iPhone vs HTC

[Adam Easy Wishes]

Right. I have an iPhone 3GS, and considering a change. An iPhone upgrade is still pretty expensive (I understand the upgrade to an iPhone 4 will probably come down in price when the nu-iPhone is out later in the summer), but just wondered about checking out an HTC of sorts.

Has anyone made the change from iPhone to HTC?

Are they similar/which is better?

Can you get Words With Friends on the HTC?

Any info welcome.

[Jaaakkkeee]

I have an iPhone 4 and I think it's brilliant. My work was giving us HTC's and the only people who didn't return it for a nokia was the people who wanted touch screens. You have to charge it like twice a day if you use any apps at all like. When my phone at work is upgraded I'm going for the Nokia.

[Bigsby]

Happy enough with my HTC Mini, even though it has the dreaded Windows 6.5 on it. As long as you got an Android one I would have thought you could get pretty much anything.

But I like the mini because (a) It's small (b) It has a radio © It's not an iPhone like every other fucker

[jester1470]

I went the opposite waty, i love(d) HTC, I've had an HTC phone since 2002 when they were the people who designed the Orange SPV and I had various SPV's right down until i got my Touch HD a few years ago, loved it and it could do everything an iphone could do. This time round I went for an iphone 4, because i found such a difference between the Iphone 3g and 4 in terms of useability./speed etc. i did toy with getting an HTC Desire, but having used my mates was never quite convinced of it. Much as i loved my Touch HD, towards the end (because it ran Windows mobile) it started to fail so I'd agree with Bigsby that an HTC is a good idea providing its not a Windows one. Personally i would go for the iphone, as an ex-hater of all things iphone, the 4 has really won me over, i'll still think carefully before going for my next phone but the iphone is the best on the market imo for now, not necessaily because of the technology but rather the user friendliness and theamount of peripheral apps etc, though android is catching up fast.

[Lethal10]

I was an iPhone hater for a long time but the words iPhone accidentally slipped out my mouth at upgrade time.

I'm certainly warming to it but the lack of flash player is really bothering me to be honest.

Everyone I know with new high end HTC phones all struggle with really bad battery life. They can't even get a normal day out of the battery.

Not sure how Nokia are going to get on with the tie up with Microsoft.

I had Nokia phones for years. The last was the N8 but outwith the sat nav, camera and video I had a dislike of that phone. The previous Nokia N900 minus the poor touch screen was probably my favourite phone.

The iPhone has so much support it makes it appealing but I still hate iTunes and all that nonsense too.

[jester1470]

I was an iPhone hater for a long time but the words iPhone accidentally slipped out my mouth at upgrade time.

I'm certainly warming to it but the lack of flash player is really bothering me to be honest.

Everyone I know with new high end HTC phones all struggle with really bad battery life. They can't even get a normal day out of the battery.

Not sure how Nokia are going to get on with the tie up with Microsoft.

I had Nokia phones for years. The last was the N8 but outwith the sat nav, camera and video I had a dislike of that phone. The previous Nokia N900 minus the poor touch screen was probably my favourite phone.

The iPhone has so much support it makes it appealing but I still hate iTunes and all that nonsense too.

Flash, I havent noticed being that much of an issue, and I'd have to say my HTC had better battery life than my phone 4 which I get a day out of if I hardly use it.

[Bigsby]

My main concern is this: which is more porn friendly?

[Jaaakkkeee]

That's more to do with the network. Orange Safeguard stops me looking at porn on 3g.

[french_disko]

I've an iPod Touch (ok, not quite an iPhone), Blackberry 8520 (for work) and an HTC Desire HD - I have to say the HTC Desire is the best of the lot.

Highly recommended.

[FatHand]

I'm not really into the apple vs the world arguments, just going to give a run down of pros and cons of iPhone 4 the way I see it.

