HTC have made Nexus One, which is Google’s own mobile and is only sold via the Web. The Nexus was the first phone to be released with the latest version of Android, (called 2.1). Desire also comes with 2.1, but HTC have added their own Sense interface on top of Google’s operating system.
HTC Desire Fact Box:
Dimensions: 119mm x 60mm x 11.9 mm
Weight: 135 grams
Operating System: Android 2.1 (Eclair) with HTC Sense
Screen: 3.7 ” AMOLED display, 480 x 800 pixels
Camera: 5 megapixels with flash, autofocus, image stabilization, face recognition and touch focus.
Processor: 1GHz Snapdragon
Battery: 440 min talk time, 560 hours standby time
Memory: 512 MB on the phone, memory card slot (micro-sd up to 32GB)
WLAN: 802.11 with 54 Mbps speed
Included HTC widgets: Bookmarks, Calendar, Clock, Footprints, Friends Stream, Mail, Messages, Music, News, People, Photo Album, Photo Frame, Search, Settings, Stocks, Twitter, Weather
Music: FM radio and media player. 3.5mm headphone jack.
The technical specifications are very similar to the Nexus One, but on the external design, they differ. The HTC Desire has physical buttons to control the phone. The trackball has been exchanged for a button with an optical sensor. Texters take note : You appreciate this difference / find it most useful when you type text and have to skip forward or backward.
HTC Desire Contract Deals
The HTC Desire is now live at http://threestore.three.co.uk, also look at T-Mobile or Vodafone who have some great offers right now.
The sound quality and consistency was very good when we tested with bluetooth handsfree. Speaking of bluetooth the HTC Desire now also supports sending files from your phone without third-party software.
The Music player can sort by artist, album, playlist, all songs, genres and composers. It’s possible to synch the phone with iTunes and transfer all information across.
Tests of video on the HTC Desire look very good on the big screen which boasts 16 million colours. Sound obviously works best with headphones and the 3.5mm jack mean you can use your standard / preferred headphones.
HTC Sense will give you a start-up screen with a small menu at the bottom where you can get directly to the call menu, open the menu of all programs or add new shortcuts, or widgets. You can also hold the Home button to bring up a helicopter view of screens.
There are different themes for the home screen which you can choose from. You can set a home screen layout for leisure and one for the job. Less Facebook, and more calendar maybe, when you walk into the office !
The browser feels very good and there is no problem to surf the usual full-sized pages. It is not as fast as an average, but the page is aligned neatly and the scrolling is intuitive much like the web browsing experience on the iPod Touch / iPhone. Speaking of which, Desire also has full support for multitouch, using multiple fingers to adjust the picture. It allows you to zoom in and out on web pages, photo galleries and when you read SMS by pinch with two fingers across the screen.
HTC Desire Versus Nexus One
If you are looking for a comparison with the Nexus One. Besides the buttons, there is no differences in HTC’s Sense, which makes it different to the Nexus. We have tested both phones, and in terms of speed we cannot see any differences. If you select Nexus, you will surely get faster updates of the Android Operating system since HTC will take a while to transform it into his own Sense. But one of the main differences today, is Desires superb integration with contacts and photos from Facebook and Flickr.
A difference in hardware is that you get an FM radio in Desire. With a pair of headphones connected to the antenna, you can then listen to regular radio without needing to be connected to the internet which is a good bonus for some people.
The overall feeling is that the HTC Desire is a really fast phone. Downloads and installs go quickly, you are rarely put on any waiting lists. Sensor button is perhaps not clear as a bell, but we would rather have a functioning sensor than a trackball that is prone to breaking.
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I love this phone !
Got a HTC Desire S, gets a lot of use especially since I added the spotify app.
Would have given it a 5 star rating but the battery life time is a bit less than I would ideally want.
Rob says
The HTC Desire is now live at http://threestore.three.co.uk