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HTC Desire Review

The HTC Desire is HTC’s answer to Google’s Nexus One which was built by … HTC? This is confusing. HTC now builds phones for both itself and the competition. What more could a company want? It is very similar to the Nexus One in terms of both design and features. It will be available worldwide soon.

HTC Desire Specifications:

  • Dimensions: 119 x 60 x 11.9 mm
  • Weight: 135 g
  • Display: 3.7 inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen, 480 x 800 pixels
  • OS: Android 2.1 (Eclair)
  • Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 1 GHz
  • RAM: 576 MB RAM
  • ROM: 512 MB ROM
  • Connectivity: GPRS, EDGE, 3G HSDPA
  • WLAN: Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g
  • Bluetooth: Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP
  • Camera: 5 MP camera, 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash
  • GPS: GPS with A-GPS support
  • Battery: Li-Ion 1400 mAh

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Design:

The HTC Desire has a superb minimalist design with excellent build quality. It is not as attractive as the HTC Legend though. The front face is dominated by the 3.7 inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen and the optical trackpad, and the Home, Menu, Back and Search keys. On the top there is the audio jack and the power key. On the left lies the volume rocker. The mircoUSB port is on the bottom. On the back is the 5 MP camera and the LED flash.

Display:

The HTC Desire has a 3.7 inch AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels. It supports 16M colors. The display quality is brilliant as expected. The Sense UI looks amazing on the AMOLED display. The screen is very responsive even to the slightest touches. The sunlight legibility isn’t very good though.

OS and UI:

The HTC Desire comes with Android 2.1 (Eclair) and the HTC Sense UI. It will most likely be upgraded to Android 2.2 when it comes out. The interface is very fast and responsive mainly due to the powerful hardware – The Desire has a Snapdragon 1 GHZ processor and 576 MB RAM, ideal for multitasking.

Camera:

It has a 5 MP camera with autofocus and flash capable of taking shots at the maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels. The camera interface is standard with a lot of customizable settings like ISO, aspect ratio, white balance etc. It can record decent quality WVGA videos at 15 FPS.

Multimedia:

It has the standard image gallery where you can view your images and arrange them. It also has Facebook and Flickr integration. The image gallery also supports multitouch gestures. The video player can play 3GP and MP4 files directly. However you can view DivX and Xvid videos with 3rd party video applications from the Android Market. The music player offers all the standard features like Albums, Playlists etc and comes with a revamped user interface. The audio quality is pretty good. It also comes with an FM radio with RDS.

Connectivity and Other Stuff:

It comes packed with all the standard connectivity features like GPRS, EDGE, 3G HSDPA, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP. The Webkit based browser supports Flash. It also has a GPS receiver with A-GPS. The Android Market now has more than 50,000 apps which makes the HTC Desire a very good option if you want an Android phone.

Rating: 3.5/5