Okay, so I’m not rocking a Moto Droid, but I am now rocking an HTC Desire Z.  The wifey helped to make this happen so thanks go out to her.

It’s currently 2:47AM so this will be short to begin with; I’ll have to come back later to flesh out this post a little more.

First impressions:

• I will not be rocking CM6.1 or CM7 (?) on this device.  As it turns out, HTC Sense is cooler than I thought, and it’s a more polished experience than standard Android.  Yes, I realize that this places me at the mercy of HTC/Bell to feed any potential update craving that may arise in the future, but for now I’m willing to live with that
• The screen is beautfil.  Nuff said.
• Hinge isn’t the snappiest but I can definitely live with it.
• It’s really nice to have a phone that actually hangs up when I tell it to (and not a few seconds later – Touch Pro, here’s looking at you kid)
• It’s a little weird going into so many apps and just… leaving them to go elsewhere.  I could do this with the Touch Pro as well, but given the speed of that device it wasn’t often that I’d go into 6-7 apps in one sitting.  Perhaps it’s the new-car-small of the Z that’s got me bouncing around in apps (particularly as I’m still trying to get the thing setup to my liking).  However, I will say that some apps do seem to restart when you go back to them, and that’s definitely weird coming from WinMo, which would leave apps open until memory constraints forced them closed.  I don’t think I’ve hit any memory issues on the Z yet, so it may just be that Android is a little more aggressive in the task management department.
• Battery life isn’t as good as the Touch Pro.  Again I’ll say that I’m using the device extensively in order to get it setup, and I have a feeling that two mail apps were trying to IMAP IDLE on my mail account – a consequence of not having my mail setup correctly yet.
• I never thought I’d say this, but I like that I can link my local contacts to my Facebook contacts.  Having this integration – provided by HTC Sense – is nice, although I’m still adamant that I wouldn’t go so far as Windows Phone 7’s penchant for throwing Facebook photos into your local photo gallery.
• L-O-V-E the way that the notification bar works.  Very cool to finally be able to see what a notification is  about without having to make any overt gestures or load the relevant app.
• Maps on Android is AWESOME.  Especially Maps 5.0.  Check it out if you’re rocking an Android phone.

I’m sure there’s more, and they’ll come when I follow-up on this post.  It may be possible that many of these enhancements could be had on the WinMo platform, particularly considering that HTC Sense is available (indeed, was conceived) on Windows Mobile.  Still, the speed of my Touch Pro can’t compare with the Z, not to mention the screen resolution, vibrancy and size.  I will say that for now I prefer the layout of the hardware keyboard on the Touch Pro, but that could be a case of a year’s worth of familiarity with said keyboard.

One negative I noticed today – and I hope that this is was an isolated occurence – was trouble staying connected to the Bluetooth kit in the car.  I had problems like that on WinMo, where Bluetooth on the phone would actually turn off.  My solution was to write a native program and some Mortscript to force Bluetooth on whenever it inexplicably turned off.  Well, it seems that the Z’s Bluetooth is staying on, but the connection is dropping.  Will investigate more later.

Off to bed now.