HTC Inspire 4G (black, AT&T)

Pros: + Fast and responsive phone
+ Great-looking screen
+ 4G, although still needs improvement from AT&T
+ Android allows you to do so much more with your phone and easier to use
+ Much better multi-tasking among apps
+ Widgets

Cons: + Battery life
+ Apps stay in the background and eat up memory and battery life
+ Limited number of home screens, no folders
+ User interface not as smooth as the iPhone
+ I hate it that Google Chrome bookmarks cannot be synchronized with the Android

Summary: After pondering for about a month, I finally made the decision to switch. Yes, I was breaking up with my iPhone and switching to the Android OS. It actually wasn't all that difficult for me to decide. I am such a heavy Google user that it made sense for me to reconcile everything on the Android. Also, I was hearing horror stories about how badly Apple was treating its app developers while Google had created a great open-source environment for their developers. I guess this shouldn't have come as a surprise after having suffered from the protective policies of Apple with iTunes for a long time myself.

Well, making the decision to switch to Android wasn't all that difficult. But which phone was I going to buy? I ended up going back and forth between the HTC Inspire and Motorola Atrix. But after reading such bad reviews on how poorly Motorola had designed their UI on the Atrix, and seeing the beautiful screen of the Inspire with my own eyes, I finally decided to go with the Inspire. And so far, I'm very pleased with my decision.

Before I go on any further, I should note that these are really only my first impressions after using my new phone for 3 days. However, I suspect that the only potential issue that might affect my longer-term opinion about the phone is the battery life. I expect everything else to remain stable at this point.

I am not a gadget person, per se. But I do like to get full use out of a device with such hardware capability. With my iPhone 3GS, I was beginning to get frustrated with the fact that all you basically do on the phone was to go from app to app and look at content that you can easily also see on the internet. With the Android system, you have the full control of the device in your hands. You can access its entire file system, background processes, device properties, and so much more. It really feels like you're getting more out of your device. At least to me. And I really like that.

Switching from the iPhone to Android, one thing that struck me right away was how much better the multi-tasking capability was on Android. With the Android, you are now in the realm of real multi-tasking. Things that remain in the background remain live, updating, synchronizing, etc. On the iPhone, yes, you could switch from app to app, but most apps wouldn't even remember where they were when you returned back. On Android, Google has really managed to provide a great multi-tasking capability and that was a great turn on for me. But of course, it's not flawless. I soon realized that everything tended to stay live in the background. Most apps don't really have a real "close" feature. You switch back to your home screen or another app, and the app that you leave behind stays on even if you don't need it to stay on anymore. Some apps do have "turn off" or "quit" options buried into their menus, but most don't. And in the end, all those apps that stay on eat on the memory and use valuable battery life. Now, I found good apps that allow you to see all running tasks and close them as desired, and I find myself doing that at least several times during the day. I'm using the app called "Android System Info" for that, and I'm happy with it.

Another nice feature that I ended up liking a lot was the widgets. Widgets are small apps with live content in them. They look great and offer good live content without even opening any apps. The iPhone doesn't have anything like this at all.

It is of course also amazing to be able to just simply transfer files between my phone and my computer with no limitations from Apple!!! In this day and age, I really can't believe that I am actually writing something like this in a review, but it is the reality. I also can't believe that I let myself be abused by Apple like this for so long. Not any more, though! I am now a free man and I am planning on staying that way from now on.

OK, now on to a few words specifically about the phone... I have to say that, overall, I am really happy with the HTC Inspire 4G. The screen is really huge and beautiful! What an upgrade from my iPhone 3GS. But it also has a bit more glare. This might be mitigated soon when I start using a screen protector. The AT&T store I bought the phone at did not have one on stock, and ordered it for me. The glare should become less pronounced with the screen protector. The phone is very fast and responsive. I was actually positively surprised by this, as the demo phone I tried at the store was so much worse on that. So I recommend not to base your decisions on the performance that you find on a demo phone in a store! Now on to the battery life... Yes, like most other reviewers, I am also experiencing somewhat limited battery life. Overall, though, I have to say that it's not all that different from my iPhone! But I think it requires the user to be much more aware of what's running in the background.

Overall, I am very happy with my HTC Inspire.

PS: Best 4G speed so far 2500 kbps down and 375 kbps up (in Miami)

Updated on Mar 23, 2011

Update after 2 weeks of use...

Pretty much all of my original comments are still valid. I really like both the Android system in general and my new HTC Inspire. I suppose the first thing I should update on is battery life, as the consensus so far seems to be that this is the weakest link. Well, I've had days when I ran out of charge in one day, and days when I still had about 30% charge by the end of the second day. There are ways to check what's using the most of the battery, and it seems that the display is actually the main culprit with 50-60% of battery life consumed by it. I reduced my default brightness to 70% and it seems to help.

Apps running in the background also continue to be an evasive subject for me. But what I realized was that except for ones that actively sync, background processes don't actually use power, just consume memory. No matter what I do, I am constantly running at about 20-25% free memory!

Overall, I am still extremely pleased and love my new phone!