It’s not so much A Day in the Life of the HTC Desire Z as it is My Life after a day with the HTC Desire Z.
Rise & Shine
08:00 – Gwaaaa! Gwaaaa! Gwaaaa! Gwaaaa! The sound I initially thought matched the old style clock-radio-alarm letters of the HTC Desire Z home screen, doesn’t sound so cute screaming in my ear while I’m still asleep. Effective alarm though.
I quickly hit the snooze button and win 10 more minutes for my effort; not quite time to get up. The HTC Desire Z battery is freshly charged as I fully expect another day of hard usage similar to yesterday when I managed to drain it in 7.5 hrs.
After the alarm terrorises me again, I groggily get up and grab the phone before heading to the bathroom.
No messages came in through the night; just as well as I haven’t figured out how to do different profiles yet and the current profile is sure to wake me.
A swipe to the right reveals my Google calendar; a custom widget I configured there to give me quick overview of the day. Not too much going on today, so lots of fiddle time with the HTC Desire Z.
Another swipe takes me to the next custom screen with a widget listing various sources of different news that is pulled in through the Google Reader service. I catch up on global events whilst brushing my teeth.
Short Cuts
08:40 – Teeth, and knowledge of current events, all shiny, I leave the house and head to work.
I would love to be able to dashboard mount the HTC Desire Z and make use of the Car Panel app, but I tried that the other night and was told my location is not available yet. Kota Kinabalu is obviously not in demand enough yet – so I miss out on traffic information – just as well because having to enable GPS sucks battery like there’s no tomorrow.
I stop and take a picture of Mt. Kinabalu sitting brightly on the horizon. That’s the way we roll here in KK.
Snapping pic takes me a little longer than it should, partly because I don’t remember where everything is yet and it’s a bit fidgety to start with: press the power button -> slide down to unlock -> click camera app -> focus – snap.
Because of very similar steps, it’s also not that easy to read and reply text messages during a stop at a red light. I suspect this will improve as I get familiar with the phone.
Office, Coffee and Connections
08:55 – First things first. The HTC Desire Z is running like it never slept, but I need an extra boost to get me going.
Time for a quick cup of coffee and a great opportunity for a basic test of the phone’s HD video recording capabilities.
While I’m in the imaging program I may as well snap a few colourful things in the office to see how the images stack up. The office is fairly brightly lit. I had to size down the pictures, because 5 megapixels is really big (2592×1552).
In the office we have a WiFi network. By the time I get into the WiFi settings, the HTC Desire Z is fully aware of my office network and every other network within range. It offers me a list from which I pick the one I want to connect to and enter the password.
Being connected to a WiFi network it automatically switches off GPRS so that I don’t use my Maxis Mobile Internet when I’m in a WiFi zone.
I open TweetDeck, which is the only app I need for two-way communications with Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In and Four Square.
I haven’t played with the standard HTC Senses apps that are loaded by default yet, because I know (and love) TweetDeck already.
From TweetDeck I can see what my friends are up to and I can post my own pictures, status updates and locations to either 1 or several of the social networks.
Another reviewer said TweetDeck is buggy – but I don’t experience anything other than TweetDeck goodness, although it does work differently to the desktop version.
Before we go to lunch, follow me to Part 2 of A Day in the Life of the HTC Desire Z…