72 Hours with the T-Mobile Pulse Phone

When my iPhone contract ended in April (last year) I was hesitent to jump on the band wagon with one of the smart phones of the time, mainly due to the massive whispers about Android and the leaked shots of some of the new android devices (Samsung Galaxy, Hero, Leo and the now X10) so I moved my contract to o2′s rolling contract (saving myself a fortune) which left me free to change/cancel my contract with a months notice when one of these new blisteringly cool phones came out.

I decided to leave the Hero and Galaxy as the screen size was too small as I really wanted an android based iPhone like experience. The HTC HD2 was a disapointment not due to the hardware or features, but because it was stuck on Windows Mobile 6.5 so I kept my fingers crossed for the X10 or Driod/Milestone to be in the UK for a pre christmas release.

Fed up of the constant delays in releasing a next-gen android phone in the UK I went phone shopping and over the course of a few months built up a big list of the phones I didnt want.

Last weekend I found the T-Mobile Pulse and was instantly smitten. The screen size was perfect it had Android (1.5 not 2.0), a cool form factor and was pretty snappy. So I signed up on a bargain contract and took the phone home happy as larry.

T-Mobile Pulse

Over the course of the next few days I began playing with the phone, optimising the settings ala iPhone to max out the battery life, adding the usual apps like Facebook, TweeDroid and the likes with a view to having a really sweet setup.

I ran into a problems with the phone including battery life, keypad usability and it wigging out every so often so I dialled 150 and decided to give T-Mobile support a call… only the phone doesnt work with ‘press 1 for this, press 2 for that’ call systems it seems… so back to my iPhone I called through and got through (no problems there) and asked them about battery life. Even with some mamoth full charges lasting overnight, my Pulse was only giving me about 1/2 days charge with super light use, no calls or text (im waiting for the number to move across). I checked online and im not the only one experiencing this. I plan on using my phone at Glastonbury so need it to run for at least 5 days with limited use, which the iPhone managed no problem.

It seems t-mobile wont let me swap the phone over the telephone and that any change is at the discretion of the store manager where I purchased it as ‘I have time to look over the phone in the store’ which I hardly think is a long enough period to text a new piece of technology, so I’m going to have to go back to manchester to pick a new phone this weekend.

I might go for the HTC HD2/Leo after all, as theres some great noises about porting android to it using blends of Nexus One etc firmware. Its a shame really becaue the Pulse had a lot going for it. It just needs the buggs working out.

I suppose the moral of this story is that when buying phones, protect yourself by buying online. That way your’re subject to the 30 day cooling off period.

Update: After lots of faffing, the Manager at the branch agreed to swap my Pulse for the HD2 (I relented as it is a good phone but I still want android on it so I hope the developers of haret get it working soon on xda-developers forum. I’ll post my review of the HTC HD2 later.