Adventures with my Desire
OMG Internets
Why does the browser (the “Internet” button on the apps page) take you to the last viewed page? This is not normal behaviour for a browser, unless you have it set especially to do this: the default setting is for the browser to load a home page.
Why this is an issue for non-geeks:
I had already been browsing websites via links in emails and tweets. I had also been messing around with other things in the apps page. When I pressed the “Internet” button for the first time, with the intent of jumping straight to a particular webpage and this is what appeared on the screen:
Now for those who can’t read this (I’m really sorry: I have no idea how to take decent photos of the Desire screen), the URL is www.htc.com/desire/m/en/in… (the rest cannot be read on screen) and below, it says, “Learn more” and underneath is a menu with two options: How-tos (71) and Guides (2).
Now these are really useful to have stored on the phone. However, they don’t look like the internet to a non-geek. The presence of the menu had totally overridden the fact that there was a place where I could potentially type in a URL and go to a website.
Now maybe I was just unlucky that this is what came up for me, the first time I opened the browser, but I tell you what, it sure did cause a lot of confusion. The browser should behave like a browser. Settings such as retaining the last webpage viewed should be just that: in advanced settings, so that power users and geeks can mod the phone up to fit their own requirements. Non-geeks need the familiarity of a home page and the more savvy of us should have the option to set that homepage to our preferred choice.
This is yet another reason that the Desire has not been designed for a broad market.
Haha, Helen, I actually prefer the Browser app to take you to the last page you’re at. In fact, it stores everything! It makes multitasking even easier.
For the casual user, I would recommend them to add a Bookmark shortcut in your main screen with your Home page there – that way you will have the effect you expected.
Ah, but it’s not obvious how to do this (or even that you can).
I have discovered you can bookmark pages using the menu button, but saving them as a shortcut is a different matter altogether.
And don’t tell me how to do this (yet!).
This is mostly due to the multitasking, it will forget the last page you were on, but it takes some time for the software to decide you’re not planning on returning to the browser any time soon.
As Xavier mentioned, the expected use-case is links on your home-screens to your favorite sites, or search results (from the search widget), or pages from applications.
The main problem with the photo is that it is out of focus (the floor however looks more or less in focus). Try moving the phone further away and zoom in.
You may also need to use exposure compensation on the camera if the screen.
I know it’s out of focus and that the bench is. I couldn’t get the camera to focus on the phone no matter what I did. I don’t think it could cope with the reflective surface.
Often cameras simply can’t focus too close. I did the same thing this morning with my old mobile taking a photo of my new Desire. See photo at bottom of this post:
http://brendanscott.wordpress.com/2010/05/26/desire-android/
I had to hold it further away (say from 40cm to 60cm) and then zoom in to compensate.
[The screen of the phone was dark compared to the background so the camera over exposed it and washed out the colours. I needed to change exposure compensation to get the screen looking black (look for a +/- sign) – but your screen looks black enough.]