We’ve managed to snag an unlocked HTC Desire and popped a bit of Android 2.2 action on there to see if it really is much better.

We’ll get to the good news early: it is much better indeed. From an improved battery to much less choppy video recording, any slight foibles the HTC Desire had in our review have now been rectified.

Speed upgrade

One of the main upgrades with Android 2.2 is the just-in-time compiler, which improves the speed of the device in benchmark testing, and has worked wonders on the Google Nexus One.

On the HTC Desire it’s less noticeable because the phone simply swished through menus and screens with no hint of slowdown, but when it comes to web browsing things are indeed a little quicker.

But the JIT compiler doesn’t just speed up the OS, it makes it more efficient too, which helps alleviate that glaring problem: the HTC Desire has an awful battery life, often not lasting the day between charges.

Thankfully that’s been sorted with Android 2.2, where we found taking the phone off charge at 8AM would mean we still had 15-20% battery life when we stumble in at 12AM, even with push notifications and Wi-Fi on.

It’s not stellar, but it does take the HTC Desire into the ‘normal’ realm of smartphone power consumption

HD video

HD video recording has also been added into the Desire with the Froyo update, but it’s not quite the update we were hoping for.

True, the choppy video has been improved with more pixels, but it’s still grainy, a little blocky and simply goes to pieces in dark rooms, so this won’t be the next device you’ll use to become the next Paris Hilton.

It also still outputs movies in 3GP format, which does nothing to help the overall quality – we’ll wait for the HTC Desire HD to see if that improves things.

Wi-Fi hotspot support is included, and this is another feature that completely changes the overall use of the phone, especially if you’re a laptop/Wi-Fi iPad user.

It’s a simple thing to set up: turn it on, change the name of the network and the password you want to use, and you’ve got a fully-fledged Wi-Fi hotspot to play with.

Of course, if you use it regularly it’s going to eat up all your data and connection speed is dependent on your 3G signal, but if you need a quick bit of web access on a larger device then this can’t be beaten as an option.

Flash video

Flash video is included by default with Android 2.2, and while the HTC Desire could manage it anyway, the new 10.1 build is much more efficient, able to play Flash video natively in web pages.

However, we do miss the way HTC used to play the video on the Desire, as a double tap on the Flash file would take it automatically full screen – this is an intermittent feature on the Desire so it’s hard to work out how to use it at times.

Things like BBC iPlayer are much better now though, as despite not being able to use the full version of the site (it defaults to mobile version) but the overall feel is slick, despite not being able to download videos.

Install to SD card

We’re still yet to see the full benefits of being able to install applications to microSD card, but there’s no doubt this is going to be a very beneficial feature in the future.

Understandably, given there are very few phones using Android 2.2 in the world today, there aren’t many applications written that make use of the new feature, but for developers this is a big deal as they can finally flex their coding muscles and make some much larger and resource-hungry applications.

Other little additions, like including a Flashlight application and the ability to share applications with friends as standard, are all great things to have and help make your HTC Desire feel like a new phone.

Overall, Android 2.2 is a real boost for the HTC Desire, which was already a great phone.

Battery life is overhauled, video is (somewhat) improved and the Wi-Fi hotspot addition is really nice.

It’s a free upgrade too, and once the networks pull their collective fingers out and offer the update to all users (as well as putting Android 2.2 on newly sold HTC Desires) then the popularity of the phone will just go upwards.

We’ve only been playing with this for a few days now, so we’ll be overhauling our HTC Desire review in the near future so you can see how it really will change your phone.

The perception of the network in the mobile phone buying process has always been that of the bad guy: always looking to get the most money out of customers while lying to their faces.

Who hasn’t, when it comes to contract renewal time, chatted to a friend about it and been told ‘tell ‘em you’re going to leave, that way you’ll get more minutes/texts/free pets’ and so on.

And to a degree, that still holds true; you can often shop around and get a better deal on a mobile phone contract, or at least persuade the uncaring guy in the call centre to give you a free case for your spangly new handset.

But with the advent of smartphones, networks now have to deal with a much scarier beast: software upgrades.

This means networks have to essentially re-release a handset multiple times during its lifetime – for free.

Why are we waiting?

And when there’s a delay, the villain card is played once more: network bosses are obviously sitting around in ivory towers, playing chess with iPhone 4s while the minions tell the plebs that there’s no stock.

Consumers need to realise that networks have to test firmware on their devices before releasing it for all, else it could feasibly not work on the phone correctly. Unlikely, but if it did all go blue screen then the fallout would be catastrophic, so waiting a couple of weeks isn’t the worst thing in the world.

The HTC Desire has made this issue more prominent than ever before, as users are clamouring to know when their expensive handset will be made sleeker/faster/less battery hungry by it being updated to the Android 2.2 OS.

And Vodafone has caught the brunt of it with its latest update to the Desire – where customers thought they were getting the Android 2.2 update early, they were treated to a ’360 update’ which basically ransacked through a few settings and added a load of unwanted icons.

And lo, did the forums ignite with wrathful users DEMANDING that something be done. “VF! WHAT HAVE YOU DONE!?????” screamed one user with his nose firmly pressed on the Shift key.