Pros:

It has a great camera, especially for video, the microphone picks up loud music surprisingly well and I've recorded practices and videoed gigs with happy results. Internet is fast when hooked into WiFi. It's pretty straightforward phone to use. I have some apps that I find useful and fun, 4 track recorder, angry birds, various synths, banking, paypal, dropbox, vimeo (pretty sure these are all available on other phones too)

Cons:

You have to have an app for pretty much everything due to flash not being supported. You can't download stuff onto your phone directly from an email or mediafire type hosting sites - example is say you have a mixdown of a track you have sent yourself and you want to listen to it as part of your music library you can't. It downloads within an email and plays it in Quicktime. That is really a major gripe for me, I don't always want to have to go back into my emails and search for a track, perhaps there is another fucking app for that too that I've missed. "An app for everything" is not great, it takes up memory on my phone when you could equally just be using a website and one piece of software that has multiple functions.

Ultimately most phones do the same things these days and compared with my last Sony Eriksson I have had no bother with this one at all.

[Guest Tam o' Shantie]

battery life was an issue on my htc desire but it doesnt seem to be so bad anymore. maybe they just take a while to 'settle in' or something.

you're welcome to have a proper go of mine any time you want dude. desire hd is even nicer but i wanted an 18 month contract so i went for the regular ol' desire.

for anyone else who doesnt know, i had an iphone 3g which i enjoyed very much but which found itself rather outdated in a short period of time. given the choice between upgrading to the 4 which is admittedly very nice, for the paltry sum of 200 quid on a 24 month contract or getting a 'free' htc desire on 18 month conract i went for the latter. i do miss some things about the iphone experience but i also don't miss what a glitchy unresponsive piece of shit mine was for about the last year of ownership. fwiw, the bare bones spec of the htc desire and iphone 4 are very very similar. (source, gsmarena.com)

and yes, you can get words with friends on it.

[Guest Gladstone]

I don't understand why you're making words with friends a prerequisite seeing as you haven't played a move for about 6 fucking days.

[Stroopy121]

I have a desire HD and fucking love it. Iphone can juggle my balls.

Downside - it has (twice now) spontaneously deleted all my texts, but it's no great heartache to be honest.

Battery life is fine with me and I use it for gaming fairly constantly. Get a solid day - day and a half out of it with pretty heavy use.

xx

[Lonz]

I have an HTC Desire on my personal contract and a iPhone 3GS via my work.

The HTC Desire (or a newer model - I think the Desire is a good few months old now, you'd probably get a newer model free with an upgrade) running Android would be my pick. I prefer the freedom to install whatever I want on the device as well as easily transfer my music to and from the device without having to worry about iTunes and how many machines I can sync the iPhone on. A PC just recognises the Desire as an external hard drive allowing you to transfer files easily.

I've got a SNES emulator and roms of PIlotwings\Zelda\Mario Kart running on mine and I haven't had to jailbreak or root the phone to do this and invalidate the warranty.

I do agree with a few others on here that the battery life on the Desire is terrible. Truly awful, I actually have a widget on the phone that turns off the 3g signal when I'm not actively browsing the web just to save on the battery.

Personally I'd try and wangle a free upgrade onto a HTC phone, if you don't like it you can always sell it on ebay for a few hundred quid and go back to your iPhone 3GS. I think it's a no lose. The iPhone is a great phone but if you try and don't like the HTC phones you haven't lost anything.

[Chris]

Battery life can be an issue but if you don't leave wi-fi, 3G, Bluetooth and GPS turned on unless you need it I can get days out of my HTC Hero. Otherwise if I'm in the office I leave it plugged into the PC with 3G turned on to grab twitter/facebook/email updates.

Really though the discussion shouldn't be iPhone vs HTC it should be iPhone vs Android. Samsung are just about to release the Samsung Galaxy S2 which will be the most powerful smartphone around. It's looking very impressive and running Android as well. The Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc is also getting great reviews and was just made Techrader's no1 phone on their best phones list.

Back to HTC they're about to release the HTC Sensation which will just about match the Samsung for power. This is the one I'm thinking of going for as my upgrade is due. Of course more power means more battery life issues in all probability.

All these new phones also means the previous generation of phones will drop in price. Probably some good deals to be had on HTC Desire HDs at the moment.