It's official. I really, truly, and whole-heartedly...

... hate having a cold.

My entire body above the waist, less arms, neck, and head, ache through repeated coughing and sneezing. My nose is regularly blocked, and kleenex and (would you believe it, they make Soothers) Cadburys need to really start better marketting of their stock, as I'm going through their products like a hot knife through butter (there's a much more appropriate simile involving wildfowl, but it's not at all polite, so use yer imagination).

Anyhow, I phoned Mobile Phones Direct today, in a rare few moments of light coughing (as opposed to rafter-raising sneezing and industrial strength coughing), and explained that I'd like to upgarde to either the HTC Sensation or the Galaxy S II. And once again, it seems that the deals I saw online related to new contracts, not existing upgrades.

Oh deep blue-language joy.

However.

If I was willing to go for the Sensation rather than the Galaxy, then I could have it on a two year contract for the same cost as my existing (roughly 31 quid a month) contract, and without having to change my mobile number. Oooo. My ears perked up. In between coughing fits, of course.

While I did the maths on this, I looked over the specs on both phones again. About the only thing, materially, that I'd loose out on, would be USB-On-The-Go, a way of plugging conventional USB devices, such as external hard drives, memory sticks, and such like, into the phone directly, rather than via another computer when monted on that, as a throughput device. I'm not sure I've worded that correctly, but I think you get the gist.

Honestly, it's something that would be nice, but which isn't, really, an urgently must-have thing. Yeah, it'd be nice to be able to plug an external USB keyboard into the phone, and be able to type quickly and accurately, without having to visually check that my finges were in the right place for every key, but I'm sure there are hardware add-ones - such as wireless keyboards via bluetooth - that I can get and use, should I feel the need to use an external, rather than the built-in firmware/software keys that the phone comes with, so the lack of this USB thing isn't a deal-breaker by any stretch of the imagination. Besides which, it's an optional extra requiring a plug-in accessory from Samsung, so it's not something that comes with the phone, after all.

The other thing is the smaller Storage and RAM on the HTC Sensation. That gave me brief pause, until I realised that really and truly, I could use a microSD card in the phone, and still have 16 gigs of storage (already have one, just needs a major reformat). And storage  cards are currently really cheap, compared to what they were priced at two years ago, so again, who'm I kidding? Yes, onboard storage would be nice, but it's really that essential, as long as there's the avilability of card storage. As to RAM, the Galaxy has 1 Gig, the Sensation 768 Megs (about three quartes of a gig). Is it that much of a difference? For high-end mobile applications (I mean software packages, bit my tongue, lol), yeah, it could be, but will I be using them? Let's be realistic: Probably not. So again, it makes little difference.

One thing that MAY make a difference, though, is the almost instant photo capture processing on the Sensation, which should enable faster photographing speeds - and that IS an important feature for me, as I take photos for this blog, and having the capacity to take fast photos is a useful one.

As to the battery life of the Sensation. I already have a stand-alone emergency recharger for my Touch Pro 2, which uses the standard miniUSB charging plug to recharge the phone, and this can be used on the new phone with no modifications, so that's not a real problem either.

So, on balance, while it'd be nice to have some of the bells and whistles of the Galaxy, the solid features of the Sensation have won (well, that and the price).

So, I've ordered the free upgrade, which should be with me in the next couple of days.

We'll see how I get on with Android over the coming months.

Stay tuned - I mean Soothed ;-)

PS - it took nearly an hour to type this up, mainly as I was back to my industrial coughing and sneezing again.

And the muscles in my chest STILL bloody hurt.

I know Flu's a killer, and important to combat, but here's a hint, bio-medical types - more days of work appear to be lost to the common cold than Flu - can't you come up with an actual CURE for the common cold?

Please?