First Android phone in Canada worth trying!

[Caydr]

In what you might call a fit of innovation, I'll post the TL;DR version at the beginning rather than the end:

HTC Desire is, at press time, the only Android phone available in Canada that's even worth considering. Samsung Galaxy S is fail as a result of its carrier, Bell, being AIDS. Telus gives 5 gb bonus data for free. Limited video codec support but it's got the one that counts. Good call quality. Battery life is acceptable, use JuiceDefender and it's good. Performance very good. Ideal screen for video, text, outdoor visibility, battery life. Camera is shite, which is average for a smartphone, it's got a flash but... meh. Good browser. Lots of good apps, lots of bad apps. Android rocks. Steve Jobs steals organs that could've gone to less douchey people. Linux jab.

Is this spam? Almost. But it's really just enthusiasm.

Recently Bell released the Samsung Galaxy S here. As high-end phones go it's quite good, and I was very eagerly anticipating its arrival on our frozen shores. But it took less than a day for me to uncover a number of glaring flaws I knew I wouldn't be able to cope with in the long term. For example, a crippling lack of hardware buttons, bad battery life, greater difficulty in rooting, questionable manufacturer reputation, and most importantly, its vendor: Bell.

Bell is AIDS. They want $50 for their lowest-end smartphone (voice + data) package, and it comes with 500 mb per month and about 13 second of voice IIRC. That's 500 MEGAbytes, or in other words, just enough to check your mail a few times a day, or browse the web with all images disabled - obviously no YouTube or applications which sync a lot.

After trying that for a day and blowing through 120 MB just doing some very lightweight stuff on wifi to see how I'd manage, I tried my second choice, the also-newly-released HTC Desire from Telus.

Hmm... Oh that can't be right... has to be a typo... 5 GB for free? IN CANADA??!

No, not a typo. If you get a package that costs at least $60, they throw in an extra 5 GB of data transfer for shiggles.

So I got a $65 plan with 1 GB, got a free extra 5 GB, got "favourite 5 numbers" as my bonus feature, got an online number which automatically redirects to my phone, added that as one of my favourite 5, and I now have 6 GB of data, unlimited incoming calls, 300 outgoing local minutes, 4 numbers I can call for free even long distance, and then I signed up for a service that I can use to get 2.5 cents/minute long distance to anywhere in Canada and not much higher to anywhere else.

Still got screwed a bit since I went for the $15 unlimited text+caller ID "value package" though, which I know for a fact costs carriers absolutely nothing to provide. But I can tolerate that since to get even 3 GB on Bell I'd be paying $100/month. What a scam. Did I mention Telus is just a Bell reseller? So how the hell can Bell themselves justify that kind of price?

Anyway, as for the phone itself, it's really nice but doesn't support much in the way of video codecs. Just h.264 baseline with MP3 or AAC in an MP4 container, or else h.263 and XVID if you're stupid. Fair enough though, that's all my Cowon S9 supports anyway, and I bought it for the sole purpose of watching video. Baseline h.264 is still a hell of a lot better than anything else except main/high h.264.

Call quality is good, network coverage is allegedly good but I haven't had a chance to test this much, I got a recent-revision phone so it has a fancy wide-angle LCD instead of an AMOLED display, which I consider a plus since I plan to also use it as my car GPS. Phones with AMOLED displays are running into severe screen burn-in within as little as 6 months anyway.

Battery life seemed to be pretty weak until I found an app called Juice Defender, which disables the fast data connection when the screen's off. Seems pretty logical to me, should've done this by default IMHO. It leaves the data on for as long as something's downloading, and also re-enables it every 15 minutes for 60 seconds to allow anything to sync if need be. Performance seems to be outstanding, as you'd expect from a 1 ghz processor being asked to only render menus and basic text/graphics.

Not too much bloatware comes pre-installed, just one shitty game demo from "we make shitty $2 games" Gameloft and the various components that make up the HTC Sense UI.

Sadly, unlike the Galaxy S, the Desire doesn't come with Swype and the beta signup is now closed. However you can download one of the 9000 copies people have uploaded to rapidshare, etc. If Steve Jobs had called Swype "magical", I'd have no criticism for him (on that point).

The screen is gorgeous and if the battery information page is to be believed, doesn't kill the battery like the Galaxy S's screen does. Viewing angles are almost perfect, with little color shift or loss of brightness/contrast. It's basically on par with the Galaxy S in that sense; you get about the same viewing angle, better viewing outside, better battery life, but at the cost of a less impressive contrast ratio.

