Desire for the Desire

I know this is going to turn out sounding dem sad, but I have yet to put my own money on a mobile phone before. I have had used 5 phones throughout my mobile phone years. I still could remember during my college years, I never had a  mobile phone. To call me, some of my friends had to call the person next to me to get to me. It was quite paiseh at the time but my parents were insistant not to give me a phone.

I got my first phone from my parents which was actually a hand-me-down from my dad. It was an Ericsson T-18. He got upgraded to the T-28 and after month of begging and crying, yes you heard it right crying. I finally got the phone and people could actually call me instead of calling a friends.

I was so proud of this phone and I took really good care of it because my parents told me if I ever lose it, I would never ever get a new phone again. However with this I felt the pain of being connected to my parents just a single button away. 

The next phone I got was a "free" Panasonic Gd 75 phone. It was the only free phone at the time when I signed up for the cheapest plan in Australia. This little phone actually lasted quite a while and it would be close to 4 years before I changed my next phone.

 The only reason why I would move on from my cool Panasonic GF 75 was because my mum was complaining that everytime she called me, my phone will be engaged. It is not because I "boil porridge" with anyone but the phone was actually going wonkers. My mum got so fed up with my phone that she said she would pay to buy a phone for me.

So low and behold I got a Motorola E398

I didn't actually do any research about this phone but I was influenced by 2 of my colleagues who were using at the time. The feel and exterior of the phone was pretty good but the software and functionality sucks. I didn't know that Motorola had this upside down view of their phones and usually the YES option is on the left and NO on the right but on the Motorola it was vice versa. Not only that, the phone actually has problems charging itself. I had to prop the phone up a little to get it to charge properly. The one great thing about this phone is that if you have a missed call or sms, every couple of minutes it will play a beep. There is something with this beep that no matter how noisy the place is, you can hear it. 

I was using this phone for a good year or so and got fed up with the interface and changed to another hand-me-down from my bro. He bought a Sony Ericsson K700i and when he changed to a new phone he passed the K700i to me.

Now this is the first proper phone that I had the pleasure to use. Everything about this phone was perfect from the SMS and calling function to the size. Unfortunately this phone has a fatal flaw which is the joystick in the middle. It will get gunked up with all kinds of dirt and render it non-functional. I liked this phone so much that I actually found guides online to dismantle the phone and clean the joystick. I used it for another couple of months and changed to my next phone which is Amy's hand-me-down Sony Ericsson W810i when she upgraded to the iPhone.

It should be quite evident now that I am super cheapskate with it  comes to phones. I will either use a hand-me-down or get free phones from people. The reason for that is, I always use my handphone as what it is intended to do. I use it just to call and sms people and on the occasion take some pictures with it.  So I never saw the need to have an expensive multi functional phone. 

Now if you liked the SE K700i, you will love this phone as well. It has everything the K700i has but without the joystick problem and also it has a cool 2MB camera with autofocus. I used the SE W810i till about 1 week ago when I finally put my own hard earned money down on the first phone that I actually bought. I been lusting over this phone for many weeks before getting it. I was reading reviews about the phone and researching about the phone for weeks. It got so bad that where ever I go in cyberspace, Google will target the Maxis adverts at me.

I was actually waiting for Digi to release it on their DG Smartplan before getting it. However last week the lust became too much and I decided to say screw it and I would sign with a Maxis plan. So after weeks of lusting, the desire for the desire has been satisfied.

I finally paid RM1499 to get the HTC Desire which is suppose to the real iPhone killer. It is built based on the Android OS which has been steadily becoming increasing popular compared to the iPhone OS. It has a solid 3.7" screen and what surprised me is how solid the phone feels in my hands. It came in an iPhone like box and even the way the pack they phone was kinda Apple style.

Everything was neatly packed and upon opening the box, you can only see the phone in all its glory. Taking the phone out and you will see the battery and beneath that is all the accessories. All the accessories were actually packed in a plastic material that was really nice to the touch. It makes the packaging quite classy and nice. The supplied wall charger was quite interesting.

Took me about 2 minutes to figure how it works and how to assemble it. The phone itself is a nice size, the front casing is made of aluminium and the back cover as a nice rubbery feel.

The baddest feature about this phone is that it is highly customiseable. If you do not like the way the icons are places, you can easily change it. You can pretty much almost change anything on this phone including the whole user interface and even the OS version. If you not happy with this OS version, you can change it albeit it is "illegal"

However I can say that it is not as easy as the iPhone to use. I took me close to 3 days to setup the phone the way I want it. This is the first phone I actually have to read the manual to figure things out. The stupid thing is that it doesn't come with the manual and I had to actually download the manual from the HTC website. Not only that I also had to surf some forum to figure some stuff out.

I would say that HTC has really created an iPhone killer as stuff actually runs almost as smooth as the iPhone and not only that it also has that pinch to zoom and multi touch functionality. However I would not recommend this phone to people who are less techy. If you like a phone that is easy to use without much customisation involved then go for the iPhone. If you want more flexibility in the phone you are using and want the same feel as the iPhone then I highly recommend this phone.