First Android experience: D+

I'd been up for an upgrade to my phone since August, and my husband had been for quite some time. Still rockin' a Palm phone, he really needed the upgrade more than myself. We decided we were ready to delve into the smartphone universe, and finally made that jump in the middle of October.

Then the obvious question: which phone to buy? I wanted to wait to see what kind of new iPhone Apple released, and if I maybe wanted to get that or the iPhone 4 for cheaper. Not all too impressed by the 4S, I didn't feel it was worth $200, and the more I looked into the specs, I didn't feel the now-outdated 4 was even worth the reduced price of $100. So, I went with the HTC Inspire.

The Inspire turned out to be nothing by trouble for me. My Facebook app crashed every frickin' time I tried to post a status update. I had to uninstall the updated app and run the old one in order to ever post anything. I'm not a Facebook addict, but come on. That's pretty ridiculous. Then, other things started to never work on the phone. I finally had it when, in trying to open a game, the phone did nothing buy black out. The screen went black and I couldn't do anything. I tried tapping the home button, which lit up, meaning the phone was still on, but nothing would respond. I couldn't hold in the power button to turn it off either. I finally had to take OUT the battery to shut the damn thing off. I was done. I had only had the thing for a week and had this many problems. I wanted Jarrod's phone, the Infuse. He had not experienced any problems, and I was still in the one-month span of time you can trade your phone no questions asked. I will never buy an HTC again. It was an awful experience and not to mention, the thing was a brick. I know 5-6 ounces doesn't sound like much (the Infuse is, like 3 oz.), but my arm would actually be tired from holding the phone up to my ear. Their phones are all really heavy for some reason.

So I traded in and got the Infuse to much excitement. Things seemed to work better, the screen was much sharper, all was well. I was delusional... The only noticeable 'flaw' was that wifi signals were weaker, which Jarrod did warn me about. Other than that, seemed fine. Until... I went to the Facebook app. Same problem. I am currently running the old version, because once again it crashes every time I want to post something! Furthermore, turns out the Infuse is still running Froyo, with no upgrade in sight (for you non-tech'ers out there: this is kind of ridiculous.) Despite it's flaws, the HTC was at least on Gingerbread. I've toyed with the idea of rooting my phone, but never actually have gone through with it.

Anyways, so Facebook still crashes, and in less than a month's time I have also had another wealth of problems: 

• I can't send picture messages--this only works about 50% of the time.
• I can't download picture messages--the message says it's "downloading" but never ever finishes downloading and I never see the photo.
• I can't watch any YouTube videos. My video player NEVER works, in either the YouTube app or the web browser.
• My internal video player never works, so videos I myself record on the phone never play. The only time it will work is if I restart my phone. But the fact that I have to do that is stupid, and then it never fails that it just goes back to not working soon after.
• Just in last week: my phone's video recorder does not work either. I tried to take a video at a store, and it would not work. I had to resort to a boring photo instead.
• Half of my games never load properly, so I never get to play those.

On Friday, I realized I actually hate my phone. I hate my phone, so boy is it going to be a looonnngggg two years, when I'll get my next one. My old 1st generation iPod touch from 2008 is more reliable than this piece-of-shit Infuse! 

Since I've had both the Apple experience and now the Android experience, I now understand why Apple costs more. iOS is more refined, and if you want that, then that's why you pay extra; makes sense, that's how all of Apple's products are. Granted, a lot of the little buggy things that tick me off about Android (like how your text box where you're typing does not expand, so if you have more than two lines of type, you can't see the rest of it and have no way of seeing it unless you want to tap and tap away trying to get the cursor up there) have probably been fixed with the newer OS versions. 

But still. For my first Android experience, I can't say I'm impressed. I guess I just have terrible luck with phones, too. Yes, I do plan to go by the store sometime soon and tell them all of these issues I'm having with my phone. I've done nothing wrong, so hopefully they can help me out.

Next time, I think I'm just buying an iPhone.