HTC Desire Phone Review

hudhee | Jun 1, 2010 |

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Pros

The pros:

Huge WVGA 3.7-inch display, compact and sleek form factor, newest Android OS 2.1, lots of high-end features, higly responsive 1GHz processor and spacious 576MB RAM.

Cons

The cons:

Less readable in direct sunlight compared to LCD-based screen, average battery life, microSDHC slot under battery.

Full Review

Google's Nexus One has been a favorite gadget for quite some time due to its great operating system Android 2.0. It is made by renowned Taiwanese phone maker, HTC. But in Feb 2010 at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, HTC introduced a variant of Google's Nexus One with some significant improvements. Consequently, most probably its price tag will be higher. Put aside that price issue for a while and now let's take a look at this baby to find out whether it worth your money.

The Desire has a form factor of bar, just like Nexus One, and it measures 119x60x11.9 mm and weigh 135g. The feel is solid, quite compact but still light.

The face of it has a 800x480 (WVGA) 3.7-inch AMOLED screen. And it occupies almost all front real estate of the phone. The Desire is one of the first few phones from HTC that are given AMOLED screen, considering that this is HTC's flagship for Android line-up. The quality of the screen surely beats any LCD-based screen. So, you get one good reason here, Screen clarity.

Though there have been serious concerns that AMOLED screens are hardly readable under direct sunlight, but I still found text were readable, by using maximum brightness setting. Anyway, in the above situation, you should not compare it with other product that uses great LCD like BlackBerry Onyx.

The case of the Desire is mostly made from soft-touch plastic while a bezel around the screen has a metallic finish. As mentioned above, this handset feels solid in the hand and the dark solid color gives a business looks to this phone.

The layout of the buttons is better than Nexus One. It has four standard Android buttons below the screen – Home, Menu, Back and Search – and other two additional buttons on each side of optical navigation pad while Nexus One has some keys in a row just above the trackball. While some people still favor Nexus One design due to its simpler front façade design, I myself prefer Desire due to practical reason.

Other buttons are as standard as a phone should be: volume control, power toggle, audio port (3.5mm) and micro-USB port. One inconvenience is a microSDHC slot which is located under battery so you need to remove battery first to change it.

The complete specs:

Phone type : Candy bar

Operating system : Android

Dimensions (H x W x D) : 119 x 60 x 11.9 mm

Weight : 135g

Expansion slot(s) : microSDHC

Additional functions : Support for Microsoft Exchange

GSM frequency bands : Quadband

Connectivity options : 3G, A-GPS, GPS, EDGE, GPRS, HSDPA, HSUPA, microUSB, Bluetooth, A2DP, AVRCP, WLAN

Display size : 3.7-inch screen

Display resolution : WVGA

Display type : OLED

Touchscreen : Yes

Keypad : None

Max. standby time (in hours) : 360 hours

Battery capacity : 1400 mAh

Max. talktime (in hours) : 6.7 hours talktime

Main processor speed : 1000 MHz

ROM : 512 MB

RAM : 576 MB

Maximum camera resolution : 5 megapixels

Imaging features : Onboard flash, Autofocus, LED

Sound features : MP3 playback, WMA playback, Stereo sound, FM radio, Voice recording, Built-in speakers

Audio jack type : 3.5mm

Loaded with lots of features and options for connectivity, Desire's battery life will be our concern. After using about a week, I can sum up that it lasts average 1.5 days in a quite intensive usage (auto-sync with one email, manual sync with two emails, some text messaging, some phone calls, taking few pictures and some frequent internet browsings)

The phone reception was good, clear for me and the other party. One thing missing from Nexus One is Desire does not have noise-cancellation feature. So, you may prefer Nexus One if your working environment is somehow noisy.

The speed of the processor is great since it uses the 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and 576MB of RAM. Multi tasking could run smoothly and opening and closing applications were done without problem.

In Closing

The verdict is if you want the latest and greatest Android smartphone on the market then you should take HTC Desire since it meets all ultimate requirements from a phone. It surely passes Nexus One in overall value. I don't know how much its price tag will be, but I think it would go in range of US$600 – 700. But with that price tag, this phone will still be a value for your money. So, go get it once it is available.