Zcly Wen

I don’t know about everyone else but I think it’s becoming more and more difficult to choose a good phone. Or, let me rephrase that, the best phone. No smart phone that comes out in the UK today is truly terrible – although other countries certainly have phones that aren’t as good as they should be – but the hard part is getting the most for your money.

Even someone like me, who regularly keeps up to date on the latest phones, finds it difficult to choose one when friends ask me. I know that out of all the phones at the moment I’d probably choose the iPhone 4S if money wasn’t an object. Most people don’t want to get the most expensive phone though. They want one that works, is fun to use and affordable. At the moment if people ask me to recommend a phone like this I choose the BlackBerry Torch 9810. I think it’s a fantastic little phone that you can get for a decent price.

Most people don’t listen and go out and get a phone that is much too expensive for them though. This is a shame, but ultimately people have to get the phone that they want the most. I wish people would look at the overall cost of a contract over the length of the deal though – I think people would be shocked when they realise they’re paying out close to £1000 over the course of two years for an iPhone.

Do they really need to get that phone? Are they a tech person who’ll make use of all the functions and features? Or are they just getting it to look good? It’s difficult to tell, but usually if someone is getting an iPhone without researching it then they are just going on what they’ve heard, which often means that they don’t really need a top of the range phone.

Until recently, I’ve always thought that getting a new phone with all the updated features is a bit of a waste of money. I’m now converted though, after buying the HTC Desire a few months ago!

The problem with smart phones – or so I thought – is that they are difficult to use, and don’t do a particularly good job of the basics. If I have a phone, I want to be able to ring people easily and send them texts – that’s pretty much it. Smart phones aren’t built for these functions, they are made to do a bit of everything.

This seems to be a problem of the past though, because phones like the HTC Desire seem to be able to do it all. I’ve had no problem ringing people, and sending texts is easy. The touch screen took me a while to get used to, but overall I think it’s a pretty good addition and means you get much more screen space.

I’d also heard bad things about the apps on Android. This is partly true – there aren’t many great apps available. Games like Angry Birds are starting to be ported over from teh iPhone though, so it seems this will improve. There is an issue with a lack of screening for harmful apps though.

There are a few problems – the main one being the frustrating battery life. If you’re going to be away from your charger for more than a day – and intend to actually use all the features of the phone – then it will run out of battery. You CAN increase the battery life by turning off  Wi-Fi and GPS, but then you’re left with a shell of a phone.

One feature that I don’t think many people are aware of is the system control widget. This allows you to turn on or off all the services which eat up battery life from your homescreen. This is a better solution, because then you’re only using GPS etc when you actually need it rather than all the time.

Getting the phone in the first place was quite difficult too. I spent ages trying to find HTC contracts that weren’t overpriced or tied me into a three year(!) deal. Luckily I managed to get a pretty decent one, but you can forget trying to get a free gift with your Desire – it just isn’t going to happen.