What are some cool thing that the HTC Ryhme phone can do?

[Victoria]

I am just wondering cause I got this phone recently and discovered a few cool things. If you know any can you list them and how to do them? Thanks in advance.

[Nikola Petrovic]

HTC Rhyme is a mid range Android phone. It can basically do what almost every Android handset can do, but better than the low segment ones, and marginally worse than the high-end ones.

Now, I have probably confused you, so I will go into details and explain it to you.

Like every phone it has calling and messaging capabilities, but if you came from an ordinary phone, messaging system is way neater and works way better. Call logs are neater too. And the contacts can be connected with facebook and gmail contacts (and your contacts profile picture will appear when they call you). If course you can add a photo the old fashioned way, but this speeds things up a lot.

Camera is not anything to write home about. HTC has never been known for making good cameras, and this one isn't either. It has flash and, of course, can take videos. Unlike ordinary phones, though, it's rather easy to share every photo you take in a few seconds (e.g. on Facebook or as an email attachment).

It has WiFi.

The email app is decent, and the gmail app is the best in business.

It is great for browsing the web, and it supports flash. Also, it is generally great for social networking.

It comes with the Youtube app too.

There are plenty of nice widgets on it, like the weather forecast, facebook widget, twitter widget, favorite contacts widget...

It has GPS and Google Maps software to use it (you need to be connected to the internet for it, and if you use it a lot, you will need a good data plan). You can use location based services to share your location through social networking, or Latitude (e.g. to easily show someone where to find you).

And probably more functions I haven't even remembered. But now comes the big one: Android Market.

Right now, Android Market has about 400 thousand available apps, more than half of them free (or freemium, with adds). Fire up Market, and browse through. You are bound to find some things you will love. I will mention a few.

It is a pretty solid phone for gaming. It can run most current generation games, even the most graphically demanding ones (it won't be able to run all the next generation games). But the simple games are the best on the phone in my opinion (and not just mine). Angry birds and Cut the rope are great examples.

There are plenty of programs for listening to music (like Winamp), and watching videos (like Dice Player), but also the programs that recognize music you are listening to in e.g. Starbucks (Shazam and Soundhound).

If you use Facebook or Twitter, HTC apps are not nearly as good as the real deal (but you have to run it in order to connect your contacts with Facebook). Facebook app on the market is a really well thought out, well sorted app. Twitter app is good (could be better imho), but there are good alternatives for people that want more (like Hoot Suite).

If you want to share your files over all of your systems (PC, laptop, phone) and have easy access to them over the internet, there are multiple solutions, with DropBox being the most popular one.

If you like to read books (and that screen is not too small for you, for me it isn't), Aldiko book reader is a must. If you buy books on Amazon, the Amazon ebook reader is a must. There are others, of course, with their good and bad sides (I prefer Go Book when I side load books, for example).

I think your phone doesn't come with a file manager, and you might need that (or not). The most popular ones are ES File manager and Astro file manager.

You can morph your picture a bit with the free Android version of Photoshop (again, there are others).

Of course, instant messaging. I prefer ebuddy (there are really many good programs for this). And how not to mention Skype. Thanks to the front facing camera, it can even video call.

The standard web browser is good enough, but not great. It's small and fast, and good to quickly see something, but for something more serious, there are better alternatives. My favorite is Dolphin browser, but there are other good ones, like Skyfire or Opera mobile. Firefox can be tad buggy, but it has it's own good sides too.

This concludes my short list of uses and apps. Fire up the market (there is a web version too, so you can browse through more easily, and install apps directly from your PC to your phone too), and start browsing the categories. You will find way more than I have mentioned, but these are good to start with.