Well then, I’ve had this HTC Sensation from (Thanks) Telstra, for a little while and I’m about to have to give it back, sadly… (I never thought I’d say that)
The Day it all began | @Telstra
I honestly didn’t know what to expect, as I’ve had a HTC before (HD2 // Windows) and the experience was very very flawed (Hello, Windows!) I’ve had every model of iNQ phone (Brew Os with a terrible camera!) I’ve had almost every model of Blackberry up until the Storm and I’ve also had a LOT of the Sony Ericsson phones, which in their time, I think, had the best camera on the market…
So, I collect the Sensation and the first thing I notice when I take it from its little box (before the train had pulled out of Melbourne Central station) is the MASSIVE looking screen! It’s big… It’s sleek… It’s big… (Did I mention big?.. More on that later)
Four point Three Inches to be precise… But it doesn’t feel that big… Anyway, I’ve got this HTC Sensation because I use my phone a LOT for my work, and derivatives of my work.. I’m a ‘social media type’ which means, in short, that I manage communities, I write content, I post stuff, I Facebook, I Tweet, I Skype, I Flickr, I generate content in video and audio and image and I use my phone whilst out and about to do a lot of this – the HTC could do all of this stuff with its little bitty hands tied firmly behind its sleek body… It’s got its own little dual core 1.2ghz processor and is faster than the proverbial drain pipe bound feline… But, there’s one thing the little gem can’t do, with all its hard-core tech, with all its stunning good looks – it couldn’t Instagram!
What the heck IS Instagram I hear you click… Well, it’s a photo sharing application for iPhone, in short. It has cool filters and simple sharing that you set up once and can choose each time you take and upload a new picture where to share it to… For example, the picture above, I shared that on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Tumblr and FourSquare.. I can also share it to Posterous, but I’m not using Posterous, currently… You can also configure to email the completed images directly from the app, so I have my mum’s email in there and send her copies of the images via email… She likes that (I have a two year old who she likes to knit for etc etc)
So what? Well, that’s what I use to share my day… I Tweet and so on, but with Instagram, I can send an image (as I’m a very visual person) and I can use the Instagram interface to be a Tweet, too… I can @ people, I can # it out if I like… It’s all in there – and, if I want, I can even use a service like Blurb and make a book, directly form my Instagram account! (Starting to see why so many people are using it, yet?)
The Applications that make it all the more fun.
A phone is only as good as its next app, right? So, what apps did I choose for the HTC? Well, here’s a list… I’ll slap them down for you and let you know what I thought…
Photoshop Express
FxCamera
LittlePhoto
RetroCamera (Thanks @MeansBlue)
Lightbox Photos
MagicHour Free
Pudding Camera (I was hungry OK!)
…and, yes as pointed out by @_Disco // Disco stu from the internet // Vignette (The trial version) which has become my favourite in the shortest time…
Sometimes it's hard to tell what @_Disco means...
I thought about this, and I even started noting down what each app does.. Aside from Photoshop Express which is more aimed toward the “Crop, rotate, adjust color, and add artistic effects” market… Oh, wait, that’s pretty much what they all do! Most of the camera apps that you see listed above do some pretty similar things – They use the onboard camera to take a photo, they allow you to apply many filters to that photo so that it looks either old, or vintage or retro or dark or vignetted or …you see where I’m going with this – there are literally hundreds of filters across the various apps, most of them look pretty same same…
When it came down to it, the phone could do all that my iPhone could do, and, in most case it did those things easily as well as the iPhone, sometimes slightly better / faster, sometimes I wanted to smash it on the nearest rock.
Here’s some of my favourite images from my time with the HTC Sensation
The old GTV 9 Building in Richmond | click for slightly larger
Red shoes after painting | click for slightly larger
Depth of Field | click for slightly larger
Steve loves his morning coffee | click for slightly larger
Golden Hour, App Free! | click for slightly larger
Ask Yourself Why | click for slightly larger
Morning! | click for slightly larger
That pretty much brings me to the end of my time with the HTC Sensation…. (Well, until @Telstra decide to send the boys around to pry it from my cold, dead hands!) But, before I go – just a shout out to the social media team at Telstra, they work 24hours a day and manage to keep a sense of humour despite a million “my internet doesn’t work” complaints… (and my “I can see the tower, but ain’t got no NextGen coverage…ugh (Which they speedily fixed, thanks) Here’s that coffee I was talking about at 2:33am
You need this more than I do, Lindy! -- Gtvone
