As part of the bloggers sharing initiative, me and Chippy have swapped smartphones for a week. He has my HTC Desire and I have his Sony Ericsson Xperia X10.

The device arrived yesterday and although I didn’t have much time to properly test the device I got it configured into a usable manner.

My first thoughts are;

1) The screen is big and beautiful although the auto brightness sensor sometimes leaves the display looking dull.

2) The feel of the device is solid, its lighter than the Desire but this does leave it feeling not as robust.

3) Android 1.6 is lacking, I first noticed this with the lack of native exchange support. A third party application is offered on the device but its not as integrated as native support.

4) Camera is very good in light situations although pretty poor in low light.

5) The on screen keyboard is awful, it misses key presses even though the haptic feedback registers a press and certain keys require a long press, specifically keys towards the edge of the screen.

6) The browser is excellent as I would expect with Android coupled with a 1Ghz processor.

7) Battery life is on par with the Desire which considering my usage habits is pretty good.

I will post more thoughts as I use the device which will lead up to a short review. Don’t forget to check out Chippys coverage of the Desire over at Carrypad.

I have previously mentioned that me and Steve ‘Chippy’ Paine are swapping phones for a week, he currently has my HTC Desire and I’m expecting anytime soon now his Sony Ericsson Xperia X10.

Well he has began to post and tweet his thoughts on the Desire already, you can follow them on his Xperia section of Carrypad and follow @chippy for his tweets.

Also if your interested in finding out more about bloggers sharing you can visit the site www.bloggerssharing.com and search twitter for #bloggerssharing

My work life has been very hectic of late and posts have been few and far between. I’m currently in the process of evaluating my working methods and trying integrate my extracurricular activities in a more streamlined way.

There are plenty of posts in me, its just making the time to publish them in a professional and high quality manner.

I’m going to start by writing a post per week and we will see how things progress from there.

For my micro updates then follow me on Twitter; @GuyOnTech and also keep you eyes peeled for my review of the HTC Desire, the fastest smartphone I’ve ever used.

Are we socialising yet?

Using my new vanity URL you can add me on facebook – http://www.facebook.com/guy.adams

Did you manage to get the one you wanted?

Those fathers out there will know and appreciate that many hours can be passed whilst feeding those little ones. In a bid to gain back some of that feeding time I’ve found that I can bottle feed my daughter and flick through the 100+ feeds I like to keep track of.

Whilst usually I would use my new HTC Touch Diamond with Opera Mobile, Google Reader Mobile and simple finger screen flicks, on a laptop this can be slightly more tricky. What with touch pads, mouse clicks and the inability to move very far its a blessing that Google Reader has keyboard shortcuts.

Some of your eagle eyed readers may be wondering a few things;

1) Why is there a red elastic ban on my daughters bottle

2) What was the picture taken with

Well the answer to no.1 is; the elastic band marks this particular bottle as being Lily’s water bottle and more on no.2 coming very soon. 

I really am sick of hearing and reading about it.

So for those of you in feeling the same, here’s a little treat;

Click here to view the embedded video.

It was a long, hard three weeks of backwards and forwards to hospital and things came to a head Friday 16th when my wife became critically ill. After the longest 24 hours of my life the hospital decided that they needed to get the baby out by C-Section.

On Saturday 17th May, Lily Mary Adams was born ten weeks prematurely at 3lbs and 4ozs but healthy and in no need of breathing assistance.

She spent six weeks in the very capable hands of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) nurses at Kings Mill hospital and then without much warning she was discharged and back home with us.

It was a very traumatic time for us, spending full days at hospital was tiring but of course worth while. We have spent the last week settling into a routine at home and Lily is piling the pounds on, she now weighs a very health 5lbs 8ozs and changes day by day.

Now things are beginning to return to a normal state I will begin posting here again. The reason for starting this blog still drives me on, my love of technology. I’ve managed to catch up on the thousands of feeds I subscribe to and I hope to be posting some tech related articles here soon.

Thank you for your messages of concern and for sticking around.

If like me you are interested in this amazing UMPC then check out Craig Pringles blog for a few nice articles on various aspects of the device:

I’m feeling a bit… Shifty

Shift Review Part 1 – a tour

How useful is the HTC Shift?

The HTC Shift Operating Systems

Holy Shift! It does have GPS!

My main concern with this device is the battery life, I don’t think I could survive a normal day with only two hours mobility at my disposal. Its an issue which many people have discussed and hopefully an issue with HTC can resolve or improve on.  

Vista since its release has taken some fairly large criticisms for some pretty high profile places and people, in certain cases for good reason.

Well some of you may or may not heard (if not where have you been?) that Apple have released their new operating system; Leopard. Since it hit our shelves I have been reading the reviews and news about the operating system and so far its been a big success but the cracks are now beginning to appear. On Tuesday I read two stories which would concern me greatly before upgrading;

Firstly eWeek reported that the Leopard firewall is less than capable. Several issues including turning itself off by default on installation, even if a user had the firewall turned on before upgrading and the block all function which doesn’t work.

“The short answer is the Leopard firewall is … ugly and a step backwards from 10.4″said Rich Mogull, an independent security consultant.

Heise Security’s Jürgen Schmidt posted an article that concluded “initial functional testing has already uncovered cause for concern,” in spite of the fact that “Apple is using security in general and the new firewall in particular to promote Leopard.”

Secondly Ars Technica reported on installation woes that users are having. Problems with blue screens of death when certain applications are use and lost user settings after the completed upgrade.

So why haven’t Apple received any serious criticism from online the community? A fairly large security issue on Vista would of had the internet in an outrage but for Leopard, nothing? It makes me wonder if the reason people are so quick to criticize Microsoft for Vista is because they don’t like the software giant.

A lot of the points he makes I agree with and have stated so in one of my recent posts about how good the Vista performance is on the HP 2710P, Craig says:

“The first point I will make in Vista’s defense is to point out that not everything bad that happens in on a computer is the fault of the OS.  On every single computer there are hundreds of device drivers and bits of software that could be the culprit for some of the issues outlined above.  Specifically the resume from sleep and docking station issues described above are most likely driver issues.”

Its always good to see different peoples reactions on what I think will be a fairly long term debate.