Last May (2014) I bought a Google Nexus 5 as a second phone to my Nokia Lumia 925. After a few months, the Nexus 5 became my primary phone, and the Nokia 925 (Windows Phone) went to my office lab for testing purposes.
Moving from a curated ecosystem of Windows Phone was not easy. I missed the fantastic camera of Lumia 925, the driving mode which when I am in the car automatically switches my music player and reads out text messages, and the Windows Phone connector app for Mac OS X which makes sync with iTunes a breeze. I hated the stock Android Dialer, Message, Mail, Player, Photos App and so on. Then my friends who were using Android helped me with recommendations and I started to get the hang of Android. As the year progressed Google updated the Nexus 5 to Lollipop and released a lot of polished apps for Gmail supporting Office 365, Google Camera, and Google Messenger (replacing the awful Hangout). I found a simple paid app SMS Backup & Restore by Ritesh Sahu (and later by SyncTech Pty Ltd) for backing SMS messages and restoring them (something that iOS and WP do with ease OOB). For the photos app, I found QuickPic Gallery to be good, especially for selecting multiple photos and deleting them, editing them easily. For Music, I got Rocket Player (JRT Studio Music Players), and for task management, I went with a paid subscription to Todoist which works on all platforms. To detect when I am in my car, I switch on Music Player automatically I use the Trigger app. Everything was going well until around Christmas 2014 when I accidentally broke the touch screen of my Nexus 5, this was the second time it had happened to me, so I decided I needed to buy a new phone.
That’s how for New Year 2015 I gifted myself HTC Desire 820 Dual Sim for INR 24,700. After much searching I went with this phone, the reason was I didn’t want to spend for a premium phone like the HTC M8 or Samsung Galaxy S5, HTC 820 supports both the 4G bands that are being introduced in India by Airtel and Reliance Jio (whenever that is). I had experiences with HTC phones in the past, the first HTC phone I owned was in 2007 with HTC S710 a lovely Windows Mobile with a pop-out full keyboard and the last HTC phone I used was in 2010 with HTC Mozart 7 running Windows Phone 7.
HTC Desire 820 Dual Sim bought on Jan 4, 2015
My first impression of the HTC Desire 820 was how polished and integrated Android from HTC feels compared to stock Android from Google. The default apps like the Dialer, Messaging, Clock, Mail, Gallery and Camera from HTC were so much better that I didn’t install any 3rd party replacements. HTC Pair, a feature that helps you to set up your phone from your PC through a web browser was a breeze to use. The HTC Sync Manager app for Mac OS X while not as fully featured as the Windows Phone connector makes it easy to sync iTunes and iPhotos from Mac to the phone. I took a liking to the HTC Blink widget as well. The voice quality was great, and hardly any call dropped which is rare for any phone in India.
Disclosure: I write reviews about products and services that I have bought for my usage and paid in full. There were no sponsorship or advertisement, or commission of any sort involved in this post.
My most loved feature of the phone was the HTC Sense Input that ships with every HTC smartphone. The reason for liking Sense is the Tamil language keyboard that comes with it, typing my mother tongue with this phone was the best experience compared to all other devices out there including the iPhone, the word suggestions were out of the world.
Tamil input OOB in HTC Desire 820
After buying the phone I found there was a Smart display on the case (a full case cover for the Dot View Touch Sense feature in the phone) for the phone from HTC for Rs.499. I highly recommend you buy it. To my knowledge, HTC is the only phone which supports this feature called HTC Dot view. What this does is show a low-resolution display through the tiny holes in the front case cover. You can even force touch to say pick a call without opening the cover to wake up the full display, saving battery.
On the left see the white colour of the box seeping through the dots, in the Right see the letters and pickup sign
After using the phone for the last 5 months overall I am happy with the phone, I found I wasn’t comfortable with the big size (5.5 inches was too big for me). The low lights of the phone were the Camera in low light / indoor conditions are average and the Battery life was mediocre lasting till 6/7 PM after a full charge in the morning. The biggest irk was the non-availability of Android 5.0 (Lollipop) for Desire 820 from HTC even after 8 months of release by Google, HTC promised one so that the 64Bit feature of the CPU in the phone gets enabled, but there are no signs of it.