Due to my previous track record of purchasing Apple products almost to the day that an upgrade to a new version is announced, I have decided to turn to the dark side for few months. As my phone contract ends and I don’t want to upgrade to an iPhone 4S with the imminent announcement of iPhone 5, I have decided to buy a sim-free android handset to use for a few months. It’s also a good way to do a bit of research into the Android experience – something that I’ve not done before.

I joked to a colleague that emerging from the Apple walled-garden is a little bit what I imagine getting out of prison to be like. The choice of manufacturers, never mind handsets is bewildering. Which version of Android should I be going for? Why do they all have silly names? How much RAM, how fast a processor (with how many cores), how many cameras (with how many pixies), what screen resolution, how much storage do I need?

In the end, I settled on HTC because I’ve liked what I’ve seen of their handsets in the past (and I’ve heard of them!). I dithered over whether to go for the wildfire S (very good value, but feels a bit flimsy to me, and is at the older end of the range), the Desire C (newer, but, according to reviews, a bit lacking in the processor department and again plastic-cased) or the One V (a little more expensive, but with a larger screen, faster processor and aluminium unibody construction). Sticking to the adage “buy cheap, buy twice”, I’ve gone for the One V.

First impressions are largely positive. The handset itself feels like a quality item, the unibody construction really helping to lift the handset above the competition. The screen is bright and sharp (though I suspect the default brightness setting of ‘stun’ may be helping this at the expense of battery life). The HTC sense UI looks very nice, and everything seems to perform well, with the handset feeling at least as snappy in use as the iPhone 4.

Downsides are that there is a persistent static / cross-talk noise when listening to music. I was actually going to return the handset on the basis of this, as I intend to use it as my primary music player when on the move, but it seems from a bit of research that ‘they all do that, sir’. Disappointing, especially as HTC are very keen to promote the handset’s audio credentials with the nasty ‘beats audio’ (which happily can be disabled). I will have to live with it, but it really is a minus point. I will see if future updates address this, but frankly I am not that hopeful – it seems to be a hardware issue. The screen does seem more prone to finger prints than the iPhone screen, but at least that’s solvable with a quick wipe. The wifi signal does seem to be affected by how you hold the device, which is, I guess, the downside to that unibody construction. Seems that Apple don’t have the monopoly on shonky antenna design…

The next challenge that I face is the huge variety of apps and utilities out there. If anyone has any recommendations for an Android newbie, I’d be very glad to hear about them! I am particularly interested in podcast management, now that I don’t have iTunes to do it for me…