Enginerd's Stuff

A week ago I joined the ever growing group of people with smart phones. I had some thoughts about smart phones in general and the different types before I got mine and have had some time to get used to mine over the last week.

If you care to hear my thoughts read on…if not then feel free to go about your day.

I’ll start off by saying this; no smart phone by today standards is really a phone so much as it is a computer that is capable of making phone calls. I came from a phone that made calls and would handle texts (not at the same time) and not much more than that. My new phone (which I will talk about in just a bit) is a long shot from any phone I’ve owned previously.

The earliest smart phone I can remember seeing was the Blackberry. This was really only marketed at businessmen and well suited to what they need in a device. It did email and communications like never before. However that was about the only application it met. It wasn’t really what you would consider a ‘fun’ kind of phone.

Following that was the iPhone. This seemed like the exact opposite of the Blackberry. It was basically an iPod touch with a phone feature, it could surf the web better but email and the more ‘professional’ things weren’t as much the focus. It really wasn’t marketed towards the business sector like the Blackberry had been, it was aimed more at the younger crowd; and of course the Mac fanatics.

The third big contender on the smart phone scene was the Android. There were a number of Android phones on the market before the ‘Droid’ came out but that was the first one with enough marketing behind it to really make it well known. This presented a nice blend of what both the Blackberry and iPhone had to offer. It was very capable of handling a business oriented job and still had the fun spin and all the games and gadgets the iPhone offered. And if the phone doesn’t have just what you need the ‘market’ is full of apps, most of which are free to download and use, so you can set it up just right for the way you use your phone.

I decided a while ago that when I finally got a smart phone it would be an Android phone, didn’t really matter what provider or if it was the latest and greatest but it had to be Android. With my contract almost up and my fiancée going on rotations for pharmacy school soon (they are required to have either a smart phone or PDA) it was time to make the switch. We looked around and played with several phones and finally put our names on a waiting list for the HTC EVO 4G. It just happened we would be getting the latest and greatest phone after all. Not that it really matters, in a month it will be out dated and the hype will move to something else.

I honestly can say I don’t have any complaints about it. I have been using it all week and while the battery life isn’t amazing it is better than what I had prepared myself for. The screen is massive at 4.3″ (literally larger than the GPS I bought a couple years back, and the phone has GPS…). I still can’t understand how the touch screen is as accurate and responsive as it is. I have a friend with the Motorola Droid and another with the HTC Droid Incredible and we have compared them side by side. Mine is clearly the biggest phone (both physically and on a spec sheet). But they all do a wonderful job of keeping up with each other. None of them lag, or hesitate unless it is the fault of the network and not the phone.

I know I sound like an Android advocate and am OK with that. I’ll give the new iPhone 4 a fair chance if I have the opportunity to compare them side by side, but I really doubt it will impress me after using my new phone. If you have a different opinion than I do I’d love to hear it in the comments, just keep in mind these are my observations and opinions and should be taken as just that. If you have a Blackberry or iPhone and it does exactly what you want it to that is great…but I don’t think that would be the case for me.