The HTC HD2 Smartphone is a beautiful device, with two failings.

  1. It’s not an iPhone.
  2. And it’s covered in ads for the phone carrier (Telstra in this case).

HTC_HD2 Oh, it tries to be an iPhone with multi-touch, and automatic screen rotation, but it’s not.  It’s too slow.  You can fix that, the team over at XDA Developers have a number of bespoke firmware updates to help you out there.  But it would still be putting lipstick on a pig.  The lipstick covered piggy being Windows Mobile 6.5.

Advertisements placed on the phone by the carrier (Telstra).  Let’s count them, the ones circled in RED are carrier added programs.  The ones in GREEN are ones I’ve installed.
HTC HD2 Ad covered screen 1 HTC HD2 Ad covered screen 2 HTC HD2 Ad covered screen 3 HTC HD2 Ad covered screen 4

  • 30 HTC/Microsoft added programs
  • 12 carrier added programs
  • 3 Wisefaq added programs.

I hate this sort of thing, because carriers are giving the Noddy User the impression that these programs are part of the phone.  In reality, they are web links, which cause you to consume bandwidth.  And provide more profits to the phone carriers.

I’ve never seen a phone with so much carrier-added crud before.  Makes me want to visit those XDA guys straight away.

Aside from those gripes, the screen is absolutely beautiful, with a size of 480×800.  Battery life seems reasonable at over 2 days, of email and web surfing.

I don’t know how “droppable” the phone would be.  My gut feeling is all you would need to happen is for the HD2 to bounce on the floor, and the glass screen would crack.  If I had a “budget for expensive smartphone drop testing”, I’d try and see.  But I have not.  So you only have my gut feelings, and my vast experience at breaking phones.

Would I be buying one? You know, yes I would.  But not from Telstra.  They put far too much rubbish on the phone.

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