Random Traffic Through Nick's Brain

A list of my issues with my new HTC Touch Pro SmartPhone / PDA. My service
provider, SwissCom, is partially responsible for some of these issues. As a
long-time Palm / Treo user I find that some things just aren’t as well thought
out on this device. As someone married to an iPhone user, I can’t help but be
envious. I’ve skimmed TFM, but I still have to RTFM.

• SwissCom:
  • Cannot delete a voicemail while you’re listening to it.
    You have to wait until the end of the message, and then
    wait through a long menu before it accepts input.
    
    Fixed: First press 0, then press 3. Why the extra key before the normal delete key? I don’t know.
  • Rules for dialling and texting are different. Dialling with the country code in front of the number while in the country? OK. Texting? Not OK. Out of the country, you need to dial with the country code. This makes figuring out what number to store in the contacts difficult.
• OS:
  • Palm: 1 syllable. PDA / HTC / Touch Pro: > 1 syllable.
    
    Omer notes: “Phone”
  • The touch sensitivity seems off. I feel that I need to press too hard, for too long, to ‘click’ things.
  • The screen turns off too fast when using the phone. I can’t figure out how to turn the screen back on once it’s turned off (say, if I need to use the keypad).
  • The device becomes unresponsive, just like Windows.
  • You can’t quickly flip between SMS messages.
    Some applications, like mail, have the nice finger-swipe to move to the next or previous message.
    Some don’t.
    That’s what you get when there is a mish-mash of vendors (HTC, MicroSoft, Opera, etc.) providing the core software for your phone.
• TouchFlo:
  • TouchFlo is a bit jittery.
  • If an application (e.g., Tasks) is already open, then clicking it’s button on the landscape TouchFlo home page doesn’t switch to it.
  • TouchFlo can’t be customized. There are certain things that I use a *lot* and want to promote to the front page.
• Tasks:
  • Marking a task as complete resets the selection to the 1st task. If you’re going through your task list one-by-one this is frustrating.
  • Doesn’t remember the last filter that was applied to it.
  • Only shows one line.
  • Number of taps to edit a task
    • Palm: 1 (tap on the task’s subject).
    • HTC: 3 (tap on the task’s subject, tap Edit, tap in the subject field)
• Notes:
  • Notes can’t be filtered / categorized.
  • A colon in a note appears as an underscore.
• Keyboard:
  • The on-screen keyboard pops up even when the keyboard is slid out. I want a way to turn it off.
  • Despite having a full keyboard, the darn thing defaults to T9 mode by default in some cases.
    Fix:
    FN+Space (T9 key).
    Switch to ABC mode (but now spell correction doesn’t work).
    Aside: Inserting a new word in T9 mode is stupidly difficult.
  • The keyboard backlight turns off too fast.
• Opera:
  • Backspace in Opera goes back to the previous page, even if you are in a text field. Having to type something without making mistakes is almost impossible.
  • There is no immediate feedback when clicking on a link.
  • It feels like you need to press and hold a link instead of just tapping it.
• Applications:
  • No Flash player.
  • No native GMail client.
    
    Fixed: Navigate to http://m.google.com/mail/ using IE, not Opera. However, this is the Java version, which has *tiny* print and constantly asks you if you want to let things use the internet.
  • No native Google Maps client. The US version has one, but not the European version. I can’t figure out how to find one for it.
    
    Fixed: Navigate to http://google.com/gmm using IE, not Opera.

Software I Need to Install or Configure

• GPS / Google Maps.
• GMail.
• Chat: AIM, Google Chat.
• Exchange synchronization.
• Synchronization with my laptop via BlueTooth.

I will add annoyances and fixes as I find them. Feel free to contribute issues or fixes in the comments field.

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