Two posts ago, I was talking about the virtues of my new Rogers HTC Dream phone, and while it was good, and I was enamoured with the 3G speeds after using an EDGE BlackBerry. After about a month of usage, I found my self avoiding using it. I tried to love Google’s Android OS, and despite its charm and open stature, I found it lacking.

It was slow, the keyboard was awkward, and everything aside from Calendars, Mail, and Contacts required manual synchronizing. The lack of a notepad application by default was also very annoying.

Enter my new 16GB iPhone 3GS. Its fast, light, intuitive, and now eliminates my iPod touch, which makes it one less device to stuff into my pocket. I was also shocked at just how fast I am with its keyboard. I’d estimate that I am about twice as fast on my iPhone as I was on my blackberry, and about three times as fast as my HTC. Thats a pretty big statement, the HTC and blackberry both have physical keyboards, which means that tactile feedback isn’t everything for touch typists such as myself.

I’m glad I made the switch to iPhone, my only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner. Now this may not be forever, since I was late to upgrade, I’ll have access to the HTC Dream for a while, and in the future, I may go back. But for now, I love my iPhone.

Looks promising, hopefully this will be available soon!

Rogers White HTC Dream

Android, Google’s Open Source OS for smart phones has finally come to Canada in the form of the HTC Dream (T-mobile G1 in the USA). Roger’s Android phone features some changes from the default Android 1.5 (Cupcake) OS that makes it unique to Canada, most notably, built in support for ActiveSync, allowing you to get push email from a Microsoft Exchange server.

There are some caveants, the most important being, if you want to use your Rogers HTC Dream with an Exchange Server, it must be running Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 with Service Pack 1 applied. In our testing, we discovered that HTC has formatted their https commands differently than the iPhone, and other ActiveSync devices causing a “Sync Protocol Error” to be displayed on the phone.

Overall, I quite like the device, and I am quite fond of its ability to run an SSH client full screen, and allowing me to use the 5 line qwerty keyboard to control servers and routers that I need access to remotely.  Web browsing is also nice and fast thanks to built in HSPA 3.5G support (7.2Mbps download, 2Mbps upload).  The built in mail client is very similar in operation to the Apple mail client that comes with the iPod touch, and iPhone.  I really like the built in Calendar’s ability to sync with Google Calendar, as well as exchange, showing the events in both calendars in different colors. This allows me to keep my personal calendar separate from my work calendar.

As expected, all of the Google apps really shine on Android, Maps, Talk, Youtube and Mail all work seamlessly with Google, and are activated with the very first setup screen when the phone is started up for the first time.

The Rogers version of the HTC Dream comes with a 2GB micro SD card already installed in the phone.

So far, I’ve only had the phone for 6 days, I’ll be posting a more detailed post on the phone after I’ve had a chance to use it for work for a month.

Post a comment if you have a question that you’d like me to answer.