About three months ago, I decided to start using an Android smartphone out of curiosity. I was quite happy with my 5-year-old Nokia N73 but I wanted to get the hang of the open source OS. So I bought a cheap droid – the Micromax A60, which runs non-upgradable Eclair (Android 2.1).  My attitude was similar to learning to drive on an old cheap car – any damage you caused is financially relatively limited.

My handset requirements are focussed. Apart from basic voice and text, I need a phone that can synch mail and contacts. It must tether easily to a variety of OS-es. I maintain a six machine multi-OS network that includes data sprawled across various Linux flavours, Windows XP, Win7, Mac OS X and network drives.

The phone must be sturdy since I'm clumsy and there are pets in the house. It must have long battery life (I travel a lot in places with long power cuts).  It has to give reliable net access on both GPRS and 3G. It has to allow seamless data-transfer, via Bluetooth preferably, with Nokia's Symbian-based N-series and E-series. A decent camera and music are useful. Games are not such a big deal - the games I like are too resource-heavy to be handled by any smartphone platform (or even low-end desktops).

My verdict on A60 is mixed, so far. There are some gaping holes in terms of personal requirements. First, the good.  Android is an intuitive OS with a decent apps market to back it up. The A60 offers good music options, especially with headphones, since it supports high-capacity SD cards. The 3.2 megapixel camera is average but does the job – video calls are impossible (no front cam).

Net browsing, video-watching, mail-synching, contact-synching are all good. The flexibility to switch between Wi-fi, GPRS, 3G, depending on availability is great. The battery life is superb. The A60 easily goes 50-60 hours (assuming Wi-fi isn't on by default) between recharges. The handset has fallen on the ground many times and once, into a bucket of water, without sustaining damage.

Now, the problem areas. It doesn't have good signed drivers to tether to Windows 7 systems. You have to run Windows 7 in test mode, or compatibility mode. This is poor tech support on Micromax's part though I'm geeky enough to be usually running in test mode anyway.  In general, tech support is poor. The A60 manual is very basic and tells you almost nothing about most functions and features.

There are issues with Bluetooth transfers to and from Nokia handsets though I don't know if this is specific to the handsets, or generic to Symbian- Android.  The workaround is easy but tedious – tether both handsets to a PC and transfer data via that.

Those are minor irritants. There are some bugs or lacunae, which are near deal-breakers. One is the inability to handle vcards properly. The standard business card transfer process is one-way. The A60 can send vcards. It can import vcards off computer drives or SD cards. But it cannot receive a vcard on SMS; it doesn't even acknowledge receiving vcard SMS messages!  It is most embarrassing to ask people to cut-paste numbers on contact transfers since most phone do this by default.

I've been hunting for workarounds for this, and so far, I haven't found one. While lurking on various tech-forums, I discovered that this problem has also plagued other Android devices. It was generically sorted out only from Android 2.2 onwards though there are Eclairs that can handle vcard reception. Unfortunately A60 is not easily upgradeable to 2.2, even with root access.

Related problems – contact-handling can be very tedious. Every number and email id can be synched to gmail contacts, which means there's a permanent backup in the Google cloud (and also on hard-drive/ SD card). That's great, if you don't mind the loss of privacy.

But if you are in a zone with lack of net-access for a prolonged period, mail-synching issue appear. The phone book may just suddenly disappear off the handset! The only solution I found in a non-net access area when it happened to me, was to tether to my laptop and re-synch contacts off the hard drive. (I won't get caught again since I now keep the phone book backed up on the SD card). Again, browsing tech-forums suggest that this is a generic OS-related issue that has occurred with several droid devices.

Android is also bad at handling duplicate contacts (first name/ last name/ same number) and at basics like editing a new phone number into an existing contact. The onboard system requires physically scrolling through the phone book to edit a new number into existing contact (I have over 1500 contacts so this could take ages).

A simple “add to existing contact” option where you input text to find the contact you want to edit, would make this much easier. Again this shows lack of imagination and user-sensitivity on the programmers' part. Cut-and-paste is again, not so easily available under all circumstances.

Despite the generally negative hype about resistive touchscreens, I like the text input system otherwise. The clarity of video including classical music, opera, rock concerts, IPL, La Liga and World Cup is good.

Will I upgrade to a newer high-end Android phone, which has better feature sets that take care of these irritants? The answer is, probably – it is a more flexible OS than Windows, Symbian or iPhone. But I haven't yet seen an absolutely compelling reason to upgrade to a high-end Android smartphone, however. I do know I won't stay too long with the A60 unless workarounds are developed for the above problems.