yea, go American "competition". The cable companies and phone companies are a bunch of colluding bastards that SHOULD be getting beat down with anti-competitive behavior. But they have so much money that they have half the politicians in their pockets. A sad testament on what the US justice system is. I'd say "has become", but it's been that way for a long, long time.

I just bagged me an upgrade to the HTC HD7 - which so far is SWEET. The battery life is shocking when you're playing games a lot though, but I guess that's to be expected.

The screen is nice and very responsive. It's transferred in all my contacts and their details from Facebook, MSN and any other windows live stuff pretty much automatically and of course I can recieve my hotmail emails along with any other accounts provided I have the right settings. (Which I do).

It uses either periodic or constant updates of your phones location - so if it's on and it's stolen you can find the bastard that did it. If you use constant updates your battery life dies off quicker, obviously. You can also remotely (from the windows phone website) lock and erase your phone completely - to protect your details in the event of a theft.

The operating system is sexy and customisable enough that you can enjoy it your own way, and it's a filthy dirty sexy looking phone. Especially once you change the back ground to black, it's pure awesome.

Oh, and did I mention - Xbox live on your phone. ACHIEVEMENT WHORING FOR THE WIN.



It's something I wouldn't mind doing a video review of, but as it records in 720p I'd like another one of these to record it with! haha

Nice phone. Shame it runs Windows though (jk, I hear WP7 is pretty good). Bought myself an HTC Desire last week. Great phone, but ironically there's a bug with calling people. Sometimes the software gets stuck when you've ended a call, the machine thinks you're still calling and refuses to call again. The only solution is a restart. I heard it's got something to do with my old SIM card, so when I get a new one in a month it should be over.

Haha, when I used to work for o2 back in the day - more and more and more, you'd see phones coming in with glitches and problems related to calling. It just used to make me laugh when poeple had a phone that couldn't make a call because it was faulty hehe

For me it mostly makes me smile because those phones are all small computers with a shitload of options (most of which no one really uses, let's be honest)...which then turn out to have difficulty calling.

That said, hope your problem gets fixed Arathorn.

I've since reverted to using a retarded cheapy nokia since I sold my other phone to o'cram (the jew). Basically the battery life was rubbish and it was ugly.

My problem with phones is that I have a very strict criteria, which is seemingly impossible to fulfill:

- Must be extremely user friendly
- Smallish
- Good battery life
- Aesthetically pleasing
- Touchscreen (preferably)
- Offline GPS / GoogleMaps
- 3mm audio jack
- 1GB for music
- NOT expensive (<200)

So now im stuck with a cheap ass phone that im embarrassed to use, but at least the battery lasts all week

I was eating at a KFC ripoff with a friend of mine a while ago and he had just bought a 'normal' phone. I asked him how much it cost (180 €) and I choked on my chicken wing. 180 is 'normal'? Christ on a biscuit.

The fun thing was, when I asked him why he didn't buy a functional phone of 40-50€ he was like "but I need something that can play music! And take pictures! And it has a built-in GPS system!"

Then I asked him whether he owned an MP3 player (yes, an iPad), a digital camera (yep) and a car GPS (yep). So basically...he didn't need all those functions for jack shit. The only valid point he had was that his car GPS can't help him navigate a city on foot.

I swear...people throw too much money on these fads. Why not buy an iPad while you're at it? /sarcasm



P.S. note that he wouldn't use it for internet. That's another story (altho I do think the occassions you really NEED an internet connection on your phone are extremely rare unless you are a travelling businessman - and even then)

Honestly I use all that stuff on my phone. I do have a gps, a nice digi camera, mp3 player etc. but I don't want to have to carry all that stuff around with me as it gets heavy in my purse. Plus those times when like this past Friday I went to a party with my neighbor and she drove. I assumed she knew where she was going, but it was a good thing I had my phone with me so I could put in the address and use the gps feature. And as stupid as it seems I even use the silly features like the flashlight on my phone. I will leave her house on Tuesdays after watching sons of anarchy with her and I want to be able to see the ground as I am walking home because we have this huge oak tree that drops tons of acorns that are easy to slip on. And having the internet is great for traveling and times when your router takes a dump on you and you need/want backup internet. So... I think you would be surprised how often you use those additional features. Hell I take my phone with me to the gym to listen to music and text while working out.

I just wish they would make my phone like waterproof so I could take it more places like the ocean or rafting or something. but I have a protective waterproof pouch for that I suppose.

I would say that I too use all those things on my phone.

GPS solely to make sightseeing a doddle.
MP3 player simply to replace my iPod shuffle. No point having 2 devices when you can have 1.

Oh quite the Spartan. I presume you hunted your KFC chicken and spilled its guts out with your spear before eating it?

jk

No, but everyone's gotta eat. You just don't need a phone that can rub your butt for 20 € more.

And I guess I'm just too economic to buy something expensive to do things that other (equally expensive) things that I already own can do as well. I AM a pretty big cheapskate, after all.

Well, I don't have an mp3-player, photo camera or GPS, so for me it's a nicely versatile machine. And the internet is quite useful, whenever I'm bored I start responding to e-mails or reading the news, things I'd otherwise waste time on at home.

Derf detects slight hypocrisy...

I use my phone options probably more than Shiny, and it's definitely worth it. I don't have a camera that's recent (I have a 2 MP dinosaur from 10 years ago)... I don't have a video camera... shiny has a GPS but it's several years old and the maps are outdated. Plus my phone syncs the GPS satellites faster. I use it for music (8GB sim card ftw), I also listen to Pandora on it, I read email, I look stuff up online. It's extremely helpful. I do have an mp3 player, but having the phone reduces the number of devices I have to carry by 1. I'm thinking about selling or giving away my MP3 player, actually.

Cool you're using a Windows phone 7 device. I always like seeing options out there. That makes 3 highly visible options (iOS, android and WP7) plus a few not-so-big ones like webOS. Competition is good.

lol @ rinox pic.

Yeah the windows 7 is a doddle to use, they've really taken a leaf out of apples book and gone for simplicity, without making an exact replica. There are somethings that will need to be improved as time goes on, for example the list of Apps isn't huge right now - but once it is they'll need a new layout to make navigating through them easier too.

What amazes me is the only credit card details Microsoft have are for a cancelled card - but some how it allowed me to download a £2 app

Wonder how?

No idea.