April 22, 2010, 8:16 PM — "In terms of screen technology, the DROID Incredible by HTC uses a 3.7 inch WVGA AMOLED capacitive display which reacts to the heat from your finger to control the device, " was the reply from the hapless PR representative of HTC at Waggener Edstrom. This has to be better than what I have now, e.g. the touch-sensitive HTC displays. Or is it?
My first HTC Touch Pro bricked after the touch screen stopped working. I was told by HTC support that my options were gone, and it was recommended as a last-ditch salvation that I should restore the phone to factory defaults. Chocolate bar HTC brick ensued. Now the second one responds in the same way. Are you an idiot, Tom? some might ask, perhaps rhetorically. You bought a second one from eBay with no warranty, and with the full knowledge that HTC charges an incredible $75 minimum to look at it if you return it to their US repair facility?
Yes, I am that idiot. I have two HTC Touch Pro bricks, ready to be used by my mad therapist friend for target practice, down near her cabin in the holler. She'll get out her .38 or her 9mm and will carefully cock the trigger(s), squint with one eye, then pull the trigger(s). Repeatedly. Maybe she'll get it in under a clip or a revolver load. Maybe not. Pigeons and small animals will be frightened. I'll have to find the shards, so as not to pollute her woodlands.
And then, once again, I'll have to consider whether I can trust a heat-sensitive, rather than a touch-sensitive display from HTC. Yes, she needs target practice. Yes, I need a phone that works. I liked it enough to trust that the first one was just an exception. It made me tolerate Windows 6.5 mobile. I knew its foibiles, its limitations, its odd habits. Now, they are for naught.
Alas, I had to actually rejuvenate the former target piece in waiting, the Treo 650. It still works. It's still awful. It's less awful than the LG Chocolate, which broke its power jack. It's less awful than the Motorola RAZR with the software from hell, and electronics from some psychopathic engineering team. Smartphone is an oxymoron. Or maybe I'm the moron for wanting to believe in them.
