Dummy's take on first using HTC Touch

As I have mentioned in one of my earlier posts, at the time I was given the HTC smartphone, I did not know how to make or take a call! I have resisted from buying a touch phone or a smart phone because I did not like waste. Since I have a phone which serves my purpose, its being out of date would actually be unattractive to would be snatchers, and if I happened to lose it, I would not feel the loss as much.

The phone came to me without the stylus, so my clumsy fingers tend to make mistakes when keying in. Then there was difficulty each time in correction, as well as not knowing most of the other functions.

While waiting for a charger, my friend in the phone shop suggested that I use the USB cable to connect to my notebook for charging in the meantime.

With a charged battery, I was able to try out the various functions to familiarize and I must say, I have yet to master them (old dog... new trick...). I could not connect it to my own Wifi router for some reasons. So I used my Digi prepaid simcard (reason for prepaid was my phobia of receiving bills with big surprises) to use the internet. I managed to type 'kosongcafe' to search for it (Google) before visiting it. Here again, I was not able to just type 'kosongc' when the whole word would appear on my notebook. It took a while to fully appear (at least 200kb) and with the small screen, what I got was only a small part of the full page. Knowing full well that time is going to cost me, I got out of my blogsite immediately. Soon there was a notification that I have used Rm3.00! But because I was asked whether to synchronize my phone with Digi, I was already using 3G or GPRS and I could see the digital clock ticking away! I switched off the phone and took out the simcard without further delay. I have just checked, it costed me another few Rm since the Rm3.00!

Later, I was at my usual coffee shop to have my lunch and spoke to the boss. He has an iPhone as well as an ordinary SonyEricsson. When asked about his experience using smartphone, I was shocked. His first expensive lesson was using a GPS system to guide his way to somewhere near Taiping and back, like a new toy. He was to discover that it costed him over Rm170!

His second more expensive lesson was when he got a message (Maxis) about 'free download' of a film on Astro and he thought everything was free. He watched the film and it costed him over Rm300!

If this could happen to an adult, I dread to think what could happen to those kids given smartphones with postpaid accounts by their parents.

I am trying to remain focus in my quest for Skype and maybe, a GPS system which does not use the mobile connection. So far, my attempts at downloading Skype was unsuccessful, due to my lack of knowledge using the HTC.

I am not sure about others, but I noticed advertisements of smartphones do not mention Skype. Skype to Skype calls are definitely unfavourable to mobile networks' revenues. Could this be a reason?

Update: China declares Skype illegal:

http://www.intomobile.com/2010/12/30/china-skype-illegal/

Link