[Desire HD General] gopher22:
Dear experienced androiders.

I am new to the platform after 4 years on WM and Nokia S60 before that. It may be my naivity, but so far, although I am loving the hardware and big screen browsing on the DHD, I am struggling to reproduce some of the functionality I have used for the past 6 years on WM and S60.

1) Video calling over 3G network (i.e. not fring or similar apps that use data). The cost of video calls is really cheap where I live, and for my elderly mother it is the ideal way to regularly show her the grandchildren. I am gobsmacked that this is not part of Android when it was part of my S60 phone I got 6 years ago, and both WM handsets that followed.

2) Ring once. Rather than constantly switching between meeting and normal modes, I prefer to set my phone to ring once. If in a meeting and I chose to ignore, it is not very irritating to others as it stops after a single ring, while I still hear it at all times if I want to answer. Now again, I imagined this was a stock feature of all OS's, but cannot find on Android.

3) GPS. One of the main reasons I was keen on the DHD was I read a press release about them teaming up with TomTom and Route 66 and that all maps would be free and could be downloaded to the handset and turn-by-turn instructions were available. I am dismayed that the turn-by-turn is a premium service that requires extra cash, but even in the interim while using the 30-day trial, it comes nowhere close to the TomTom software I had on my last three phones. I cannot easily see why the GPS is not locking by looking at the satellites etc, crucial information is missing from the display, all in all just an inferior product.

4) Multitasking. I hate not being able to flip to another application and back again without the application randomly deciding that I am relaunching it. Part of the problem is not having hardware buttons - I used t have an task mananager hooked to one of my hardware keys on WM, and if I wanted to flip back to my home screen to check something, and then back to the app, it was a simple press of the hardware key. I have read that one should not use taskkillers on Android, but find the built in functionality not very intuitive, including the holding down the home button.

5) Cannot get autosync to sync with gmail but not contacts and calendar. I have problems when my calendar entries from my corporate mail are synced to google and all attendees get reinvited, and do not want to sync contacts, as gmail harvests all sorts of contacts I don't want on my phone. But as soon as I allow gmail to autosync the mail, then the other two also sync.

6) Data autodisconnect. I had my WM set up in such a way that as soon as the data connection was idle, the 3G or Edge connection was dropped. I then set up all applications to sync infrequently or only use data when triggered manually, and was able to ensure excellent battery life. I have found toggles to stop data altogether, or juice defender to allow connections at particular times, but cannot find a way to reproduce the autodisconnect functionality. As soon as I enable data connections the phone connects, even if I have set everything not to sync in the background.

I hope that there are ways of accomplishing all of these things. I know one should not pass judgement until one has spent a decent amount of time with a new phone or OS, but I wonder for now if I am alone in mourning the passing of WM6.x?

Thanks for any advice any of you can offer to get my DHD set up to at minimum reproduce previous functionality.