so i went phone shopping this week

[tubby.twins]

I just upgraded to a HTC Aria last week.  It works very nicely.

 

[tfarny]

I think the HTC is going to be my next one - I like the fact that it's still pocket-able.

 

[Dan025]

i like that too, the batery life isn't great if you keep wifi and "HTC sync" going. HTC Sync is used to keep your twiiter and facebook updated, there are preloaded widgets that are part of HTC sense that allow you to have a single status and will show all the news feeds for your friends. i think the email might use HTC sync for the push function as strange as that sounds i didn't seem to get my mail notifications with sync off, may have been coincidental though.

the poor batery life was disapointing but can be managed by altering settings and getting an app called task killer pro. it will auto kill apps when you turn of the screen. there is also an exceptions list so you dont kill apps that are usefull when running in the background like music players.

i am strongly considering going with the captivate, i have 9 days to return my aria but im on the fence about getting a larger phone and giving up the optical track ball or whatever you'd call it. also htc's interface is less cumbersome (partially to do with the optical tracker making editing text more easy). the aria's speed is perfectly suited or even overkill for its lower resolution screen. but flash is choppy and the phone runs out of memory. on 3g on a network that's not too busy like north jersey or upstate newyork it serfs the web like a computer. it blow my old iphone away in web surfing. but the captivate is only $80 dollars more with a plan and has 16gig internal storage expandable to 32 with a micro sd. aria has very little storage and a 16 gig sd card costs about $80 from att.. ill bet they did that on purpose. add in a faster processor bigger hi res screen and swype and it is a great deal if you ask me. neither one of them has a flash on the camera and that's disappointing (why jack why? verizon gets a flash on the fascinate, why no love for att?) ill bet att wanted to cripple it so it doesnt compete with the iphone 4, jerks!

 

[Dan025]

oh other plus with captivate is the internal storage means you wont run out of room for apps. for some reason android 2.1 cant run or install apps to the sd card, 2.2 is not available for HTC yet other than the desire and maybe the droid incredible. 2.2 can install and run apps from the SD card.

 

[tfarny]

Hmm. I already have a 16gb micro card, and I have less than zero desire to continuously update facebook from my phone. Sounds like a ridiculous chore to me.

 

[Dan025]

Hmm. I already have a 16gb micro card, and I have less than zero desire to continuously update facebook from my phone. Sounds like a ridiculous chore to me.

well then the HTC is probably for you unless you fill the internal storage with apps then you need to wait for 2.2 to be released for it so you can put them on the sd card.

correction i was talking about the sync feature on the phone not HTC sync which is something else  :doh: . the widget can only turn all authorized syncs on or off and includes apps for facebook, twitter, the weather, news, ect..  but in the settings page you can kill the less useful apps and say just have it push your emails and sync the weather.

having all the sync features on is useful once though, the phone will sync your Facebook and gmail contacts to your phone giving them each a contact card with whatever public information they have on facebook or whatever info you added to gmail. it is nice to have it there for the rare but not unheard of occasion i want to get a hold of someone who's phone number or email i dont have, many people i rarely talk to have friended me on facebook and now i have many of there phone numbers and emails in the phones contact list.

HTC sync is software for the computer but they pull the version that was actually useful. the version stiil there is 2.0.38 and is an update of an older version so it supports the aria it is to help sync email to outlook. 3.0 was originally offered for the aria and can sync the phone to your itunes library and applications can be sideloaded like itunes does on the iphone which is useful as att removed permissions to install apps from sources outside of android marketplace. not much you cant find on droid market but i wanted to install the beta for swype but missed the cutoff date to download it. HTC sync 3.0 can still be found in a google search but cant be gotten from HTC's site

 

[Dan025]

so i returned the aria, got the captivate, aria was $129 after $100 mail in rebate or in store credit, so i spent $100 on accesories in store, sd card, case, beilt clip, headphones. captivate was $199 so i returned the phone and all the accessories in exchange for the captivate and it was basically a one for one exchange after the restocking fee.

 htc had many great features over all the competition, they had support for flash in android 2.1! but the screen just was to hard to read in the daylight and i had to use a third party app to kill a number of processes to conserve battery power, yeah i could have gotten an anti glare screen cover but there is just something about the captivates amazing screen. as for flash support ill just have to wait for the 2.2 upgrade. still need to see what the battery life is like but i figure with the amoled screen and 45nano meter arcitecture of the processor it aught to be better than the htc, not to mention the reviews ive read and spec sheet seem to all agree with that assumption.

update:
after a few days with the captivate i know i made the right choice, you can argue features vs. spec's all day but overall the call quality on the samsung is outstanding! best andriod "PHONE" if you ask me. i mean what good is a droid x or incredible or evo if the battery is always dead and the call quality sux. the battery life is good especially for a 1 Ghz phone. audio is also good through speaker phone and is outstanding through the samsumg in ear headphones which im a fan of, no ear buds for me. the audio was also great on the aria for headphone use but not from the onboard speakers, the stock headphones for aria were earbuds not in ear. i was a bit disapointed at the lack of a second camera for video calls and lack of a camera flash and support for flash but the overall experiance is great. managing apps and widgets and features to get a balance between convenience and battery life on the aria was work and an annoyance, the captivate is just a joy to use. if i were on sprint id wait for the epic over the evo, that should be an amazing phone with the only drawback being the greater thickness from the slide out keyboard. i know you are all tired of hearing about cell phones so im gonna shut up now!