[Archived] HTC Desire?

[Wilky]

any of you crew got one?

[ihateburnley]

Yeah

[Savory]

got a desire hd

[mac]

Yep and I love it !

[Beta Ray Bill]

Superb phone.

[Glenn]

If you're looking for a cheap Android based phone with a surprising the high spec for the price, the Orange San Francisco (aka ZTE Blade) is great. http://shop.orange.co.uk/mobile-phones/San-Francisco-from-Orange-in-grey

Many of my techie mates have picked them up and I got one for my wife for Christmas.

What most have done is

1. Get the phone for £100 on PAYG from Orange (if you whine enough, you can buy it without a sim with £20 of Orange credit).

2. Unlock it. (Free, web based)

3. Upgrade to Android 2.2 and get rid of all Orange's guff

3. Slap a GiffGaff sim in it (£10 a month for 250 mins, unlimited text and most importantly, unlimited data)

and suddenly you have a phone running the latest version of Android (very quickly once de-oranged) for £100 (plus £10 a month for unlimited data).

I'm dead impressed with both the phone and Android itself, may be tempted to switch when my iPhone contract is up.

[Ricky]

Glenn, if you are an existing orange customer you can quite often get £30 knocked off the San Fran as well.

Makes it even more of a no brainer.

They have changed the screen since the early models though. The early ones had a very nice OLED but the new ones are TFT I think. Still very very good for the money but not quite as good as the OLED.

[Biddy]

They have changed the screen since the early models though. The early ones had a very nice OLED but the new ones are TFT I think. Still very very good for the money but not quite as good as the OLED.

That happened on the Desire. Did it happen on the San Fran as well? Would have thought HTC would have learnt by now.

I have the Desire. Had it for about 8 months now and it's slowly getting to a place where it does everything my 4 year old Windows phone can do. Finally got a version of Skype, I have a proper Sat Nav on it, vplayer can play divx files without re-encoding, Froyo means iplayer works straight from the browser. All good stuff. The killer for me still is the battery life. Some casual browsing and download a couple of apps from Marketplace and suddenly the battery drops to 50%. It feels like it is constantly on charge.

On the flip side, I wouldn't go back to the Windows phone now as that just feels so dated, clunky and slow (although I still use it for Tom Tom).

Be aware of "de-branding" though. My Desire was unlocked but had o2 branding, I got impatient waiting for Froyo to come out through o2 so I de-branded to a stock rom (need to use a "goldcard" which is just an SD card with and file on it) and let the over-the-air upgrade do it's business. This has worked flawlessly until the last update which keeps popping up on my phone. HTC have put in an additional check whereby it starts the upgrade, reboots and then just hangs with an "unknown device" error. Take the battery out and it boots ok again so no loss. The problem is now, I can't upgrade (and hopefully to Gingerbread) without completely flashing the Rom and losing all my settings, scores, saves etc :-(

[Wilky]

I've got a desire

what I want to know is as anyone downloaded ESPN goals, subscribed and.managed to get it to work?

[Wilky]

also, if any of u are subscribed to the rovers player... guess what works on the flash enabled browser?

looks like the Android app isn't coming but the site version works so isn't a bad thing I suppose..

[Clitherover]

I've got a Wildfire which is basically the Desire but with a lower resolution screen, only paid £130 for it an all.

3. Slap a GiffGaff sim in it (£10 a month for 250 mins, unlimited text and most importantly, unlimited data)

That sounds a really good deal will have to check that out, is it unlimited data or fair usage policy though?, my o2 contract says unlimited but it's actually restricted at 500MB. Also what network does GiffGaff run on.

Cheers.

[Wilky]

I've got a Wildfire which is basically the Desire but with a lower resolution screen, only paid £130 for it an all.

That sounds a really good deal will have to check that out, is it unlimited data or fair usage policy though?, my o2 contract says unlimited but it's actually restricted at 500MB. Also what network does GiffGaff run on.

Cheers.

completly unlimited mate.. it runs on 02

order a sim from here.

https://giffgaff.com/orders/affiliate/wilky

u get free £5 air time on it went u activate the sim

If you're looking for a cheap Android based phone with a surprising the high spec for the price, the Orange San Francisco (aka ZTE Blade) is great. http://shop.orange.co.uk/mobile-phones/San-Francisco-from-Orange-in-grey

Many of my techie mates have picked them up and I got one for my wife for Christmas.

What most have done is

1. Get the phone for £100 on PAYG from Orange (if you whine enough, you can buy it without a sim with £20 of Orange credit).

2. Unlock it. (Free, web based)

3. Upgrade to Android 2.2 and get rid of all Orange's guff

3. Slap a GiffGaff sim in it (£10 a month for 250 mins, unlimited text and most importantly, unlimited data)

and suddenly you have a phone running the latest version of Android (very quickly once de-oranged) for £100 (plus £10 a month for unlimited data).

I'm dead impressed with both the phone and Android itself, may be tempted to switch when my iPhone contract is up.

did u order ur sim via my link I posted a while back?

[Wilky]

@Glenn, have u had any payback yet pay... off giffgaff?

[Biddy]

<br />I've got a desire<br />

<br />

what I want to know is as anyone downloaded ESPN goals, subscribed and.managed to get it to work?<br />

<br /><br /><br />

I used it. I got charged once, half the videos didn't stream correctly. During 3pm games the app disabled all videos, even old ones. The streams that did work looked ok, always seemed to be the rovers ones that were broken.