Users don’t want bloatware. We don’t want crap on our phone like icons that offer services we will clearly never use. We have app stores now, so if we want sat-nav software, we’ll jolly well go and get it.

And if we can’t uninstall it, well, that’s like putting our phone in a glass box and the networks deciding when and where we can use it. Not cool.

Forum shouting

So what happened? Vodafone actually did something, announcing that the new Android 2.2 update is imminent, and will roll back the changes made.

It’s been called a massive backtrack: Vodafone has been forced to admit users don’t want to have bloatware they didn’t ask for.

But it’s better to backtrack and appease consumers than to pretend everything is fine and anger people for two years while they run down a contract they entered into based on a certain promise.

We want an unlocked and unbranded phone, free of any tinkering whatsoever, each time we shell out hundreds of pounds for the latest handset on a two year deal, and ‘smuggling’ stuff onto our phones should never happen.

And while this smartphone utopia is still a while away, at least networks seem to be realising there’s a bloatware line in the smartphone sand that can’t be crossed.

This post was written by guest contributor Leila Janah, the CEO of the nonprofit outsourced services firm Samasource. Leila continues to argue with me over whether or not pure capitalism can solve what ails us. I tend to take a Randian view of the world. Janah argues that capitalism can often lead to evil, and points to the massive Taiwanese firm Foxconn as an example of capitalism going wrong. That’s certainly a crowd pleaser, but I think most of the problems with capitalism stem from government regulation. You can watch my recent video interview with Janah here. In any event, Samasource is a fascinating experiment and is already helping the world become a more pleasant place to be.

Sixty-three percent of the Fortune 500, and more than half of all American businesses, are incorporated in Delaware. The state’s laws protect corporate directors and enable them to focus on the bottom line. Traditionally, that has meant maximizing profits and shareholder value.

But a new trend is emerging to counter Delaware’s influence on American corporate policy, and it’s pretty thrilling for those of us in the social enterprise sector. In April, Maryland became the first state to allow entrepreneurs to form Benefit Corporations. Also known as “triple-bottom line” businesses (so named for their consideration of people, planet, and profit), B Corps now include over 300 companies representing $1.1B in revenue, including Amazon competitor Better World Books and GoodGuide, a site that rates consumer products for safety, environmental impact, and social responsibility. B Corporation, the nonprofit behind the legislation, is growing in influence — in the organization’s hometown of Philadelphia, B Corps now receive tax incentives.

Benefit Corporations aren’t the only newfangled legal structures available to mission-driven entrepreneurs. Several years ago, Vermont created Low-Profit Limited Liability Corporations, or L3Cs (Vermont, bless those hippies, also approved Benefit Corporations in May). Michigan, Utah, Wyoming, Illinois, and New York followed suit.

I can hear some of you scoffing. How can a business optimize across multiple types of return? How can one measure social and environmental impact consistently across the full range of businesses? Is Adam Smith turning in his grave?

The notion of multiple bottom lines emerged in the 1980s, after major environmental catastrophes like Exxon Valdez and the Union Carbide gas leak in Bhopal made it clear that some firms were not counting the true environmental costs of doing business on their balance sheets. Negative environmental externalities went largely unregulated, and activists realized that business leaders were a more likely source of change than government. The first crop of these companies included Ben and Jerry’s, whose founders Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield famously donated 7.5% of pre-tax profit to community projects, and Dame Anita Roddick’s The Body Shop, whose “Trade Not Aid” and Greenpeace campaigns built her a reputation for business ethics.

Today, there are at least 25 different approaches to measuring social and environmental impact at the firm level, ranging from Fair Trade labeling systems that focus on living and working conditions for suppliers to Jed Emerson’s popular Social Return on Investment method, and the companies that use them have access to new pools of capital. Led by the Rockefeller Foundation, the Global Impact Investing Network includes 30 socially conscious investors including funds like Jeff Skoll’s Capricorn Investment Group and TIAA-CREF.

This activity around social business, and social capital markets more broadly, is encouraging, but highlights a central problem: in the absence of a single standard for measuring social and environmental returns, regulatory agencies can’t build effective incentives to encourage companies to adopt them. Optimizing for multiple variables is notoriously challenging; even when leaders unambiguously express their commitment to social and environmental goals by, for example, modifying their corporate mission statements, they face major tradeoffs. Prior to the advent of Benefit Corporations, people and planet took a back seat to profits. Ten years ago, Ben & Jerry’s sold to Unilever — according to Will Patten, a former executive there, Cohen and Greenfield wanted to retain control of the company but could have been sued by shareholders for not selling to an entity willing to pay well above the company’s stock price.

Under Maryland’s new law, the Bens and Jerrys of the future are free to compromise profits for the pursuit of vaguely defined “public benefit,” which includes things like preserving the environment and improving human health. The directors of Benefit Corporations are required to file a “Benefit Report” to shareholders each year, and are required to consider the effects of their actions not only on shareholders, but also on employees, customers, and, notably, suppliers.

In the wake of worker suicides at FoxConn and the recent discovery of $1 trillion worth of lithium, copper and iron in Afghanistan, is the tech world ready for B Corps?

Source: Techcrunch.com