My wife and I are both on T-Mobile and have been using G1 phones for the past couple years.  They’ve been very good phones but are starting to show their age.  A few months ago mine started to be hard to hear while talking…and just a couple weeks ago hers started having  SIM card errors.  I’d been tasked with finding our new phone but hadn’t seen the one that I really wanted (I wanted an EVO but wasn’t willing to drop T-Mobile for other reasons, mostly several people on the plan).

On Thursday after I’d been putting it off for far too long, she decided to ‘just stop by’ to see what T-Mobile had.  And of course what they had was the brand new HTC Sensation.  Long story short…she walked out of there with two of ’em.

First Look

Wow, it’s a beautiful phone!  even though the form factor/screen is significantly larger than the G1 it feels much smaller in my pocket because it is so thin!  The screen is really gorgeous too.  I’m at that stage where I need reading glasses some of the time.  With the G1 it was getting to be most of the time.  I don’t have to grab them so often with the Sensation because of the larger, sharper screen.  The Sensation has some nice screen effects by default so it shows very nicely.

Keyboard

This is my first phone without a ‘real’ keyboard…it’s taking some getting used to.  The default keyboard has some idiosyncrasies that make it a bit annoying to use, but you can install others and I’ll be trying out a few.  The first two on my list are SwiftKey X (Amazon Android Marketplace) and Swype (It’s in beta still).  The default Keyboard has a swype-like interface but I haven’t grown to like it yet.  Stay tuned, I’ve only tried for a couple of days…

Battery

My first concern with the Sensation has been battery life.  The sales person recommended we charge/discharge completely for the first few days, then re-charge before restarting.  Battery life was not impressing me in the least, but it was a weekend and I was using the phone heavily.  I think if you’re going to use your phone all day every day you’ll want to buy a spare battery or you’ll need to plug in for at least part of the day.

I sure wish there were an option to have a bigger battery…I’d happily live with a lump in the back of the phone on those days where I wanted to use it heavily while away from power.

Interface

It takes a while to get used to a new phone and this one is no different.  So far it’s a bit of a pain to actually answer the phone, Swype does some weird stuff when it interacts with Google’s auto-complete search.  Also there are places where I wish for a more intuitive interface.  I do feel like I’ll be much more used to it within a few days, though…it’s mostly quirks of using the On-Screen Keyboard and getting used to where Settings and Options are once I get into an application.

Links:

Review at Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/27/htc-sensation-review/

Summary

So far I’m really liking my new Sensation.  The keyboard is taking a while to get used to, battery life seems better as the days go by, but everything else is pretty nice.  I’ll write again as I get used to this new phone.

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Posted by Greg on July 29th, 2011 :: Filed under phones,Tech
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