I persuaded my dad to buy the HTC Desire about 2 weeks ago and he’s absolutely delighted with it. I was very excited about the HTC Desire and am even more excited about the HTC Evo which will be released in the US in a couple of weeks on 4th June. I currently own an iPhone 3G with which I have a love-hate relationship. I have been looking for a new handset now that my 18 month contract is coming to an end. Of course the iPhone 4G/HD will also be out soon but I don’t want another handset that will restrict me from doing the things I need to do (e.g. Bluetooth file sharing, Flash). The HTC Android phones don’t have the same restrictions and whilst the Flash support may not be perfect on every website at least they are making an effort to address consumer needs. I’m not a fan of Apple’s policy to judge what is best for the consumer nor am I fan of being lied to when they say you can experience the ‘full web’.

So what’s stopping me from buying an HTC Desire? Well there are 2 things I have reservations with which if addressed would make the HTC much more desirable. Firstly the availability of apps that I currently have for my iPhone and secondly music management.

Apps

The following is a list of apps that is currently not available for the HTC Desire as of today.

• Google Earth – it has been released in the Android Market but not for the Desire. I assume it’s only a matter of time before it becomes available.
• LogMeIn Ignition – currently in Beta, not released yet
• Amazon.co.uk – no official store app currently available for Android (there is one for MP3′s and one for .com)
• Ebay.co.uk – no official app currently available for Android (there’s one for .com)
• Skype – Skype lite is available on other Android handsets but not currently for HTC Desire
• X-Plane – coming soon – see here
• Sky+ Remote Record – there’s an unofficial app available but currently nothing official from Sky

It appears that all of these would eventually be released and whilst it would be nice to have them available now I don’t mind waiting a few months if that is what it takes.

On the positive side, note the following apps ARE available on the HTC Desire but NOT on the iPhone

• Google Goggles – visual search – take a photo and it will do a Google search on the item you photograph.
• Google Maps Navigation – turn by turn navigation with Text to speech

Some of my other favourite apps are available on BOTH devices:

• WordPress
• Facebook
• Orb Live
• eBuddy
• Flixter
• IMDb
• Shazam
• Paypal

Whilst not an app, the BBC iPlayer doesn’t currently work on the HTC Desire – although you can use a 3rd party app called BeebPlayer.

In summary, the choice of apps shouldn’t stop you from switching to an Android phone or the HTC Desire. There are a wide range of apps available and with the number of Android users growing the choice will inevitably increase.

Music Management

I currently use the iPhone as my main MP3 player. I use dynamic a.k.a. ‘Smart’ playlists with the music rating system 0-5 stars to organise my music. I have lists of unrated music which I have been working through and rating over the past 2 years. Then when in the car I can simply play my 4* or more playlist which gives me a playlist of my favourite music. I have another playlist called ‘Recently Rated’ which lets me listen to my latest rated music should I wish to do so. If I rate a song on the iPhone, the rating is sync’d back to iTunes and my music is fairly well managed as a result. I like the ease with which the entire solution works and considering I have almost 3000 of 4200 tracks rated I am quite keen to stick to something similar. Unfortunately the HTC Desire doesn’t support song ratings as far as I can see (by this I mean manipulating the rating for the song on the device, either directly through editing an ID3 tag or via XML as I believe the iTunes solution does?) and of course it will not directly sync with iTunes. I’m not a big fan of iTunes and I’m on the lookout for something that will replace it – I’m going to be looking at DoubleTwist and a few other solutions over the next few weeks to see what my options are.

I appreciate the HTC Desire is approaching the market as a smartphone device, whereas the iPhone has approached it as a iPod device with Phone capability however I think if they could match the iPhone’s capability in the music department there would be no case for anyone to choose an iPhone at all?

How do other Android users manage their music? Is there anyway I can manipulate ratings on an Android device when I’m on the go?

Please leave a comment sharing your ideas and solutions…