I got a new toy

Three years ago, I got my first smartphone. Alas, my HTC Desire (supposedly the top of the line at the time) was pretty much obsolete a month after I got it. Still, it served my purposes for a while, Despite being too slow to run more recent apps, lacking storage space, taking forever to bring up webpages, and being occasionally plagued by technical problems.

Even with all those issues, I loved it. It was the perfect size for my needs. It worked flawlessly for calls and texting, and performed well as a music player. And the build quality... Good God, that thing is sturdy. Nothing about it feels cheap. Eventually though, the problems piled on too high. My needs have moved beyond what my Desire can provide.

Today, I finally upgraded.

I'm now rocking a shiny new HTC One. Metal construction. Gorilla glass. A 1.7GHz quad-core CPU. 32GB of storage space. A 4.7" 1080p screen. Stereo speakers with built-in amplifiers (so the box says). Unlimited 4G LTE data service.

Everything about it feels rock-solid, even more so than my Desire. My brother just got a Samsung Galaxy S3, and my One feels like it could bludgeon his phone into a paste without taking a dent.

Everything about it is fast. Browsing is quick and painless. Apps load in the blink of an eye.

It feels alien.

I'm sure I'll bond with it over time, but I just don't feel that instant connection I had to my old phone. I'm definitely going to miss the convenient menu button on the face. I'm going to miss the little nub at the bottom that I could use to navigate complicated menus without clumsy finger fumbling. Hell, I'm even going to miss the rounded edges and the velvety texture of its back plate. And the One is just so large. I can't carry it the way I'm used to.

But on the bright side, I have access to a whole new world of apps I had been missing out on. I want to focus on that for now.

If anyone reading this happens to know of any awesome apps I should try, drop some names.