One month with the MyTouch...(a love story-sort of)

**deckard67** · 09-24-2009, 05:40 PM

Some of you might have noticed my post on my impression of the mytouch after playing with a model in the store. Well at the end of August, I bit the bullet and got one(black). I am not an iPhone hater (more like an AT&T hater) so I hope that you find my personal review useful if you are considering making the leap.

1. Look and Feel--After having it for a month I still love the look and feel of the phone. It is quite a bit smaller than the iPhone which I think is a plus. One handed navigation is much easier, especially with the extra buttons and the track ball. I love the trackball, especially when I am browsing the web and my big fat fingers can't properly hit a link to navigate to another page. The phone has haptic feedback which I think is a necessity for a touch screen as slight vibration lets me know I have typed. The phone fits in my hand pretty well, but I bought a blue and black hard case that accents the phone nicely and makes it just the right size for my somewhat large hands.

I love the customizability of the home screen. I have added my own wallpaper of my favorite College football team. There is an app that one can download to completely customize the home screen with themes, but I found that it slowed the phone down so I did not keep that app.

2. Call quality--call qualilty is good. I did have to take the first myTouch back as the earpiece speaker sounded like it was blown. The one I have now sounds great. The external speaker is pretty good and is quite useful to play some music or for use as a speaker phone.

3. OS, Apps, and stuff: I think the Android OS is coming along nicely. I am looking forward to the update that is supposed to have some fixes. For me though the phone works as advertized. I am a google services user, so gmail and calendar integration are seamless, and the fact that I now have all my contacts stored on my gmail account now makes losing my phone (heaven forbid) less stressful since my contacts are automatically backed up.

The OS is pretty responsive, and I am happy with it. Sometimes there will be some lag which can very depending on how much is running in the background. Task Killer is a must for the phone as I can kill one or all of the apps running at any time and speed up the phone if it slows. The OS is very stable. I have yet to have my phone freeze. I restart it ever few days just to keep it fresh, but I have not really seen a need to restart it like I did with my BB pearl.

I have not rooted my myTouch but now that the unlocker.com has a one touch method for rooting, I will probably do so. I am holding out though to do it after donout since once a phone is rooted I have to manually update it myself. And while rooting will expand what I can do, right now I do not need tethering or some fo the other things that can be done with the phone.

The thing that makes this phone so intuitive is the pull down notification pain at the top of the screen. I love that no matter what I am doing it lets me know that I have a new message, voice mail, calendar event, and that I can "pull down the window shade" and read and goto whatever notification I have. This part simply kicks the iphone's butt.

4. Storage.-I have been downloading apps for some time and am up to more than 30 (I think). According to my phone I still have 220 out of a possible 290 MB left for storing and running apps.

The fact that it takes large micro sd cards is sweet. I am planning on buying an 16 gig card soon. Should be enough for my needs.

My Complaints:

3.5mm jack...Why this was left off is so stupid to me. If it had this jack I think it would put it over the top for many users.

192 MB RAM for running apps is a bit light. I wish they would have put more like 512...I think this would solve what issues with lag there are. Memory is so cheap now days, so I think this is an oversight for all manufactures.

Soft Keyboard: the portrait soft keyboard was virtually unusable for me as the letters were way to close together for my big fat fingers. I did load the HTC keyboard and I really like it much better, so I was able to solve that issue. I was not sure I would like using a soft keyboard, but I found that I have gotten pretty fast with it, rivaling how i was able to type on my bb.

T-Mobile's 3G network....just plain stinks. I am in the PHX area but I live in the outskirts and have no 3G at my house. I do use the wi-fi but there is something with my router that will not let me download some apps through wifi and I thus have to switch off the wifi and use EDGE. It really is unacceptable that t-mobile has such horrible 3g coverage. With the Hero coming out for sprint and their wide 3G coverage, T-Mobile needs to get its act in gear here or they will lose what advantage they have.

Overall. The phone is not perfect. But to me it is close. I love it. I love the apps I can download. I love the coolness of the device. And I love that it is not an iPhone. (I like being a bit unique) It does the job for me. I may leave t-mobile over the 3g issue, but if their 3g coverage was competitive with other companies I would not even think about it.

**Owen** · 09-24-2009, 06:06 PM

If you have decided to root your phone, you may want to also consider switching to an alternative ROM. Like you, I loved my Magic (same as MyTouch) for all the same reasons you mentioned above. I switched to Cyanogenmod that has compcache and apps2sd built in, and the two pet peeves you mention (occasional lag and storage space for apps) were taken care of. Now I wouldn't change it for anything.

**dlopes90** · 09-24-2009, 06:28 PM

how did u get the htc keyboard without rooting your phone? cause i hate the cupcake keyboard!!

**Absolute** · 09-24-2009, 06:42 PM

Originally Posted by dlopes90

how did u get the htc keyboard without rooting your phone? cause i hate the cupcake keyboard!!

search for the HTC IME and install it like u do any other apk...but it has to be the older one, I don't think the newer one would work...I'd give u the apk but I don't know where that version is, hopefully someone else does.