Didn't get charged for about 3 months and now I have been charged again. Not sure how I cancel.

[Clitherover]

order a sim from here.

https://giffgaff.com/orders/affiliate/wilky

Cheers mate, ordered one. Am assuming you get something free for recommending me?

One more question, will i be able to pop teh giffgaff simcard straight into my Wildfire without an unlock as it is on o2? (said i was on contract before i meant payg)

[Ricky]

The Giffgaff sim should go straight in.

I've put my brother and work colleague both on giffgaff over the last month or so. I'm still tied into my O2 contract but the Giff Gaff deal is just too good to miss. I'll be getting one as soon as my contract ends. Just debating buying a Sim Free Iphone 4 to replace my 3GS, however I understand there may well be a new Iphone in the offing by then anyway so I'll wait and see what happens there.

[Clitherover]

The Giffgaff sim should go straight in.

I've put my brother and work colleague both on giffgaff over the last month or so. I'm still tied into my O2 contract but the Giff Gaff deal is just too good to miss. I'll be getting one as soon as my contract ends. Just debating buying a Sim Free Iphone 4 to replace my 3GS, however I understand there may well be a new Iphone in the offing by then anyway so I'll wait and see what happens there.

Thanks mate, the deal is too good, it's usually either free texts/web or free calls with the big networks never both, am on o2 text and web atm and to make a call completely leeches my credit.

[Wilky]

02 actually own giffgaff you buy 02 top up vouchers and top ur giffgaff sim up with them easy peasy...

all giffgaff sims will work in all 02 locked handsets, like I said 02 and giffgaff are as one... hither owned by telefonica..

the chap getting an iPhone 4.. if u do, I will need a giffgaff micro sim, normal giffgaff sims won't work...

Cheers mate, ordered one. Am assuming you get something free for recommending me?

One more question, will i be able to pop teh giffgaff simcard straight into my Wildfire without an unlock as it is on o2? (said i was on contract before i meant payg)

cheers mate, yea I get 500 points going into my payback once u activate the sim, which is simple.. you go online imput the code top up a tenner using bank card or an 02 voucher then I get my 500 points (£5) and u have £15 credit instead of £10...

you also get paid for posting in the forums and getting people to sign up...

[Biddy]

the chap getting an iPhone 4.. if u do, I will need a giffgaff micro sim, normal giffgaff sims won't work...

It probably would, just needs a bit of stanley knife/scissor action to trim it down to the right size. Well that's what my mate did for his Ipad. Typical Apple eh? Why stick to a standard.

[beerwins]

If you're looking for a cheap Android based phone with a surprising the high spec for the price, the Orange San Francisco (aka ZTE Blade) is great. http://shop.orange.co.uk/mobile-phones/San-Francisco-from-Orange-in-grey

Many of my techie mates have picked them up and I got one for my wife for Christmas.

What most have done is

1. Get the phone for £100 on PAYG from Orange (if you whine enough, you can buy it without a sim with £20 of Orange credit).

2. Unlock it. (Free, web based)

3. Upgrade to Android 2.2 and get rid of all Orange's guff

3. Slap a GiffGaff sim in it (£10 a month for 250 mins, unlimited text and most importantly, unlimited data)

and suddenly you have a phone running the latest version of Android (very quickly once de-oranged) for £100 (plus £10 a month for unlimited data).

I'm dead impressed with both the phone and Android itself, may be tempted to switch when my iPhone contract is up.

My phone has recently has just buggered up so its time for a new one, I like technology but I have let phones completely pass me by as I have had the same one for years.

I wanted to try this new phone tech but did'nt really want to spend so much incase I hardly used it.

I just ordered one of the zte phones and a Giffgaff sim too, I actually pay £10.00 a month on O2 for 100 mins and free texts so the Giffgaff thing is way better too, are the free calls to any network?

Thx for the good advice You just saved me hours of non stop phones being thrust in my face with pushy salesmen.

[Wilky]

all desire owners I urge u to download this trial

http://www.appbrain....owslite.kiio.es

its brilliant...

add that app with the unlimited data you get by activating a.sim from here

https://giffgaff.com...affiliate/wilky

and bought a.£10 goodybag.. makes all more worth being this app..

just to show how unlimited giffgaff is/can be..

I've downloaded 20gb worth of data before and last month I used 6gb...

[Glenn]

all desire owners I urge u to download this trial

http://www.appbrain....owslite.kiio.es

its brilliant...

add that app with the unlimited data you get by activating a.sim from here

https://giffgaff.com...affiliate/wilky

and bought a.£10 goodybag.. makes all more worth being this app..

just to show how unlimited giffgaff is/can be..

I've downloaded 20gb worth of data before and last month I used 6gb...

There is actually one limit to GiffGaff''s "unlimited" daya, you can't use it to tether (i.e. hook your phone up to a PC and use it as a modem) because that potentially uses colossal amount of data.

[Wilky]

that's not a limit tho, its an Industry standard thing.. as most networks off mobile broadband. something giffgaff are looking at doing..

[Wilky]

http://members.giffgaff.com/danielclo1il/sweepstake/

click the above link to try and win £10 free giffgaff credit

[cn174]

Are you on commission for giffgaff or something?!