Don't let her enormous display distract you: She's worse than syphilis.

It looks and sounds like it should be gorgeous – but just like a girl with an ample array on display, you’ll realise that beneath her HTC interface, she is actually a developmentally-delayed vacuous strumpet with a hideous, mischevious heart.

The most embarrassing problem (yes, there are so many that I categorize them by kind) is the social awkwardness prompted by two factors: Unreliable text messaging and hang-up lag time.

The text messaging is strange because some messages just sit, somewhere hidden in the phone (no, not in the Outbox – I said hidden), waiting to be sent. Then, with a restart or a network dropout, and they’ll all send, up to a day or so late.

It’s a problem because when you’re messaging a lady, meaning is inferred by how long it takes for replies to appear. If quick, then the other party is excited and devoted to the task; slower could imply nonchalance or avid interest resulting careful writing and re-wording of a text; too long and it’s disinterested or busy; no reply and the prognosis is bad, doc.

So I send a message, and the clock starts. I can no longer use the trusty ‘Read Message Confirmation’ – which I used to use secretly for great effect (your phone prolly has it – it tells you when the open the message) because they removed that option. I can’t know if the message sent.

Sometimes I fire off a few, which arrive with them in a quick flurry of messages of escalating frustration.

From the basic “Where are you?”

To the less certain “Are you coming?”

To the pathetic “Hello?”

To the passive aggressive “Well I guess I’ll see you round somewhere else then” – all within 20 minutes. Nothing says ‘stalker’ like floods of messages.

Thankfully I don’t send too many messages, because the keyboard is so temperamental and hides away randomly, then won’t show it’s face again without vigorous screen prodding, then it stops helping me spell my words on it’s bizarrely unusable keyboard.

The not hanging up caper is another game it likes to play, as did my last HTC Touch. You press the hang up button and the call keeps transmitting while the phone goes through the apparently excessive computations on it’s allegedly mega-fast processor required to run the command: End the call.

So while you are saying “That was …” they are still tuned in. I am aware of casting agent and one girl that have heard something. The casting agent called for a meeting (which clashed with lazy swimming pool time) and I hung up and said: “Uurgh, damn work.” And they heard me. The girl still won’t tell me what she heard me say – prognosis again bad.

So, thus far, with a review of the awkward texting and foot-in-mouth calling, the phone is doing badly. But it gets worse.

If I’m trying to set my phone to not connect to the internet while I’m roaming, there isn’t a blanket option for it. I twiddle through every app that needs the internet, turning them all off, but it still won’t help. It’s still determined to dial out.

The demonic beast’s internet settings have to be scrambled so it doesn’t know how to get on the internet, else it’ll continue to dial up like a horror film phone that keeps ringing after it’s unplugged. With that done, the snarling, talk-time eating, internet junkie phone, resorts to continually informing me that it can’t get on the net.

Like a junkie might nag for a hit, the phone pops up complaint box after complaint box about it’s lack of ability to dial out to find out what the weather’s like. I know what the weather forecast is like. I’ll tell you: It’s fucking hot until it starts pissing with rain in what we call monsoon. Forget the internet for now. Shut up and let me type yet another awkward text message!

You win phone: You’re more annoying than me in my sister’s dreams. Have your fucking internet. I hate you.

It has lots of cool options, but almost every one is just a bit buggered. Even when I go through the rather long process of quitting all the background apps it still runs slow, hangs or crashes so badly it needs to be defibrillated and soft-reset before it can get past some disconcerting colour bars and evil DOS-like glyphs.

You don’t understand how much I need this phone. I Google people (directors, other actors, funny guys or cute girls) as soon as I meet them, often while sitting in front of them – like a stealthy information-whore ninja. If someone tells me something amazing, I’ll verify their story immediately, and supportively defend them or batter their untruths into submission. I end debates about known facts in a ruthless manner. I ride to auditions guided with Google maps and the GPS, and Latitude tells me where my friends and family are. I check the News, Quote of the Day, Facebook and see what recent scientific discoveries have been made (Melt in place brain recording devices, apparently!). I have my show reel and my photos on the phone, along with Excel spreadsheets of my earnings, and load the show reel only production-house computers (if I brought the stupid sized cord they decided to use after the awesome mini USB one).

If it always failed to do that, I would have set it on fire, but it sometimes does those things, and sometimes just hangs, causing me to suffer that awkward ‘Should I try to press close again now or will that cause both this window and the one under it to close when it starts responding again?’ Bam, bam: Fail, you quit out of maps. Too bad.

Then (finally) I contacted the HTC website to ask them if I just had a shit handset, or if all they sold was shit handsets, and guess what: Their website, specifically the bit that records problems, is experiencing problems and won’t let me complain. Well they’d better read this.

I so wanted to write about the awesome features of this phone and how it makes the iPhone look like a feminine pointing device, and the HD2 is like a wicked, black, beast of burden, like a shiny stamping stallion with huge nuts. But instead it’s a retarded Shetland pony with truck-nuts gaffer taped under his tail.

The phone sucks.

Other problems (I couldn’t even attempt to make then readable): Text message times are all screwed up so I apparently reply to messages I haven’t read yet, or new messages will arrive yesterday; The WiFi is weak, the Router causes the no-sleep function to stay on after the Router is switched off, the screen occasionally goes funny safe-mode-esque purple colours; the google search function doesn’t work in opera while google page still loads; the slide to unlock sometimes sticks and needs a battery-pull, the WiFi forgets network passwords and forgets to connect to networks, and at medium power mode it can barely see my router through my wooden door; the task manager is now less useful and a bunch of others I can’t remember.

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