[Brent212]

I received my TP2 a couple days ago and have been tinkering with it pretty much nonstop. I upgraded from the original HTC Touch. Sprint is my carrier (got the $30/month SERO plan). Here are some of my gripes.

The main (HUGE) thing that I hate is the lack of a dpad. I've used the Touch for over 2 years now, and I can't believe how damn useful that thing is. It's much more efficient and requires so much less movement with my hand to simply control most of my actions with the dpad. Just navigating around the file explorer is so weird now. I actually have to reach up and tap a folder to access it. And the big issue is that all over the OS and applications are situations where I want to highlight an item but not select it (e.g., highlight a folder but not navigate into it). And I miss scrolling down to the bottom of a page just by holding the "down" direction on the dpad... not even needing to look at the screen. And jumping back a letter or two in a word that I'm typing if I make a typo... I know the on screen keyboard has arrow keys, but they take way longer to get my hand to than the dpad did. I loved being able to control so much of the phone by simply holding it in one hand and using my thumb at the bottom. I'll probably get used to it, but damn it sucks.

I miss the regular old school keyboard. The one that was so small that it required a stylus to use. It's incredibly useful in situations where the current application doesn't offer copy/paste/select all, etc. options. Need to select all? ctrl+a. Google Maps doesn't allow me to paste that address I copied from that email (how the F*** they don't have copy/paste in Google Maps is beyond me... someone needs to be fired and beaten)? Break out that old school keyboard and hit ctrl+v. I did just notice that the Google Maps on the TP2 actually does support copy/paste, so that's good. The one on my Touch didn't, which is unbelieveable. Another app that didn't that always pissed me off was the older version of Opera Mini (4.2 maybe) that I was using on the Touch, but I know the newer version (5?) does, so that's cool. One instance I've needed the old keyboard on the TP2 was in Total Commander when I was attempting to copy the path to a file. You can highlight the path at the top but can't copy it. So annoying.

I'm pretty bummed that in 6.5 (was using 6.1 on the Touch) they didn't add the simple feature to the default email app that every email app on the planet should have, where you can select which email account you want to use to send the current message you're composing. I have several email addresses that all forward everything to my gmail account, which I use to archive everything for easy searching, and because gmail supports push notifications with activesync. So I'd like to be able to open an email on my gmail account on my phone, and reply using the account that the recipient sent the original email to. Anyone know of an email program for winmo that does this?

Another big one is that if you sync your contacts with your gmail account, which I do, it forces the phone contact list to have each contact displayed with "last name, first name". Some of my contacts are simply companies, so I don't even have those fields, and I originally had the display for those contacts set to "company name". Now I have a bunch of blank names in my contact list, and the only way to see each of them is to look at the details, where the company name is displayed.

Which reminds me of another quirk. When I select a contact in my contacts list, it brings me to a screen that has most of the info for that contact, but not everything (company name, notes). When I select from the bottom menu, "See more info", it brings up the screen that I think should just replace the previous one, with all the info that's been entered for that contact, in a better looking format as well.

I haven't been able to figure out a way to have the screen lock when I push the power button. I used "Slide 2 Unlock" on my Touch, and I know I can use it here most likely, but the built in sliding unlocker thing (start menu->"lock") works pretty well, and I'd like to just use that, mostly because I don't want to mess with all the phone interface screens, which I'm pretty sure Slide 2 Unlock replaces.

I like HTC Sense, for the most part. Although I hate that the weather thing doesn't have any locations available. Santa Cruz, Truckee, Tahoe... all missing. WTF? But somehow it uses the GPS signal to get the info for whatever po-dunk town I'm in, so I know the data for all those locations is there, it just won't let me add them as pre-defined locations so I can look at them when I'm not actually there (which is really much more useful than just seeing what the weather's like where you're at... I can look out the freaking window).

I flashed the Energy ROM last night, and I'm loving it. WAY better than the stock ROM in that it's so much more easily customized. The ROM added the lock on suspend, so that's good, although now another thing I wish I could make it do is have the screen shut off after X number of seconds once it's locked. I like to set it to never turn off on it's on when unlocked, so I can spend however long I want looking at a page of text or a picture or whatever, but then when I hit the power button, I'd like it to lock and turn off the screen, which it does. However, now if the power button gets hit when it's in my pocket, it'll stay on indefinitely.

I love that on the Energy ROM, the start menu button not only opens the start menu, but closes it as well. It was ridiculous on the stock ROM when that wasn't the case, and the only way to get out of the start menu was to hit the "X" or the end button. Just seems more natural to hit the start button again.