HTC Desire

An excellent Android smartphone

 

 

 

Lovely design and build, brilliant display, excellent web browser, superb integration with social networking services, Sense UI is fantastic

Phone heats up while using, display is a fingerprint magnet, earpiece is too small and difficult to hear at times, using optical trackpad to click pictures is inconvenient, poor FM radio reception, unimpressive battery life

Take the Google Nexus One, remove the Google branding and put the HTC logo and then slap on the Sense UI, and what you get is the HTC Desire. Beneath the slightly modified design both the phones run identical hardware. Google never thought of launching the Nexus One in India for reasons best known to them. Till now if you wanted a Nexus One the only way to get it was in the gray market. But now, thanks to the launch of the HTC Desire in India, you can get what is virtually the same handset through official channels.

The launch of the Desire is also quite timely; Google recently announced that it will no longer sell the Nexus One to consumers. We have already reviewed the Nexus One a few months back when we got a chance to use the handset. Now we will see how good the new Desire is, and more importantly, how it stacks up against the fierce competition for the title of the best Android phone.


Bundle

• HTC Desire
• Battery
• Charger
• USB cable
• Stereo Headset
• microSD card
• Quick start quide
• Safety and regulatory guide

The bundle of the HTC Desire lacks one key element that I believe every high-end mobile phone must come with: a carry case. The Nexus One did and it was pretty nice with an Android logo on it. I wonder why HTC did not see fit to include one with the Desire.

Desire & Construction

I know I've said it several times before but I will say it again; I'm a big fan of HTC's design. Apart from Apple, they are the only ones who can design truly beautiful phones. All their phones have this understated elegance and a design that can stand the test of time. The design of the Desire is from the same school of thought. Simple clean lines, matte surfaces and a lack of any shiny bits gives it a very low profile but an attractive look. Of course this is all subjective, so your opinion may differ from mine. But I must say it looks a lot better in real life than it does in photographs. I would also say I prefer its looks to that of the Nexus One.

One look at the front and you can tell that the display has been given number one priority. Everything has been moved out of the way. The controls on the bottom have been moved as close to the edge as possible. The earpiece on the top is barely noticeable. I like the idea behind this design, something that Apple pioneered, where the display is given more prominence and everything else is moved out of the way. When you have a display this big, why do you need buttons that will only replicate the functionality that the display can handle?

Unfortunately, you need buttons. At least the current version of Android requires buttons. So even though HTC has given prominence to the display over the buttons this has resulted in the buttons being pushed a bit too far south for comfort. It's not too bad but you do have to shuffle the phone in your hand a bit too much when operating the buttons, especially when you have pulled the phone down for operating the top of the phone's display. I guess now we all know why Apple retained the 3.5" display size on the iPhone.

The buttons themselves are pretty good. I do prefer them to have touch operated buttons below the display, as found on phones like the Nexus One or the Motorola MILESTONE. The buttons on the Desire have a nice solid feel to them. In the middle you will see that HTC has replaced the trackball of the Nexus One with the optical trackpad on the Desire. The trackpad is also clickable, so you press down on it to select something, although the only time I found myself using that function was while taking pictures with the camera.

The Desire lacks a dedicated camera shutter button like other HTC phones and has to rely on the trackpad to do the clicking. The trackball on the Nexus One had the ability to glow whenever you received a notification. On the Desire, HTC has used an LED above the display to do the same.

I like HTC's choice of materials for the phone. The display is surrounded by a metal rim, which I'm assuming is Teflon coated, like it was on the Nexus One. The rest of the phone is covered by this rubbery textured matte plastic, which gives a nice grip but also has a tendency to pickup smudges from your hands. The Desire comes in only one color option and that's brown, which brings back memories of the HTC Hero that came in a similar color option. Another thing that reminds me of the Hero is the subtle chin below the display. Although it is not as pronounced as it used to be on older HTC phones, it's still visible enough to remind you that this is still an HTC Android phone.

Going around the sides you will find few things to talk about. On the left is the longish volume control button, which is similar to volume control buttons on other HTC phones. Although I like the design, the problem with having a rather large button is that more often than not you end up pressing it unintentionally. The same thing happens - to some extent - with the power button on top. You often end up pressing it when you are trying to slide down the phone in your front pocket. The 3.5mm headphone jack is on the top as well.

