[HD2 General] p3eps:
About 3 weeks before the release of the iPhone 4 I read all the new press releases and decided I wanted to replace my HD2 with one. A lot of friends have the 3GS and they look like a lot of fun. I had the original iPhone and the 3G for a few months.

I pre-ordered 2 32gig iPhone 4's... one for me and one for my fiancee.

The release date arrived and the pair of them were delivered to my work.

I opened my one and started playing. I downloaded some of the apps / games that I'd seen friends playing with that had made me want an iPhone in the first place. From the start before anyone had mentioned signal issues, I had a poor signal.

My fiancee saw my iPhone and decided she wanted to wait for a white one - so I immediately put hers on eBay. A nice sale of £962 - and I sent it to South Africa!

I got it on the Thursday afternoon, and I took it into my local Apple store on the Sunday about the dreadful reception - and that it had a random bit of plastic sticking out of the screen. The 'genius' tried cutting it off, and then replaced it.

At my work, my HD2 gets a 3-4 bar 3G signal. The iPhone got an 'O' signal - which is the worst possible. My main use of a smartphone is having decent internet at work - and using this O connection was hopeless. This was the same whether I had the phone on the desk or in my hand. My workmate has a 3GS and when the 2 sat next to each other on the table, his (same network) had 3 bars of 3G and mine had 2-3 bars of O.

I carried on for a few more days, and eventually finished Angry Birds!! Once that was done, I struggled to find anything worth using the phone for. I noticed on the Saturday (6 days of owning my seconds one) that it had a big scratch on the screen and a couple of small ones - despite it being in a soft case all the time, So much for the scratch proof glass!

The proximity sensor wasn't working properly, so on Sunday (a week of ownership) I went back to the Apple store again, and the genuis gave me a third one.

Fearing it would scratch again, I ordered a Zagg full housing skin for it - and went back to using my HD2 again. I left the iPhone 4 for 2 days - then decided I didn't really want it anymore! The signal was useless at work - and wasn't much better at home (where I use WiFi anyway).

I stuck it on eBay at night with a Buy It Now of £995 - and in the morning it was sold. Sent it to Finland this time!

Now I'm back to my HD2. I had decided I would buy something else with my iPhone 4 profits (just over £650 after eBay / PayPal fees) - but after a bit of looking around I decided my HD2 is as good as anything else out there.

Yes, the iPhone is easier to use in that the touch screen works much better. The typing works much better on the iPhone with the spell check and predictive text. The new screen DOES look amazing and watching movies on the screen was great. Apple have finally made their phone include all the things that have been missing over the last few generations... but it is still lacking some stuff. If the signal had been decent at work, then I may have held on to it... but I'd have kept my HD2 for my bought WinMo apps. I really liked the size - it was just that fraction smaller than the HD2 which made it sit slightly better in my pocket. The battery life also seemed to be better in the iPhone 4.

As the white iPhone seems to be on an endless promise - my fiancee got a Sony Ericcson Xperia X10 Mini Pro today... and is very happy with it so far. I've had a play with it and it seems to be a very nice 'little' phone. If they make a slightly bigger one with a decent screen resolution it might be worth considering.