The #TelstraDesire and Mobile Journalism - It's simply not good enough ((tag:telstradesire)

I was expecting the HTC Desire I'm reviewing for Telstra in exchange for being allowed to keep the phone to be a serious competitor to the iPhone for mobile journalism. While it has some advantages, especially the 5MP camera which takes beautiful pictures, it has some major flaws which make it not really up to what I expect.

For a start: I haven't found a single Android app that lets you edit video. Not even something that will do simple things like trimming clips, stringing them together, adding basic titles and uploading them. I can do this on my Nokia 6120c, one of the most-underpowered phones that still gets to be called a smartphone. Not being able to do it on a high-end smartphone seems ridiculous to me. Of course, someone may well write an app for it - this isn't Telstra's fault, or HTC's fault, but someone who wants that feature isn't going to buy the phone no matter whose fault it is.

You can broadcast live using UStream or Qik. I've tested UStream briefly, it seems to work OK. But not being able to take a video or record sound, edit it, then file from the scene is to me a major weakness of the phone. However some people may think the only thing a smartphone is good for is talking quick video or crossing live to breaking news before better broadcast equipment is available. If you think that, you might not mind so much about the lack of video editing.

The only audio editing app I could find, Ringdroid, only lets you trim a clip, not join up multiple clips into a single file. (it's designed to make ringtones, so it's not pretending to be something it isn't). Once again, IF you can record in one take so you don't need to edit, you can easily email an audio file to Posterous - you can set Posterous up to automatically send out updates of what you post to Facebook, Twitter, blogs etc. Of course, the file MUST be less than 5 MB; it seems you can't attach files above that size emails you send in the GMail app, and when I opened up Gmail in the Dolphin browser it simply refused to let me attach files - the button to do so was greyed out.  I found a very awkward way around this: Open up Gmail in Opera Mini, go to "basic HTML" view and attach it there. But using this phone isn't meant to be awkward.

The poor battery life, which many reviewers have noticed, is also going to be a problem unless a mobile journalist buys one or even more than one spare batteries, keeps them charged, and carries them around.

Posted via email from @djackmanson