HTC Desire
Living up to its name?
Review Much has been made of the fact that the HTC Desire is really Google's much-touted Nexus One under the hood. But, truth be told, despite HTC's considerably lower profile among the general public, the Desire has several features that mark it out as superior not just to Google's smart phone debut, but also to the vast majority of smartphones available on planet earth.
Tasty Éclair: HTC's Desire
Following hard on the heels of the HTC Legend, the Desire is at first glance a more conventional looking handset. That's no bad thing though – it doesn't have that rather pointless chin, and instead uses the space afforded by its 119 x 60 x 12mm and 135g size to cram in more screen acreage. Despite the biggish numbers, its relative thinness means it feels fairly modest in the pocket.
Beneath the screen are separate home and menu keys, a combined back and full search button (it will offer search results for the phone and for the web) and a small optical track pad with a nicely tactile pressing action. These are sturdy hard buttons by the way, rather than the Nexus One's touch-sensitive strip and trackball.
The sides are barren save for HTC's trademark sliver of a volume rocker, with a micro USB power/sync slot on the bottom and 3.5mm headphone jack and power/standby button on top. It's sturdily put together and the back is of non-slip rubberised plastic with camera lens, small LED flash and a loudspeaker grille all near the top. Overall, it feels sturdy and solid, and even gets the edge on the Legend by not having a sharp edge around the casing, so it feels a little bit smoother against the ear.
The 3.7in OLED screen offers 480 x 800 pixels and looks superb. Which would be fine on its own, except that its capacitive responsiveness makes it even better, accurately distinguishing between brushes and presses and offering multi-touch pinch to zoom too. The Desire comes with the latest incarnation of HTC's justly praised Sense user interface, which runs on top of the Android 2.1 (Éclair) operating system and, besides the track pad, is the biggest distinction between the Desire and the Nexus One.
The Sense UI adds further enhancements to the Android experience
There are seven home pages rather than the usual three (or the Nexus' five), each of which can be populated with standard Android widgets plus a few specials from HTC. When you pinch any of the homepages inwards you get all seven in one, which can help if you've forgotten what you've put where. It's easy enough to brush between home pages in any case.
COMMENTS
iTunes sold me on Android
The fact that iTunes is a prereq for the iPhone is the reason I've not bought one. Unless you use a single PC and have the patience of a saint and don't see the need for backups then iTunes is a horribly broken mess.
Hate to think how much it fails when you try and use two devices (iPod/iPhone) on the same PC.
So yeah, not being forced to use iTunes is a big selling point for Android :)
I want one
I want one
I want one
I want one
I want one
I want one
I want one
I want one
I want one
I want one
OK?
Re alternative viewpoint
"* Placing your cursor in a text box is hellish, I know Google can't copy Apple's little spy-glass but they desperately need something better than trying to hit the one pixel between the last letter in a text box and the edge of the box. Maybe just allow me to run my finger along the box to move the cursor. Seriously; anyone who's got a Desire, try using the browser to google for a long search term and then try to remove the last word. you're a better man than me if you don't want to snap your phone in half before you give up and just type the whole damned thing again)."
Use the optical joystick. It's easy.
"* The 'all apps' list is just that, all your apps, in alphabetical order. No ability to sort, create folders or make the list tidy in anyway, so my list currently exists of game, game, ebook reader, file manager, game, app, app, etc, etc. UGLY, and lots and lots and lots of scrolling every bloody time!"
Er, are you nuts? The Desire has 7 desktops you can scroll or flick between to organise games and apps. Put all your most commonly used apps and functions on the desktops, and leave the applications list for stuff you only use occasionally. If you don't want to use the apps menu at all then create folders on the desktop (long press, create folder) and organise your programs that way.
Android interface is vastly superior to the iPhone's dump-all-icons-on-the-desktop approach.
"* No Divx / Xvid support. There are 3rd party apps but they're really bad, I created a video that was the screen's native res and tried playing on yxflash and it stuttered all the way when reading from my class 6 sdhc card."
It's coming later this year, HTC said they didn't want to include it before it was ready.
"* The app store expects you to put your card details in every time, even though it uses Google Checkout. Why the hell can't I just use my Checkout account? If it was this fiddly to buy apps on iPhone the app store would never have made any money."
Not had this problem. Setup Google Checkout with the same account linked to my phone and it works just fine.
"* Considering how amazing the screen is, why the hell does the tinny little speaker sound like listing to someone else's earbud from across the room. the iPhone's little speaker was never great but at least you could comfortably watch iPlayer for more than a few minutes without wanting to stuff cotton wool in your ears. And my £50 Sennheisers hiss when connected."
Haven't noticed any hiss on my Sennheiser's. Perhaps you're expecting too much from a phone speaker.
"* Lastly, the 3G signal is pants, There's several places in my day where I used to use 3G for browsing or checking email on my iPhone, now I can only get signal in one of them and only in a pretty specific spot (read: standing still in the middle of a field, if I walk 10 steps I'm back to gprs)."
No problem here. Maybe a network issue.
Sounds like a smartphone may be a bit complicated for you.
This may be the one
This may be the one that will prise my beloved 2G iPhone from my hands! HTC are becoming (IMO) one of the best handset manufactures. Just need to get weaned off my apple technology
@ryan
After breaking my iphone I opted for an android rather than get a new iphone was because of iTunes.
It is such a horrible bloated piece of control crap - why so may people adore the fruit company that came up with that mess I will never know.
