The One About HTC Legend

Today has got to be one of the happiest day of my life since CNY at least. Guess?

A job? nope.

A new gadget? Yeaps…

I’m sure I’ve given enough clues in the previous posts.

Yes… HTC Legend!!!

I didn’t expect my dad to agree to my getting a new phone (disadvantage of living with parents, they control your spendings). And so I went to the Digi centre and bought one today! Complete with a data plan and all (but my internet is not available yet… called the customer service and the guy nicely told me that it’ll take a maximum 24 hours so i’m still waiting).

Get ready for a VERY long post and eons and eons of photos!

It has the most gorgeous 3.2 inch AMOLED screen (had to refer to the specifications for that) and seriously all phones pale in comparison, even the overhyped iPhone and HTC’s own HD2 (my uncle just bought one). Unlike other screens, you can look at this screen from any angle and the colours will not be distorted (think LCD TVs and monitors).

The phone is designed with a little “chin”. That little angle there. See? To prevent the screen from being scratched when you place it so. Or maybe to better suit our faces?

Oh didn’t I mention? HTC Legend is equipped with Android 2.1 OS (Android is another type of operating system for smartphones. Think windows and mac. Gets the job done but they’re different.)

Comes with a 5 megapixel camera but definitely won’t replace my darling FZ28 any time soon. And if you didn’t notice, the entire phone is carved out of a single piece of aluminium (no splits/attachment/cracks) so it makes it more sturdy and feels more solid. The aluminium also disperses heat well (I think…).

This is the locked screen, when you activate it after letting it “sleep”. You have to swipe down to go to the main screen. There are a total of 7 screens for you to customize. The middle being the main screen with 6 others you can fill up with shortcuts, widgets and etc.

The main screen. All the icons are movable and the weather widget here is pretty cool. It makes the screen cloudy for a few seconds if the current weather is cloudy and raindrops appear if it’s raining. Will have photos on that later.

HTC has this FriendStream widget where you can get the updates from all your social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook all in one place.

So this shows the current weather in Kuching plus the forecast weathers for the next few days.

You can customize or add up to 7 places for the weather widget.

And Android’s well supported by Google so you get apps like Google Map. Here you can see the GPS at work showing where the phone’s at now.

Web surfing’s pretty fast (using my WiFi anyway) and as you can see, it loads up the entire website. But the contents are fairly small right? 

You can toggle it horizontally by tilting the phone horizontally. 

Or you can pinch the screen using thumb and forefinger (is that what it’s called) to zoom in.

And pinch and zoom some more. This is what they meant by multitouch on a touchscreen. The iPhone is a good example of it. Reverse the pinch to zoom out. TTyping on touchscreens will need a lot of getting used to. There’s no physical keys and all you get is the slick glass screen (yes the screen is made of glass not plastic to prevent scratches to a certain extend). If you type with the screen vertically, the keys are quite narrow and you’ll make a fair amount of mistakes. But fear not, the word prediction system is working well here. Otherwise, just tilt the phone horizontally and the keyboard will appear like so too. Much easier but still takes time.   Plenty of softwares to download from the Android Market and a good amount of them are free. Even though the number of apps are still way behind Apple’s, the numbers are growing exponentially. By this time next year, it would’ve reached infinity (not that infinity’s possible but you get the idea).The packaging of the phone. Simple.

Make sure that your set is certified by SIS Distribution or it is most likely an AP set.

The specifications.

With the back cover off and the micro SD card and SIM card ejected. The battery slots above the cards. The protective covering for the battery and cards.

With this phone and unlimited internet, it’s basically all you need especially for you FB, Twitter, web addicts. It’s quite user friendly and easy to set up and plenty to customize (hear that Apple?). All the social networking sites are easily accessible since they have their independent widgets/softwares so that you do not have to go to the websites to see updates anymore.

YouTube has its own widget and it’s pretty awesome. I tried watching the Ironman 2 trailer and it loads smoothly. Will try out again when I have my internet connection.

So far so good. Loving it!

The One About Updates

I miss playing badminton. We didn’t play last week since my friends had something else to do, which was just as good since I was weak from diarrhea yet again. And I spent Sunday either sleeping or somewhere near the loo with tummyache.

