Time for a new telephone...

So, while changing my Orange contract to get a slightly better rate (down to £19) I also noticed that my handset was *well* overdue for an upgrade, even better than that - I had accumulated so much "loyalty" that almost any telephone was being offered to me for free (including iphones)...however, I didn't want an iphone, and I'll explain why...firstly, and most importantly, iphones use a lot of bandwidth, and while they will probably work just fine in most of the country, I work in Canary Wharf where (as you can imagine) there are quite a few iphones...all I hear all day long is people complaining that (while they appear to have a signal) they get missed calls, delayed text messages, network busy, slow internet connection (etc. etc.), it's probably not *so* bad on Orange (as they only recently adopted the iphone), but the older iphone networks around here are pretty swamped (apparently it's just as bad in New York City)...secondly, the battery life is extremely poor on iphones, the few charging cables in the office are traded *constantly* and I've got used to week-long battery life with my little Nokia...thirdly, the iphone (unless you risk your warranty) is highly restrictive, people worry about even plugging it in to charge it in case itunes wipes off all their music, and (actually) I really don't like itunes, I don't want to have to manage all my media via itunes, I want to drag and drop files in file manager (and have them just work without itunes converting them to some other format)...so, I decided to take a look at the latest HTC devices (loved my C500 running Windows mobile), and I noticed with no little amount of interest, they run Android - the operating system made by Google (which is completely open source - much more my sort of thing - as I'm an "under the hood" sort of fellow)...

iphone=locked/idiot proof, Android=open/flexible (nothing against all those millions of iphone users, it's just not for me - how can 8.5 million iphone sheeple users be wrong)...? Baa... ;)

After a little reading, I settled on the HTC Hero (the review is a little old, the latest software eliminates the lag they talk about - and apparently Android 2.1 is due any day now - so I've avoided the "ironing out" phase)...it's got all the flashy things the iphone does - digital compass, gps, multi-touch screen, wifi, accelerometer, ambient light detection, 3.5mm headphone jack (yes!), and just a few very nice things the iphone doesn't - it connects via standard USB (mounting itself as a drive), takes up to 16Gb MicroSD expanded storage, connects you up to all the Google services right out of the box (email, RSS reader, calendar etc.) as well as things like twitter/facebook etc...even does augmented reality through the camera and (purportedly) voice to text (so less fiddling with little keyboards on the screen), so I'll tell you tomorrow (when it is due to arrive), if it is as good as it looks and if I find any good apps to install (all the decent ones from the iphone have already been ported apparently)...!