That was a long coffee break . Well, I have a lot to talk about emails, social networking, web surfing and other aspects of this phone. By sharing the same page (part 1), it will be just too long. I am sure that it will make you feel tired and bored. That is why I planned to write a separate one for this.

When it comes to keeping in touch with others, whether with your loved ones or with your clients (related to business), this phone will not fail to impress you

Display, connectivity and battery life

The display of this phone is good. It is not the best but I am satisfied with it. Anything displayed on the S-LCD 3.7″ display is bright and clear. The screen is glossy but I don’t have much problem viewing it even under direct sunlight.

As for the battery life, I would say that it is OK. It is not very good and at the same time, not very bad too. It is satisfactory. I am a person who is connected to my email everywhere I go. Imagine having 5 push emails running 24 hours (yeah, I don’t turn off my phone even when I go to bed). Not only that, there is Facebook and Twitter running in the background, sending me notifications every now and then. I hardly use IM with this phone but quite often, I also surf internet (about average 1 hour daily). Calls (in and out) will be about 10 minutes daily and smses will be about 1-2.

Looking at my style of using it, the 1300 mAh battery can last for 16 to 18 hours. I am not very happy about it because I need to plug in the charger every morning to make sure that the phone don’t run out of battery while I am outside but most of the touch screen device have such miserable battery life. Even my Samsung Galaxy Tab can only last for about 25-27 hours maximum. I believe network strength (telco) also plays a part. However, I am happy that the HTC Desire Z is using a commonly used Micro USB port for charging. It helps me to use my friend’s charger in the office if I forget to bring along mine. Even if I couldn’t find a charger, I can use any Micro USB cable and charge the phone via my office computer (this phone supports USB charging). I am happy with that

You don’t need to worry about the connectivity if you have this device. It has almost everything – from bluetooth, WiFi b/g/n, GPRS, EDGE, 3G, HSPA, USB tethering (use your phone as a modem), USB disk storage (use your phone’s memory card as a external disk drive), wireless hotspot (use your phone as a wifi modem and surf internet) and many more. I don’t have issues in that aspect. It is all fantastic for the HTC Desire Z when it comes to connectivity.

As for network, the connection is quite stable and good. I don’t see any drop in the network bar not matter how I grip the phone (death grip). While talking to my friends, there is no dropped calls or any voice disruption. Call quality is very good. There is one feature that is missing in the HTC Desire Z. Guess what? The video call . Yup, there is no video call camera (front camera) and you also can’t make any video calls at all. That is the only minus point that I can see in the phone calling feature for the HTC Desire Z.

Web browsing, emails, social networking and IM

Android is doing extremely well in this area. With a combination of pyhsical QWERTY keyboard, the experience of web browsing, sending emails, communicating with your friends via social networks and instant messenger is awesome.

I never had any problem loading websites. It loads all the websites perfectly . I always have this “memory full” error when I try loading my own website, blog.rodger.my, using a Symbian phone and a few other normal phones. With Android’s built-in browser, it is amazing. It didn’t show any error and every single thing was loaded. Well, some of you may find the built-in browser to be a bit of a hassle or imperfect (e.g. for me, I can’t exit the browser. There is no option for that). That shouldn’t be too worrying because there are a lot of 3rd party browser in Android Market as an alternative. I tried Dolphin Browser and it worked without any flaw.

Because of the browser’s capability to easily load any websites, I don’t need to depend on my desktop computer to enjoy some casual net surfing .Sometimes I also perform online banking transactions using the Android web browser

Emails – this is another awesome part. I believe that I’ve already mentioned this during my review about the Samsung Galaxy Tab (Android). My experience with mobile e-mail started off with Nokia E71. It was a marvelous device but had some hiccups. Emails were good but not perfect (some of my emails didn’t work as expected). As I wanted to be very mobile (not attached to office, sitting in front of the PC the whole day), I needed a reliable internet device. So, I have to switch to Blackberry. I love my Blackberry My BB Bold 900 was excellent when it comes to email, social networking and IM (MSN Messenger & Yahoo! IM) I do not want to pay extra for BIS. Furthermore, in case BIS screw up for any reason, I will no longer receive my emails, even via WiFi. That is when Android came into the picture. The HTC Desire Z is more than enough to satisfy my email needs. I can easily reply my client’s emails using the QWERTY keyboard. Any emails that comes in will be notified immediately and I can check my emails while I am on my bed. I can easily set multiple emails (unlimited, even for Microsoft Exchange) without any problem. Currently there is one Microsoft Exchange Mail, 2 Gmails, one 3rd party (personal domain) email and one Yahoo email. There is a green notification LED on the right corner of your earpiece grill and I don’t need to press my power button to check on the screen for notifications.

