I am the proud owner of a new HTC Desire and it is fabulous!

My G1 finally came to the end of it’s useful life. That or my contract came up for renewal so I went for the upgrade. To be fair to the G1, I was a seriously early adopter, I got a lot of use out of it, and it only occasionally let me down. By the end, though, it was a bit creaky. The battery was all but useless, and it’s ability to pick up signals could only be jump-started by switching it on and off again.

What a revelation the Desire has been.

With shiny new Android software, a fantastic camera and a mind-blowing screen, I am, so far, a very satisfied customer. I’ve only had it for about a week, so I need more time to report on all the features, but I wanted to tell a couple of stories about T Mobile customer service. Get this - they are good!

I requested an upgrade online and waited anxiously for my new phone. I waited. And waited. “Where is my new phone?” I shouted at the G1. Poor thing.

The T Mobile site offers a few options for contacting them, and right at the very bottom? A Twitter account. I opted for that, my first experience of tweeting a company support system. The way T Mobile do it is curious indeed. The Twitter account “opens” between 8:30am and 5pm, where presumably someone is just sitting there, waiting to help you out. I got a response immediately, which involved direct messaging them (I hate the DM feature on Twitter so very much, but that is a whole other post), emailing them, and sorting it out.

Thing is, the person I emailed replied pretty much straight away, and they were a human being. The Desire was out of stock, and my order was ready to be processed when the next batch came in. I replied saying I would just have to be patient. I got another reply, and it contained a ’lol’. Fantastic! An actual person, not a corporate drone, gave me the answer immediately. Well done T Mobile, and well done Twitter.

My other story is only brief, I somehow managed to break the charger within hours of owning the phone, so that I had to rush out and buy a new one. Walking into a shop and saying: “Do you sell chargers for the Desire?” is a horrible sentence, but they aren’t phased. They must also get questions like “Do you sell Tattoo chargers?” which is just weird. HTC - stop it now.

Anyways, the nice man behind the counter was actually using a Desire at the time, and when I was handing over the money, he showed me what he was doing - emulating some Nintendo games, I think. He went: “Look at this… oh, I died. Because I was serving you.”

It made me laugh, although it also made me feel a bit guilty. Sorry nice man in the shop for ruining your Street Fighter experience. Console yourself with the knowledge that my fabulous new phone is now fully charged.