I bought an Android phone some time ago, the HTC Hero. After much fiddling with it, these are my suggestions for anyone interested in doing so too:
- Find out what you really want. A nice starting point is PdaDB. This site lets you choose features, like an Android OS and GPS, and lists every PDA having them.
- HTC Sense, a UI for Android phones exclusively from HTC, is really cool and actually makes Android useful. Consider buying a phone with HTC Sense included. Be careful since not all HTC models bundle it.
- Search E-bay before you buy. Most android phones are expensive and the HTC Hero I bought is no exception. It costs about 550,00 Euros retail price here in Greece. I bought it from e-bay for 411,00 Euros, including postage. European users beware, buy only from a EU country or you will probably pay import taxes. I bought mine from the UK. In my opinion though, even at 550,00 Euros, this phone is worth it.
- If you truly want to buy from Greece, then I suggest searching with Skroutz. It should find the best price for your phone in any Greek e-shop.
- Because of a bug in Android, if you don’t set up your Google credentials right from the start, you may need to factory reset your phone, erasing any customizations you may have made. Let this be one from the very first things you do.
- After you buy the phone, there should probably be an Android firmware update for it. Since the ROM upgrade does a factory reset on your phone, this should probably be too on of the first things to do.
- Market, the place to install android applications from, is strangely only fully accessible via the phone, even for simple tasks such as browsing or search. If you want to search and find apps for your android phone, and you probably will, I recommend going to Androlib.com or Cyrket.com.
- At first, this phone will consume most of your free time from just by playing with it. You will probably neglect your spouse and/or job the first days of use. Take appropriate actions to remedy the situation, like buying flowers or taking some days off work. Consider yourselves warned!
- You may want to buy some accessories for you phone. My advice is, again, use E-bay. I bought PDA holders for my bicycle and car at one third of the price I found in a cheap retail store here.
- You may want to protect your phone from scratches using a plastic wrap. One of the best is supposed to be InvisiShield from Zagg which claims to be virtually indestructible. Keep in mind that such protection covers the entire phone and may ruin the comfortable feel of it. Thankfully, the one can choose to install only parts of it, so I used only the screen cover. However, if one wants just a screen protective cover, can as well choose one of the many other, and cheaper, available from other manufacturers. I bought 6 no-name covers for just 1,00 Euro from E-Bay, postage included! In any case, expect the feel of the phone to change to the worst.
- Since I chose not to wrap my entire phone in plastic wrap, I bought silicone skins from E-bay. Although a little more bulky than Zagg’s plastic wrap, the feel of it is extremely nice and protects it from damage in case I drop it. I definitely need it!
That’s all, I hope these will prove useful and bring painlessly more people to the wonderful Android platform.
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