As an avid reader of this blog you might have noticed that, contrary to many others of what I like to call my tech blog writing buddies, I am not too fond of Apple products. Now, I am by no means totally against them, hell, I even own an iPod Touch. But I have always seen it as not much more than a rather slick mp3 player which incidentally also allows me to access the Internets once in a while or play that one or other game. I was never really tempted to upgrade this to an iPhone, let alone become so entranced with Apple that I would gladly pay for their albeit slickly designed, overpriced and ultimately underfeatured computer products.
Lately though, I have felt the need to upgrade my mobile phone to something more full-featured. With me using an operating system (Linux) that Apple can’t or won’t support, an iPhone was out of the question (among other issues like Apple’s iron fist when it comes to what shall and what shall not be run on their devices). So instead, I opted for the HTC Desire, an Android powered phone. As luck would have it, I quickly found a carrier that sells it, ordered the beast and a week later my trembling hands were unboxing.
Anyway, as I mentioned above, the Desire runs on Android, Google’s own mobile operating system. There’s a marketplace very similar to the Apple appstore which at the time of this writing holds roughly 40,000 applications. Which is about 39,950 more than I will ever need. But people like choices, and I guess that’s what Android is all about. If you want, you can replace every application on your phone with applications from the market and guess what? Neither Google nor HTC will care. And they won’t even revoke your warranty either.
There’s one problem I have with the Desire and that, of course, is its battery life. If you use all the stuff smartphones are famous for, you know, like surfing, taking pictures, sending emails, watching videos, listening to music and such, the HTC’s battery will crap out after approximately three hours. You can of course use the resources sensibly, in which case I’ve heard people mention battery times up to three days. Be that as it may, I am still wondering what the battery industry is doing all day long. I mean, it’s not as if they didn’t have time work on the durability of batteries for the last fucking century.
At last, you might be wondering what the headline is all about. Basically, I just wanted to lure you in. I don’t think there’ll ever be a smartphone to rule us all. Because there are more important things in life than gadgets. Like drinking, food and daytime television.