More boys' toys

Don't you just adore the arrival of a new bit of technology?  Nestling in the palm of your hand, all strange and mysterious because you haven't yet figured out exactly what it can do, and since we all know that real men always follow the adage when all else fails, read the instruction book there's the anticipation of future hours days of unbridled delight rising in a crescendo to the point where you have what can only be described as a techgasm as more and more functionality is discovered and ways you might exploit that technology spring to mind, eventually leading inexorably to you wondering how you ever got by in life up to this point without it.

A couple of days ago I took possession of such a piece of modern technology.  No, let me rephrase that slightly.  It surpasses mere technology.  This is a piece of art.

I am now the proud possessor of an HTC Sensation mobile telephone handset, which at the moment is that company's flagship product. 

It has all sorts of bells and whistles including an 8Mp camera which can record video in HD and play it back on its large 4.3" 540 x 960 pixel 16:9 aspect ratio wide-screen display; a blisteringly fast dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 1.2 GHz processor, and seven different "home" screens each of which can be completely customised with a huge selection of Apps and Widgets and which are flicked between with impressive looking animation effects.

It's the first mobile phone I've owned which has the Android operating system, and I went for that rather than an Apple iPhone mostly because of my dislike of iTunes (which is not one of these I hate Apple and Microsoft and Google and Starbucks etc because they're big successful American companies rants) but also that the synchronisation of the phone with MS Outlook in which all my life (such as it is) is stored on my PC looked to be a damn sight easier with the HTC than with an iPhone.

I don't think I blogged about it at the time, but my previous phone which was a Nokia N97 Mini was frankly a catalogue of disasters, and to cut a long drawn-out story short the original one I got in February 2010 was returned to Vodafone twice within a couple of months for repairs to different faults before being replaced by a refurbished one when it had to be returned a third time in quick succession with yet another fault.  Unfortunately the replacement also developed a fault about a month after I got it, which was fixed and lasted a bit longer than the previous one.  Sadly this died about a month ago when the screen froze completely and refused to unfreeze even after a hard reset.  So I upgraded to the HTC because coincidentally the old one failing came just when I could upgrade early with Vodafone.

So with all that in mind imagine how I laughed when the new HTC Sensation I collected on Thursday just before 4pm powered off twice when I was taking photos at a school reunion on the Friday evening, powered off when I was accessing the Internet on the train on the way home from the reunion, and suddenly started showing big wide green "interference pattern" stripes on the screen when I switched on the camera on Saturday afternoon (i.e. yesterday)!

So back to Vodafone it went and it's now been replaced with a brand new one which, so far, is behaving itself.  I'm prepared to overlook this initial aberration, after all when I collected it on Thursday they only had two in the shop, one which had been taken from its box and demonstrated to, and played with by, a customer, and one with the rear case missing because it had been cannibalised, and I agreed to take the one with the missing back together with the back from the other one so it's likely that this was a foolish decision on my part!  The one I now have was in a sealed box!

So I'm now all set again, and can now seamlessly integrate all my phone contacts with those I have on Facebook and Twitter, and see everyone's updates together in one place, while checking the local weather forecast and plotting a route from where I am to where I want to be.  And it can all be captured on HD Video!