Text is exceptionally sharp and although I haven't seen an iPhone 4 in person, I strongly doubt that the DPI difference would be noticeable during normal use. The fact that Engadget now resorts to using a microscope to demonstrate the difference between screen DPI leads me to believe 800x480 on a 3.7" screen is more than enough.

The camera is pretty crappy, with mediocre quality and a crippling shutter lag, and the weak flash doesn't do much to help anything. Galaxy S had a far better camera, even taking into account that it doesn't have a flash.

At first I thought I'd be hindered by the Desire's rather weak (fingerquotes) "GPU", compared to the Galaxy S. However, after watching this video, I've come to realize that I'll actually be hindered more by the fact that I'm trying to play games on a phone with no game controls. Desire's got an optical trackpad which can also be pushed down and used as a button though, which seems like it could be pretty useful. I get the feeling any gaming I'll be doing on here will either be GBA emulation or simple 2D stuff, which doesn't disappoint me in the slightest. Why would I care, when the 3DS is right around the corner and it will actually have game controls, not to mention professional developer support?

The built-in browser is pretty quick, no complaints there, and it seems HTC has baked-in a lightweight version of Flash. You'll probably want to disable it to save battery life and avoid ads. I've never even turned it on, seemed pointless.

Regarding Android as a whole, there's a lot of talk about the Android Market having 60,000 flashlight and task killer apps, plus 10 useful ones. This is not the case. A few I'd recommend: 3G Watchdog, Air Control Lite, AK Notepad, Andoku, AndroZip, Bebbled, Favorite Frequencies (harass dogs, young people with good hearing), Gmote, JuiceDefender, JuicePlotter, Movies, Photoshop Mobile, RealCalc, Red Stone, Swype, Task Manager, TED Mobile, Torrent-Fu, Wifi Analyzer, Wikidroid, Yellow Pages, and anything from Google. I'd recommend others probably, but my phone came with ones baked-in for a lot of functions. These are just the ones I found since I got the phone yesterday.

Android as an operating system seems really well-made and the progress in just the last year alone has been staggering. The only threat I see to Android's continued adoption by handset manufacturers is the pace that the developers keep improving things. 2.2 only just came out officially and there are only two or three phones that even support it, and already there's talk of the next version coming out around the end of the year. Outpacing Apple is one thing, outpacing your own business partners is another. Handset manufacturers are used to updating their OS maybe once every 4 years, and the "update" is a new wallpaper. This isn't going to sit well with them.

In conclusion: Finally! A multipurpose smartphone that doesn't make me feel like an iPedophile.

I feel I must hereby rescind my previous statement that Linux is only good for routers. It's also good for phones.

[Pxtl]

tl;dr.

I pay $15 per month for my cheap-ass PC Mobile LG Rumor. It has just barely enough minutes for my wife to ask me where the hell I am, and unlimited text so I can waste time on twitter, and fark-all else.

It's a POS, but it does what I need for the price I'm willing to pay.

So I have no interest in sexy new smartphones. However, Samsung has a spinoff of the sexy new Galaxy S that I actually am really interested in - the YP-MB2.

What is it?

It's somebody making an Android answer to the iPod Touch that doesn't suck voluminous amounts of penis. It's a Galaxy S without all that money-sucking phone crap.

[Caydr]

I felt the EXACT same way not so long ago, but every time I wanted to get directions while I was already in the car, every time I was in a store and wanted to see if a price was fair or not, every time I wanted to see what reviewers were saying about something before I bought/rented/saw it... these things outweigh my desire to avoid expensive smartphone plans.

I look at it this way, there are a few different things I feel I need on a fairly regular basis when I'm not at home:
-Music/video player
-GPS
-Mobile internet stick w/ laptop
-Phone
-Camera
-Book/e-reader
-Some sort of gaming system, if possible

I can either wear cargo pants and a backpack everywhere I go, or I can have a phone that does all of the above and more.

As you say, a really, really barebones phone plan runs at $15/month and gives you enough minutes to use it very sparingly. But I also need a GPS, which costs around $200 probably and needs at least semi-annual map updates, which cost $80 or so IIRC. I need mobile internet, and that costs $200 for the 3G stick unless you want a 3-year contract (IIRC), plus $30/month for some piddly little amount like 500 mb, with crazy overage charges. Then there's the books, which cost money individually or you can try getting older ones for free and putting them on a $200 ebook reader. And you want something you can do while you're waiting somewhere, so either strap a sudoku book to all of the above or bring your DS everywhere and get dirty looks from everyone over 30. And a camera of some kind is nice too in case you see something interesting, so put another $300 in there at least since I'm not going to buy a crappy one; might necessitate some kind of camera case...

