Update: HTC Desire HD turns itself off, hope for nice new phones

An update to my original post concerning random rebooting of the HTC Desire HD.

Even after an update was applied to the phone over the air, I found that it would regularly reboot itself even when I'd left it unattended.

The answer turned out to be that the SIM card was gradually loosening from its slot, which I think was the original root cause of the phone rebooting unexpectedly (I thought this was something to do with the Alarm Clock, but it seems that was more of a symptom than a cause).

I taped my SIM card down inside the phone so that it couldn't budge from its slot, and it has never rebooted itself again.

That's the good news. The bad news is that the phone is badly playing up these days. When I call other people it randomly puts them on hold and dials other people's numbers, and more often than not it will just terminate the call without warning.

So I think it's almost time to lay the ol' HTC Desire HD down to rest. It will be interesting to see what comes of the Apple, Nokia (not so much) and other phone launches. 

When they announce the iPhone 5 (seems like it will actually happen this time!), I hope that the new version of iOS includes proper 'Android-esque' widget functionality - for me this will make or break my decision to buy an iPhone. 

So come on Apple, make your OS properly content-centric - not just a bunch of brightly coloured icons.

Come on Apple, get your Googles on and see the need for widgets!

I am tired of Android.

I find it to have generally poor implementation in a lot of apps, poor usability and half-hearted attempts to Apple-ify the user experience. There have been vast improvements in the past few months, but it's still lacking.

After I'd had my iPhone 3GS for 18 months I genuinely wanted to give Android a chance, not only because I was tired of the locked-down iOS ecosystem, but because I thought maybe it was a viable alternative for the fairly serious phone user.

Having owned an Android phone in the form of an HTC Desire HD for over a year, I am on the verge of returning to Apple via iPhone, iPad and my next computer will be a MacBook.

In my opinion, Android is the PC of phones and tablets. It's just not quite there. There's no 'ooh-ahh', in the experience - just mediocrity. I want a tablet for home and travel, but I wouldn't consider an Android tablet for a minute - not even with the knocked down prices we're seeing at the moment. I'm intrigued by Windows 8, but it's too long away.

Now to the point - my only sticking point with my return to iOS is homescreen widgets.

The best thing about Android is the great widgets you can add to your homescreen. Instantly accessible and useful information, quick shortcuts to the information you need, and general interest. Every section of my homescreen is rammed full of something I find useful.

Compare that to iOS' sweety box of colourful icons which mean virtually nothing. You can see which apps you have to launch as well as a few basic pieces of information, but nothing particularly useful to you at a glance. I really wish Apple would realise that they need to add user widgets to the iOS homescreen - the lack of widgets was one of the reasons I plumped for Android 12 months ago and it's the only thing which somewhat puts me off buying Apple iOS devices.

If I think that, then I very much doubt I'm alone.

Sort it out Apple - you may have queues out the door and up to the distant horizon when you launch a new product, but that queue could be a few people longer if you do the right thing and add widgets to iOS.

Apple Tablet: Will Steve's New Toy do the Job?

Many people apparently believe that Apple are about to announce a new gadget, the Apple Tablet.

Since it's such a work of art, I always thought it would be cool to take an iPod Touch and enlarge it by several times. It looks a bit like the Tablet (if it actually appears) will look just like that.
I really hope that they do release such a gadget, because aside from an iPhone I've never owned a Mac. It looks like it could be the perfect first buy; possibly portable, durable and running Mac OS X, with a user experience that beats the hell out of Windows (not that difficult).

Of course, it's going to be expensive and demand will undoubtedly reach fever pitch,
so I better start saving!