HTC Desire Review
Written on 5/14/2010 03:30:00 PM by poison_ivy
Well, this is a bit late considering that there are already a lot of HTC Desire reviews on the net but I need to do this to complete my comparisons between the HTC Legend vs. HTC Desire vs. Nexus One vs. Xperia X10. So anyways, here are my thoughts on the HTC Desire.
Design
The HTC Desire really does look like the Nexus One except that the Nexus One has a more velvety back cover. There are physical buttons on the front of the HTC Desire plus the optical directional pad in place of the trackball on the Nexus One. Now here's the first design glitch that I hated on the HTC Desire: the battery cover. As I've mentioned and if you read my other reviews, I hate pop up battery cover because it destroys my fingernails and the Desire has well, a pop up battery cover. I would have preferred the slider battery cover on the Nexus One.
I guess that's just the thing I hate on the Desire, otherwise, everything's okay. The physical keys have a tactile feedback and the optical pad is responsive.
If you read my HTC Legend Review, well, the HTC Desire is is similar in all respects except that there doesn't seem to be any live wallpapers on the Legend.
Because of the bigger screen real estate, it's easier to type messages on the HTC Desire. I had less mistypes on the HTC Desire compared with the other Android handsets I've handled. Also, this is one thing I don't get, when in the SMS inbox, on the Legend, I can't view the thumbnail images of my contacts but on the Desire, Nexus One and Motorola Milestone, I could. I wonder if that feature is turned off on the Legend?
The speakerphone on the Desire is a bit noisy but useable. The Desire has less of a problem finding a signal in my home compared with the HTC Legend. Although the HTC Desire doesn't have noise cancelling as the Nexus One, it does a good job of lessening the background noise when you're talking with someone on the phone, at least, when compared with the Legend.
The HTC Desire is responsive and scrolling is smooth but I really can't see that much difference on the Legend except that the Desire is a bit snappier.
The web browser is again, exceptional. Web pages render fast and smooth plus there's flash although like on the Legend, it's a bit buggy. YouTube videos are played through the YouTube player but other flash videos are played on the browser.
Watching videos is enjoyable because of the large screen real estate but again, I can't help missing DivX compatibility. Audio quality is good and HTC's media player is definitely much better compared with the stock media player on Android. Audio quality is great using the headphones.
The 5 megapixel camera, like on the Legend, is really awesome. I guess the days when I keep bashing HTC's camera on its mobile phones have ended. Sample shots below.
Conclusion
Well, what more can I say. With 1GHz processor and a bigger RAM, it looks like the HTC Desire is top of the heaps in the Android game and with rumors that it will soon get DivX 720p video recording, it looks like the Desire has the best bang for the buck. But with Android 2.2 Froyo on the horizon, one would wonder how long can HTC update the firmware of the Desire. We know that the HTC Hero, the first Android with Sense took a looong time before it could be updated to 2.l because of its custom UI so if you want the latest firmware on your phone better go with a stock Android interface like on the Nexus One.
Posted in
HTC Desire,
HTC smartphones,
mobile phone reviews,
Reviews
|
I was in a user testing session a week ago and we spoke about how often the user uses the internet. She said she used her phone 95% percent of the time to access the net over her laptop... the tester then asked if she had an iPhone.. she just laughed and said it was rubbish and that the only phone to use is the HTC. She specifically noted the desire. Is the browsing that good?