It goes on and on. And then you start to worry about all the crap in your pockets/backpack crashing against each other, so you need protective cases and you have to walk funny and there's shit falling out of your pockets and you can't sit properly or you'll be breaking something.

$65 a month and $80 upfront for the phone, to a gadget-whore like me at least, sounds like a steal. Best part of it is that I can now probably cut off my home phone altogether and save $30 a month at least, even before you factor in any long distance. I've been waiting to tell Bell where they can shove their shitty doesn't-work-in-the-rain phone line...

YP-MB2

Hopefully they do something about the battery life - their Super AMOLED screen was supposed to be really low on battery consumption but everyone doing real-world tests (myself included) are finding the opposite seems to be true.

[knorke]

in this thread:
i just want to phone VS zomg its new

[Caydr]

$65 for 6 GB of data is new, yes. If I'm not being clear, my enthusiasm isn't just for the phone, but for the fact that I can actually use it for its intended purpose. In Canada, we have two main telecom providers - Bell and Rogers.

Bell subcontracts everything they can out to the lowest bidder and buys off our regulators to ensure they can continue screwing everyone for as long as possible, blows through government money without following through on any promises to build new infrastructure, and can be basically summed up as the Canadian version of AT&T.

Rogers does the same thing, but uses coaxial cable to deliver the consumer rape instead of a phone line.

The two companies are basically in a fierce neck-and-neck competition with each other to see who can go the longest without being forced to stop lowering service standards by customers switching to resellers like Telus or Teksavvy (best internet company ever)... which somehow manage to deliver better service at lower prices despite having to pay Bell/Rogers to use their copper in the first place.

Bell and Rogers recently LOWERED bandwidth caps on home internet. LOWERED. What the hell's that? Is our population booming so fast they just can't keep up or something? No, it's fecking cold here and 70% of the babies die every year from either freezing to death or being eaten due to lack of food.

Canada's a nice place but our telecom industry is run by people that think Hitler was onto something.

[SwiftSpear]

Fido's data plans are pretty good, and you can import any phone with SIM card capabilities and it will work on their network.

They tend to have far far far less bullshit than Telus on thier networks too. No crap like locked ringtone features, absurdly short ring times before voicemail picks up, or the complete and total inability to manage features in anything resembling a sane manner.

[edit] they also have by the second billing and variable usage plans available. And you pretty much customize your package to the minute detail.

[Caydr]

I agree that if anyone else is an option, it's Fido - except that their phone selection sucks ass and I'm too cheap to buy a high-end unlocked smartphone outright.

The things you have against Telus don't apply to modern smartphones (Android, Blackberry, iPhone), and Fido certainly locks down things just as bad if not worse on dumbphones. I've got this Motorola Z6w, great phone as dumbphones go, and it's even got some really neat unusual features. Everything's locked down or disabled (including those unusual features) and like six of the buttons launch the (useless) internet browser since their original function was stripped.

The automatic tiered data plans are still a horrible ripoff compared to 6 gb @ $65, even if that $65 didn't include all the other things it does. Aside from that, Rogers (Fido's parent company) has a smaller, slower data network by their own admission - notably, still leaving parts of my fairly large city of residence only covered with 3G rather than 3G+. And Fido users only get access to a subset of Rogers' towers last I heard, further reducing the coverage.

They claim it's "the most reliable" network, but that's pretty ambiguous. Either it works or it doesn't IMHO, and having service in more areas is more important to me than whether or not a call drops once in a blue moon. At least it's not AT&T.

I will definitely agree with you that by-the-second billing is a killer feature though. That's why my secondary phone (aforementioned Z6w) that I gave to my mother for emergencies is still on their $15 plan.

edit: Apparently my PHONE gets a 2x faster upload speed and the same download speed as my home internet. 3078/1817. WTF is that? The ping's twice as high (108), but still... why must Canada have such a screwed up telecom industry?

[PicassoCT]

I want augmented reality, so i can impress girls with 3d-modells following down the street behind me. But im happy, the messy, creative, demarchist internets is for once again a step ahead of steve jobs disneyworld.

[echoone]

I don't know if WireFly supports Canada or not. Just the same, they frequently have great phone deals. Google gave me my Moto Droid. I got the wife's Moto Droid for free from WireFly. That's two Android smart phones for an out of pocket cost of $0. Deals on smart phones can be had. Of course, data is never free.

If they don't support Canada, at least US customer's can benefit.