New year, new phone!

Happy New Year!

I have celebrated the new year by upgrading my mobile phone. I confess to agonizing over my choice, and I apologize to my colleagues who I have bored silly with my research into phone size, processor specs, and endless review comparisons. My previous phone, an HTC Touch, has served me very well, but I really wanted to get a new contract with a decent data component so I could fit the "3 screens and a cloud" model that everyone's talking about.

Of course, I could have followed half the planet and gone with an iPhone. But there were three things against it: (i) the contracts are expensive; (2) its Outlook support is not quite rich enough for me; and (iii) it actually doesn't work that well as a phone. (All my friends with one, comment that it frequently drops calls and reroutes calls straight to voicemail.)

These three constraints are quite hard to solve :-) In the end, I am essentially stuck with needing another Windows Mobile phone. Luckily HTC have been working hard to make WinMo a more sexy proposition. So, I have gone for the HTC HD2. It's a very nice phone - HTC have re-skinned WinMo 6.5, making it much more finger friendly. Moreover, the HD2 has an amazing 4.3", 800*480, capacitive screen. Yes, that's right: multi-touch on a WinMo phone!

So far, it's been a nice experience. The only downside I've noticed is that the 3G coverage for Vodafone is a little patchy. There are a few bugs that I've tripped over, but I'm looking forward to version 2 of the ROM, which has been leaked here; it looks great.

[I have treated mine a bit better than this guy!]