Got my HTC Dream Android Phone from Optus
Well. Not really mine, but rather a loan phone from Optus and Bang PR, and I still need to return the phone back to them on Friday. The HTC Dream came to the office this morning with a strange packaging.
It came with only 15% of juice in the battery so the 1st thing is charging it up. I like how it can be charged with an USB cable, similar to my old Skypephone, which means 1 less cable to carry around. Nokia E71 can be charged with an USB cable as well, with a $2 Nokia CA-100 cable that should have came with the phone.
Some first impressions:
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It’s smaller and thinner than I thought.
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It feels “plasticky” when I compare it with my Nokia E71. Nice grippy surface though, and less a finger print magnet than the E71.
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Nice sliding keyboard. A bit awkward to type on but maybe I haven’t got used to it.
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Awesome user interface. Light year ahead than Symbian/S60. The web browser is very usable for daily browsing, unlike the one on Nokia.
It’s currently on $59/month Optus contract + $15/month phone payment over 24 months, i.e. expensive — even more expensive than iPhone. I do see a lot of advantage HTC Dream has over iPhone, which is a phone that I would probably never buy.
More review in the next couple of days.
Comments
@Matt,
You’ll find Android based HTC Dream is also a touch phone as well! However, it also comes with a nice QWERTY keyboard with a dedicated numeric row — best of the both world I guess :)
I won’t get an iPhone because of its lack of a QWERTY keyboard. But my biggest issue is Apple/iPhone’s “openness” or lack of, whereas an open source OS like Android seems closer to my ideology (yeah I know you still need to r00t the phone to do whatever you want).
Hey Scott I was also given one of the Android handsets to try out for a week or two. I’m yet to sample the iPhone but the Android was pretty cool.
I especially liked the separate keyboard and it was fun to have access to Google Maps, especially while moving around… you’ll never get lost again! What do you think of it now you’ve had time to look at it?
Can the HTC Dream (with Optus or unlocked, shouldn’t matter what though) run Msn messenger?? i’ve heard it doesn’t have it on there, but can you get it on there? I’m pretty keen on getting the phone, just the fact that a main reason to get it so i can use msn while i’m on the move.
thanks!
@John — see my latest review:
http://scott.yang.id.au/2009/03/htc-dream-vs-nokia-e71/
@Dalton — I actually do not think it has MSN. Although I have not used MSN for a while so I don’t really care…
My HTC Dream is displaying websites (facebook) and emails in chinese. How can I fix this. on the main menu settings, it is in english. Can you help?
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Playground is the personal weblog of Scott Yang, a Chinese-Australian Christian who works as a software developer in Sydney Australia.
Am interested to see what you think after a little while. I don’t like the look of it; however I am holding out against Apple because everyone has one and the idea of touch phones for me sounds really bad.