[haus]

I'm going to keep my shift, but I see Android as a stepping stone for me until WP7 matures to the point where it is available for CDMA and competes with iOS and Android for the particular set of applications I need to do my job (nowhere near that yet, so I'm doing my best to get comfortable with Android).

As a business/Exchange user, there are just too many holes in Android for this to be a viable long-term solution. It reminds me of using Linux on the desktop. It's partway there and there is some cool free stuff available, but for me it just doesn't cut it in a production environment.

I think it's funny that I've read a few battery life complaints here and the folks at Android Central seem to think this phone has the best battery life of any phone on the planet. Weird.

As for OP's concerns, I'll post my thoughts after using this device for a couple of weeks now.

1. Having to download apps...yes. I've had to pay $20 for a decent Exchange mail client (tried them all and Touchdown is really the best in terms of functionality, though I like the interfaces of some of the others better). I had to pay a dollar (it's now more) for a voice dialer that confirms before calling, since the built-in dialer would always call the wrong person. This isn't a lot of money, but this stuff was built into WM and it's practically criminal in my opinion that it's not built into Android.

2. Volume buttons. I've gotten used to them and I almost never hit them anymore. Same with the hardware keyboard in general, which I actually like more than the TP2 keyboard now (!).

3. Signal strength...just don't hold your phone and you'll be OK. LOL.

4 and 5. I use bluetooth pretty much constantly. My issue here is that the prox sensor is DISABLED when bluetooth is in use, which is just plain stupid. There's no reason to disable the prox sensor as there was on the EVO because the sensor is in a better location on the Shift and is not as prone to accidental coverage.

As for the sync issues, I use Exchange. Since I'm migrating to Exchange 2010, Touchdown syncs email, contacts, tasks, calendar, and notes, and I'm pretty happy with that. I wish the stock email client did it as well as Touchdown, but Google will push Gmail forever since they want to read everybody's email and insert advertisements.

I very much miss the ability to swipe left/right to see different email accounts. I have two jobs and I need separate emails for each. Having to use Touchdown for Exchange and the built-in client for IMAP is a total PITA.

I like to harp on this phone mostly because I had much higher expectations for Android at this point. This is squarely on Google IMHO. HTC has built pretty impressive hardware in the Shift. But the OS is just lacking. I may have said this before somewhere but to me buying an Android phone is kind of like buying a really nice car but having to buy your own engine and maybe steering wheel to get it working. On WM most of this stuff just worked out of the box.

That said, the Shift is a pretty cool device. I like that it is small, yet feels very solid without being heavy. For the things it does well, it does *very* well (like browsing, and apps that are designed to do a specific task or two).