And there’s no news whatsoever from all the jobs I applied for. Ish… Either I didn’t make it or they are taking an awful long time to process it.

I am still very much tempted by the HTC Legend offer by Digi. It’s HALF OFF!!! Well, you’ll have to switch to postpaid and pay the data plans monthly but at least you are only paying as you use for calls and smses. Unlike other postpaid plans where you have to pay for the monthly commitment fees + calls + sms + data. It is good for people who call and sms less (like me). And besides, it’s no fun having a smartphone if there’s no data plan.

HTC Legend is said to be the best looking Android phone around now (best looking phone all over I think) and it ranks in the Top 3 of the best phone! And now it’s 1/2 off!!!Can I get one? Pwetty please. My old phone(s) are dying. And please don’t both die on me.

Oh and the photo? Taken at dusk one evening at my grandparents’ place. Lovely purple sky 🙂

The One About the Amazing Shanghai Expo 2010

Generally, I’d hardly be interested in expos such as the above. But seriously, it’s so pretty. Check it out here.

I can spend days and days just snapping photos. There’s so much to see! They even moved the little mermaid all the way to Shanghai!

I was amazed to see the Seed Cathedral. I thought it’s called Seed Cathedral only because it’s prickly outside and looks like a seed. I have no idea that there’s real seeds in each of the pricks! Cool!

The One About the Yellow Water Lily

Another variant of the water lily. Different colours this time. Needs to brighten it I guess since it was taken during a cloudy day. And that I risked only a few shots. Damn mosquitoes killing me…

The One About the Pretty Purple Water Lily

Love this photo! I’m not gonna pretend that it wasn’t post processed. I edited it to make the colors pop up more. It’s grandma’s water lily 🙂

The One About D-Ordeal again!

Today was another of THOSE days. Had tummyache and diarrhea since late last night till evening today. For the time being, the ordeal (as I called it) is gone. Hopefully it won’t return. Won’t miss you! Shoo!

Mum’s away again. To KK this time around. Wanted to follow her but she’s only going for a few days with grandma to uncle’s place. And I doubt if they will do much sightseeing. So I didn’t trail behind la. hahaha

The One About the Pretty Flower

The same flower featured in my wallpaper 2 days ago. It’s actually just another species of chrysanthemum (to florists anyway). It looks different and pretty and I snapped a lot of photos of it only to find a few satisfactory ones. hehe 🙂

The One About Zooming in on Birds

This is when the zoom on the camera comes into good use. Was eating breakfast one morning and spotted the birds eating off the ground. Zoomed in and took this photo 🙂

The One About the Small Purple Flower

No idea what’s the flower called but the colour is gorgeous. Anyway, it’s really small and unnoticeable unless you look around for it. Macro lens! Yay!  More random photos from my grandparents’ backyard to come!

The One About the OEM Shuttlecocks

I mentioned that I play badminton weekly right? Anyway, you’d have thought that badminton is a relatively low cost sport compared to golf, tennis, etc.

Let me break down the figures here. There’s the court rental fee, usually RM8 per hour on Sunday. There’s the badminton racket, which you buy or inherit (like I did), but it’s a one time thing so it’s okay. Then there’s the shuttlecocks. Who’d have thought that shuttlecocks will cost so much???

The shuttlecocks in the market, from the cheapos to the branded ones like Yonex, are vastly different. The cheapos may be cheap but they don’t fly as well. So it affects the play. The good ones are durable and fly well but they cost anywhere from RM40 to RM80.

We usually use Yang Yang ones and they cost about RM60 to 70, so technically it’s about RM5 EACH!

That’s quite a lot if you play regularly, especially for out of jobbers like me.

So I saw this thread in the LowYat forum selling OEM shuttlecocks. It means that the shuttlecocks are produced in the same factory/same material/same manner as the branded one (which is not named) but with noticeable price differences and under different brands. The quality is equivalent to that of the pricey ones and it comes in 3 grades which are priced at RM25, RM30 and RM40.

I bought one tube of each and they arrived yesterday. 

Honestly, I can’t tell the difference between the grades until I try them out on the court this Sunday. Time to save money!

Oh and from the above, in the order of increasing grade, blue, silver and red tube 🙂