I wasw going to write a blog full of innuendo and stuff, but I cannot remember what most of it was :/

And then I briefly considered taking a picture of the phone to accompany this blog, but again that would be weird since the photo would be taken with my old phone...

Ok... so... the phone.

Its got a nice and large screen (am I compensating for something by buying a phoen with such a huge screen?) and it looks nice enough.

It is an "Android" phone, meaning it has the android Smartphone OS on there - version 1.6 at the moment, which is sort of ancient, but I decided to accept the information that they will update it to the lastest version something in the near future.

That will allow the full capabilities of the screen to be realised at some point. (along with better voice integration which arrived with versions 2.0/2.1 of Android.)

Before the big update to a newer version of android hits, there are already rumours out of an updated build of the firmware that fixes some bugs and maybe speeds things up too - the version on my phone currently is R1FA014, with the newer build being R1FA016, but it has not been made available as an update on my phone yet (the delay may be due to location or network tie in/customisations being requierd before release.).

Talking of the future, I got the phone on T Mobile. This year, T Mobile and Orange will merge, so if there are places where only one of the two networks has reception, hat problem should go away at that point. (If neither do, then things stay the same I guess.)

Hardware Features

The phone has an 8 Meg camera. One day I will test it out. Not used it at all so far, but I guess its good to have that there if and when I need it.

It also has a fast processor, compass, accelerometer (to tell how the phone is being held) and GPS built into the device. Cool stuff.

Did I mention that it has a huge 4 inch screen?

On the negative side, there seems to occasionally be lag on the screen presses and sometimes pressing a button seems to not register properly, so you have to press it more than once. This is not often, but it is an annoyance. I expect both these to be solved through software updates.

There's an App for that

On the phone (and most smartphones it seems since the original iphone), everything is called an "app" and Sony Erricsson have given android a cusom UI (Code named Rachel. I am sure there is some innuendo I can make about that, but I will leave it to you) and a couple of custom apps. Well, three really.

The first apps to hit you are timecape and mediascape.

Timescape is to manage your communications in a single place - all social networking and communications such as calling and everything else. Naturally, I decided to remove this from the home screen and replace it with the regular old fashioned "contacts" app. I don't need my phone to be smarter than me thankyou very much. Besides, social networking (or any other form of networking for that matter) is simply not my thing. Isolation be golden.

The second one is Mediascape - this manages your media. Suffice it to say, I have no media on the phone so far (incorrect - playnow managed to put some sample tracks in there), so the jury is still out.

There is also "Playnow" - A music store which may eventually become a competing (but not replacement) "app strore" to compete with Google's "Market place". It is currently focussed on music only from what I can see and that is not an area that holds vast amounts of interest for me. It is also Sloooow.

The phone requires a Google account to use some features, but if you want to use your gmail account with the phone, do NOT use the email app to handle the email. use the gmail app that is also on the phone. It is far superior and respects the gmail threading view.

Recommend me some apps!

And now the task of installing and checking out apps. Anyone got any reccomendations? Reccomendations for the non socially oriented person, mind you.

Remember, I am unsocial and a cheapskate. so free would be good.

(Also, any good games to test this thing out?)