learned how to jailbreak and unlock it in the UK. I did not expect to enjoy it much, but I found my self falling for it - the cliché'd phrase kept on applying - "it just worked". Exactly how you expected - everything. When I typed on the keyboard, I rarely made an error. When I browsed the web, I always hit the right link with my fat finger. Life was good - email was clear, intuitive - the right buttons were always "right there". There were drawbacks too (iTunes for starters), but these were sort of OK given the benefits. I had completely fallen in love with the thing.

Over the last couple of years, a good freind of mine had been coming over to the house with various phones to try and impress me. I shoo'd hm away with Blackberry Bolds, Storms, Android G1's and the like. Then, he came round with his latest toy - the HD2.

My first thought was "here we go again", but the more he showed me, the more I liked the look of it. I liked the nice big screen, Activesync email\contacts\calender, the multi-touch screen. I saw the way that the interface had changed from the old tiny "squared of boxes" look of Windows 3.1 to a nice finger freindly "big, modern, finger menus". The more I looked, the more I liked. I struggled a bit with typing on the keyboard, and navigating on the web, but I just thought that I needed to get used to it. It seemed to tick all the boxes. At last, I thought, Windows Mobile has finally come of age. I swallowed my reservations, and took the plunge, recieving my new phone 7 days ago.

Since then, I've had a love/hate relationship. I love the fact that I can actually make/recieve calls at home again (iPhone reception was fine everywhere, except in my house!). I've got a GPS now, and the compass. I love the quality of the camera and the video. I love that I have a flash. Looking forward to getting some great apps for them. I love the whole "smooth" flow of apps like the album for viewing pics and vids. I love that I can plug it in to any PC and install an app right there.

But then i find that there's no central repository for Apps really - Windows Mobile Marketplace is a joke - there's hardly anything on it. I'm left Googling in a hit and miss way for something I want. Which brings me to the next point - touch accuracy. I just can't get used to the screen. It takes me about 5 attempts to click on any given link on a web page, usually I hit the wrong link first, and have to go back a page, then try again. Typing with the on sceen keyboard is a disaster for me. It's like the phone has Parkinson's Desease - I just can't ge the letters I want consistently, and this makes typing a nightmare. it's compounded because when I try and hit the backspace key to correct stuff, I often miss that and end up with more unwanted characters. I don't like the tiny little "x" and "ok" buttons in the top right corner to close apps.

So I thought, "what version of the software have I got? Maybe an update to ROM, Manilla, etc will improve things." I had UK T-Mobile 1.43 ROM, so I looked around and decided that I'd upgrade to Artemis 5.5. This has improved things a bit (nicer control menus for closing apps and menues), but crucially not the way the keyboard and web respond. I also seem to suffer from the "shaking" when dragging a web page up and down, occasionaly. I was videoing a scene the other day, and the video was interupted by a DHCP message, FFS! A DHCP message!!! So the scene was half filmed. What a f*** up.

The whole experience is a real roller coaster, and I *so* want to love this device, but I'm left so exasperated by some of the basics, that I find myself avoiding using it, searching for a laptop instead. And now it seems that Windows Phone 7 will not available for the device. I'm even considering cancelling my contract, and returning the device.

Can anyone use the keyboard and web accurately? Any advice or suggestions, forecasted upgrades or similar that might help?

If you got this far - thanks for listening!