As mentioned in my last post, I finally picked up my new cell phone, the HTC Fuze.
After Scott, Jamie, and I met at the food court and ate, we headed to the AT&T store and found that they had the phone. The sales guy brought one out so that we could play around with it, at which point we discovered that the reviewer who said it was sluggish and unresponsive was either a. smoking crack or b. didn’t bother calibrating the touch screen before playing around with it.
It did take forever for it to start the first time, as it had to install a bunch of stuff, but after that it was fine. Admittedly, when sifting through photos via “flicking,” it’s not as fast as an iPhone or iPod Touch, but that’s hardly a deal-breaker.
After playing with it, the question of whether or not one or more of us was actually going to buy it arose. Scott needed to talk it over with Stacy, while Jamie had already gotten the go-ahead from Casey, but was still somewhat reluctant to do so, and I, of course, had the “advantage” of being a loveless loner who doesn’t have to clear anything with anyone.
Even so, I was leaning towards waiting until after payday, but ultimately decided that I didn’t want to wait.
While I was being rung up and getting my service plan upgraded, Jamie decided to buy it as well.
I went with the accessories pack, which included a car charger, 2 GB microSD card, case (more on that in a bit), and a Bluetooth headset. There was some sort of issue with the headset that it was supposed to come with it – I guess they didn’t have it – so I ended up getting a better one, apparently. It is a pretty nice LG headset. Now I can be one of those jack-offs walking around everywhere with a Bluetooth headset stuck in his ear who, upon initial inspection, appears to be talking to himself. Of course, in my case the odds are pretty good that I really would be talking to myself.
Scott and I waited around while Jamie was being rung up, and were approached by another sales guy who was especially chatty. Turns out that he had worked at AOL for a while last year. He tried doing some namedropping of various AOL bigwigs he had worked with, but neither Scott, nor Jamie, nor I recognized the names, so when he dropped them they just kept on falling.
At some point – weirdly – he started telling Scott and I all of these places where we could get really good deals on unlocked phone.
We were both thinking, “Uh, you do know that you work at a place that’s in business to sell locked phones, right?”
Jamie, still being rung up, told Scott and I that we could leave if we wanted. Scott offered to stay, and I would have been willing to, but it was getting a bit late, given that we had yet to start Riff Trax night, so when Jamie found out that we had plans to watch movies she said again that we could leave, and when Scott started to demur, I said, “Meh, we can just ditch her.”
So we did.
When we got to my house and I started going through everything that came with the phone I discovered that I hadn’t gotten a case.
I also remembered that I’d intended to go to Wilsons Leather Store while I was at the Town Center to buy some gloves. I figured that because they’re (sadly) going out of business I could get a good deal.
So to deal with the issues of the case and the gloves, I stopped at the Town Center on my way home from work on Friday and I learned that I didn’t get a case because they were all out, and that the Wilsons has already closed and been replaced by some other store.
It was only two strikes, but I was still out.
In any case, so far I’m digging the phone, not because it’s somehow life-altering, but because it’s just got a lot of little “Hey, that’s cool!” features that set it apart from the simple functionality of my old phone.
And besides that, it’s sleek and sexy.
In terms of actual functionality that sets it apart from my old phone, it has a better keyboard that has the most commonly-used special characters (@, for example) right on the keyboard without requiring pressing the Function key, and it includes a full-fledged Web browser (Opera Mobile). Beyond that, the Touch Flo 3D interface is a marked improvement over the default Windows Mobile interface.
The 3.2 Megapixel camera takes unusually sharp and clear pictures, has an auto-focus feature, and has really good image-stabilization so that pictures don’t turn out nearly as blurry as they do on most cell phone cameras.
Among the “that’s cool” features are the fact that the stylus is secured in its storage spot with a magnet – something Jamie discovered – that actually pulls the stylus into place as you’re pushing it in, and the fact that the screen automatically unlocks when you pull the stylus out.
If you’re in a meeting and the phone rings, you can simply turn it over so that it’s face down and it will stop ringing. You can also set it so that it automatically switches to vibrate during times that there are appointments on your calendar.
It comes with a game called Teeter that takes advantage of the phone’s accelerometer (the video features the slide-out keyboard-less version of my phone). You have to guide a ball into a specific hole, past obstacles like walls and other holes, by tilting the phone. It even gives some tactile feedback so that you can feel when the ball “hits” one of the walls or goes into a hole.
It’s kind of addictive – and maddening.
Speaking of the accelerometer, there is one sort of…well, not complaint, exactly, but more of an observation about the phone that I have. Unlike the iPhone or iPod Touch, the screen’s orientation doesn’t automatically change with the orientation of the phone. At least, not always; it seems to be application-specific.
If I’m browsing in Opera, or using the camera, for example, and I turn it on its side, the orientation of the screen will change. But if I’m using the actual phone, or say Bubble Breaker, and tilt it, the orientation does not change.
Like I said, it’s not really a complaint; it’s just different from what I would have expected, thanks to my iPod Touch.
When I was upgrading my service plan, the sales guy asked me if I text at all. I said that I don’t do a lot of texting, but it is a feature that I use. I wondered why he was asking, as I thought that I had unlimited data and texting on my existing plan. He said that I didn’t have unlimited texting. Evidently I’ve been paying per text, which, given that I never noticed any major increases in my monthly bill, says a lot about how much, or rather, how little, I text.
In any case, I went with a different plan that covered texting. I also opted to add the GPS service. I doubt that I’ll get that much use out of it, but I might as well have it. I tried out the GPS software yesterday and was pretty impressed by its accuracy.
So, yeah. Digging the sleek, sexy new phone.
But what, you may ask, about my old, not-so sleek and sexy but still perfectly functional phone?
When I was home for my mom’s birthday I was talking to my niece Jourdan about the new phone I was eventually going to buy, and she jokingly asked if she could have my old one. The thought hadn’t occurred to me; I figured on just dropping it off in one of those charity boxes or whatever. So I said that she could, which surprised her. I’m not sure why; it’s not like I was going to have any further use for it.
Apparently ever since that time she’s been periodically asking my mom “Did Jon buy his new phone yet?”
So this morning when I headed out to go to the comic shop and go grocery stopping I stopped at the Postal Connections to ship it to her. When I got home I sent her a message on Facebook letting her know that I had shipped it out.
In response she said that I “must be the best uncle ever.”
Ha! In your face, Stuart and Brad, and Dean’s brother Rick! I rule!
Apart from the activities mentioned above, I haven’t done much today. After getting home and eating lunch, I took a rather lengthy nap.
I spent most of last night watching the recorded TV piled up on my DVR, and still have a few more shows to watch tonight.
In fact, I think I’ll go do that now.
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