The only hiccup that I can see is the Yahoo email. Since I am using the free email service from Yahoo, it doesn’t support POP3/IMAP retrieval. The only way to go about it is to get a Yahoo mail application from Android Market. Well, that is not a problem . The problem starts when you are using the application where it doesn’t give you an immediate notification when a new email arrives to your inbox. Setting is all good and the notification is suppose to be immediate. Not sure what went wrong and that has happened a few times so far. So Yahoo users may want to take note of this. This is a common problem for all Android phones because I also had the same problem with Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Social networking – is anyone here using any social network other than Facebook? I am asking this because Facebook is the most popular social networking site and as for Android, I don’t find any app other than Facebook. Owh, I just found a MySpace app but there is no app for Tagged or Friendster. Anyway, the official Facebook app for Android works flawlessly with the HTC Desire Z. All notifications is shown on your screen. The updated version also supports Facebook chat and you can now chat with your Facebook friends no matter where you are . I have nothing bad to say about the Facebook app. It is fantastic.

By the way, does Twitter falls under social network? Never mind, I must mention something about Twitter as well because Facebook and Twitter are 2 apps that I use the most . The default Twitter app is very good. I have no complaints about it. It is simple and it notifies twitter DM, mentions, tweets and so on. It is a good app. Some of you may not prefer to use the default Twitter app. That is where you can make use of ‘Peep’. The UI is slightly different (suitable for those who are bored of the standard UI). Other than the UI, I don’t find much difference, especially with the functions. It is all the same. This ‘Peep’ Twitter app also supports SSL connection. If you are concerned about your connectivity, then you can make use of it.

Some of you may have multiple Twitter handle and prefer to use a single app to connect it all. If that is the case, there are a lot of 3rd party softwares in the market e.g. TweetDeck, Seesmic and so on.

Social networking with the HTC Desire Z is a wonderful experience. You can easily type your status or chat with your friends using the physical keyboard. If you prefer touch screen, it will also never disappoint you. Have you read my article about touch vs type? Feel free to read it from HERE.

Before I forget, if you would like to snap a photo and upload to your Facebook or Twitter, it can be done within seconds. You will definitely enjoy social networking via the HTC Desire Z.

IM @ instant messaging – there is no native IM app in Android OS for chat. When I used my Samsung Galaxy Tab, Samsung had their own ‘IM’ app which was very nice. For this HTC Desire Z, the only option that you have is 3rd party app. I am currently using ebuddy but there are a lot more softwares out there in Android Market. So far, no problem found with ebuddy. I am satisfied with the connectivity. My messages will reach the other party without much delay and I have no problem receiving messages too.

Conclusion

The rest are about the same with any other Android phones. I guess all of you are familiar with Android’s capability. So I will end with my summary about this device . This device is great when it comes to business (emails, connectivity) or socializing (social networks, chats). It will be suitable for anyone – a business men, a office worker who has a lot of things to do related to emails, a student, teenagers…..just anyone.

The keyboard is awesome. Many of you may not like to type long emails using the touch screen. There was a time where I typed a long email (of course, via my PC) to my client and she just replied with an ‘OK’. I was so pissed off and when I called her, only then I got to know that she used her phone to reply. Sometimes the limitation of replying emails or typing smses using a touch screen will end up with a lot of mis-understanding. Well, if you are comfortable with the touch screen, then it is fine

When it comes to multimedia, this is where the HTC Desire Z is not good enough. I will not say that it is very bad. If you ask me to rate this device for its multimedia capability, I would give an average or 6 out of 10. The camera will not suit those who wants to take some quality snap shots. However, the music player and video player is good. With 3rd party apps, it can be even better.

Well, no matter how good the camera is for a phone, it will not be able to always take a shot that we want because there are a lot of limitations, with CMOS sensor used in phones and without a optical zoom. So I find the camera feature in any phone to be just nice for casual use.

Overall, this device is highly recommended if you are not much concerned about the camera capability.

If you have missed the 1st part of my review, feel free to click HERE.