Oct 12, 2012 10:08 PM
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When your dad texts you in the middle of the one night you choose to spend at your friend’s place to tell you he has a surprise for you, it can be a little intimidating. Especially when your family is not the surprise giving or taking kinds! All you hope is that you don’t get too caught up thinking about what it is because it just might be the exact opposite- well that is the problem when you don’t have a pattern to fall back onto… the surprise becomes truly that… there is no way of knowing!
So the next day, tired from a long day of mind numbing work when I got home I had a brand new HTC Explorer waiting for me. It would be approximately closest to the truth to admit that I did not see that one coming. I couldn’t! Because my dad hates my obsession with technology, especially cell phones. He doesn’t get it and he doesn’t want to. So when he was the one who got me my first smartphone I obviously had a lot of questions.
Firstly, what’s the catch? Surprisingly, there wasn’t! Secondly, why? Well, it turns out that he had seen my cousin use it and really liked it. The style and layout of the phone appealed to him and because he felt he couldn’t get accustomed to such a ‘technological’ phone but still wanted someone in the family to have it and I seemed like the best option.
Obviously, I was beyond happy. I had always wanted a smart phone and I finally had it. Plus I was bored out of my wits with the mundane Nokia models and wanted a change. The Samsung phones that were within my budget had silly names like Champ or something and that is why HTC seemed like my knight in shining armour.
Now, I am in my fourth month of HTC paradise and the magic’s wearing off. There are some very significant problems with my phone and, as I now realise, HTC phones in general.
First and foremost is the abysmally low internal storage. It is ridiculously low. And therefore this smart phone isn’t, well, that smart. You can’t download apps as the ones that can be stored on the SD card still require a certain amount of internal storage to run. I had to delete Facebook and Whatsapp apps as it was impossible to work on either as the phone couldn’t get over that weird internal storage warning on the upper left corner of the phone. It is so disconcerting and there is no way you can do anything about it.
Another problem with the phone is the inability to mark songs in the media player. Irrespective of whether you want to delete them or share them, you have to do it individually. That is both time consuming and very irritating.
Also there is no way of accessing the memory card directly. There is not a single folder that contains all the items of the memory card so if you need songs you go to the media player, photos then straight to gallery and recordings to another folder. Phew! It is tiring.
But there are always two sides to a coin and the Explorer is no different. It definitely gets points for style. It is leagues apart from the wannabe touchscreen smartphones who falls way behind in actual utility. It is largely efficient and has great connectivity and efficacy.
So whether or not you choose to explore the Explorer is entirely your call. But I would advise if you are like me and many others who wish to maximize the potential of a smartphone, internal memory cannot be compromised on.
