My World Just Got a Little Smarter

My mom and I recently switched to Sprint and are now using our very first smart phones. Our device of choice was the HTC Evo Design. The Evo 3D is supposed to be a better device, but one of the reasons for that is its larger size, and that's more of a drawback for me. Also, I just don't care for the 3D feature at all. So we went with its less expensive little brother, the Design.

The Transfer
We transferred from another network, and we ordered the phones online. So we had to wait for the phones to be delivered, then wait even longer for our own phones to lose service so we could power on the new ones. For me, this happened at 11:30 Wednesday night. I was still texting a couple people, so I felt obligated to switch over to the new phone, but I also had an appointment in the morning and didn't want to stay up too late. Oh well. Sleep usually loses in these situations.

For me, the transfer was clean, sudden, and obvious. My old phone no longer had any bars and no longer said "AT&T" at the top of the screen. My mom's phone wasn't as nice to her. She was still making receiving calls on her old phone, but text messages wouldn't go through. Finally, around 12 hours after I had activated my phone, Dad called me to say Mom's phone wasn't working. When he called her number, he was redirected to a Sprint voice mailbox. It was time to make the switch.

Even then, though, Mom's transfer wasn't quite as clean as mine. This morning, her old phone received a text my dad had sent. I don't know what's going on with the whole thing.

And I was dumb enough not to have saved my contacts onto my SIM card, so the guys at Sprint couldn't transfer them. Guess I have to do it manually. Yay.

My Favorite Features so Far
1) Apps
One of the first things I did after basic setup was download an alarm clock app. Sure, the phone has one built in. But I didn't see a "Vibrate Only" option, and that's what I really wanted. So I downloaded an app that did provide that. Today I downloaded an app that monitors my battery life by percentage, because the bar just wasn't accurate enough. Overall, what I like most about apps is if my phone doesn't do something I want it to do, I can probably make it do that just by looking for the right app. Also, I think I like the Android market. It's easy enough to use.

2) Texting
One feature I've been looking forward to for a while now is text messages stored in conversation threads, rather than an inbox and a sent box. Now if I forget what I said last (which I do surprisingly often) all I have to do is look up. Because switching back and forth between inbox and sent box got old pretty fast.

Another feature I really like, but wasn't expecting to be so crazy about, is the vertical qwerty keyboard. On my old phone, if I held the phone vertical, it gave me a numerical keyboard like the one I used for dialing. This one, like many others, gives me a smaller version of the qwerty keyboard. I used to just think this would be annoying, that the letters looked too close together, etc. But holy cow. I love this thing. It is so much more convenient than I expected. I can text with one hand!

And the last cool texting feature: Auto-correct. Yes, it's annoying sometimes. Yes, it can get in the habit of correcting to things I don't want to say. Yes, I have to teach it some "words." But that's actually easier than I expected. And mostly it helps more than it hinders, and I use the backspace key a lot less than before. So Auto-correct is my friend.

3) Front-Facing Camera
This is an excellent tool for anyone in a long-distance relationship. Enough said.

I could ramble more...
But I won't. This post has gone on long enough, and you need to get back to your life. I just wanted to share the newest exciting addition to my life. Thanks for reading!