 

Display

The display on the HTC Desire is 3.7-inch, 800 x 480 pixel, SLCD. The new Desire no longer comes with the AMOLED display since HTC is currently facing a shortage of those. Whether they would switch back to AMOLED when the situation is sorted is unknown but for now every Desire is being sold with an SLCD.

So what is an 'S'LCD, you ask? Well, in case you haven't figured it out already, the 'S' in SLCD stands for 'Super'. The SLCDs utilize an IPS panel instead of the usual TN panels found on almost every other phone with an LCD. The advantages of IPS panels over TN panels are the wider viewing angles and better color reproduction.

The display on the Desire looks absolutely fabulous. I haven't seen the AMOLED version, but if it is anything like the one on the Nexus One, then I prefer the SLCD version. The colors on the SLCD look far more natural compared to the over saturated ones on the AMOLED. The AMOLED does look bit more vibrant in comparison though, which some people will find more appealing than the SLCD. When you consider viewing angles, the SLCD is on par with the AMOLED with some stunning viewing angles typical for IPS panels. If HTC had reduced the distance between the actual display and protective glass on top they could have been even better.

When seen outdoors, the SLCD washes out considerably but never did I find it washing out completely. No matter how much light was falling on it the display was still readable. The same, however, could not be said about the AMOLED display. If given a choice I would choose to go for the SLCD rather than the AMOLED, thanks to its superior outdoor performance, natural colors and excellent viewing angles that are on par with those of the AMOLED displays.

The biggest problem with the display, however, is that it is a fingerprint magnet. There doesn't seem to be any kind of coating on the display to prevent the accumulation of fingerprints. After a short while of using the phone the display gets completely covered with fingerprints. Although it is not much of a problem indoors but outdoors you can hardly read the display through all the smudges. Thankfully I found that cleaning the prints off the display was fairly easy and one swipe on your shirt or trousers could take care of most of them. Whether the screen is scratch resistant or not is yet unknown but during the time I was using it, the screen did not pickup any scratches, even when I vigorously rubbed it to clean the fingerprints. 

 

UI & Applications

When the Desire was launched it came with Android 2.1. Indians, however, are lucky as the Desire that is launched here comes with Android 2.2 Froyo. Not that you cannot upgrade an old Desire to 2.2 but it's nice that it comes pre-installed. For those who don't know, Android 2.2 brings a host of improvements over 2.1, which includes faster performance, especially in the web browser, ability to install applications on the memory card (application dependent), ability to use the handset as a Wi-Fi hotspot, Adobe Flash 10.1 support, enhanced search, 'Update All' option in the Market, and Cloud to Device Messaging framework, which would allow external Web services to send push notifications over the air to Android devices, among other things.

But this is not a Google phone. This is an HTC phone, which means it comes with Sense UI installed on top of the Android OS. Now I know some people hate having a custom skin on their Android phones and would rather prefer to run the standard OS. However, when it comes to Sense UI, I'm willing to keep my feelings for custom skins aside for a while because it is simply amazing. Of all the custom skins that I have seen on Android so far, HTC's implementation is by far the best. It's clear they have worked very hard on it and some of the applications such as the music player, clock, etc. are actually better than what Froyo comes with by default.

I especially love how HTC has integrated social networking services such as Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, etc. into the interface. All you have to do is go into the settings and sign into the services and then the phone automatically starts pulling your data from these services and integrates it into the phone. For example, your contacts from Facebook will automatically be added in the phonebook. The birthdays of your friends on Facebook will be added in the Calendar application. You can also see your friend's photos from Facebook or Flickr directly from within the Gallery application.

You can also have the news application pulling in the RSS feeds from your favorite websites. An average user, who doesn't know the difference between a custom skin and the standard version of Android is likely to prefer what HTC has done here. By default Android just doesn't offer the same level integration with other services the way Sense UI does.

The Desire also comes with certain applications that are not found in the standard version of Froyo. For example, there is a Flashlight app, which makes use of the LED flash on the back to be used as a flashlight. It gives you three levels of intensity and you can also let it flash in SOS pattern in case you are stuck somewhere; very useful. Then there is an FM radio, something that's very rare in the Android world. Then there is Footprints and Friend Stream.

The former lets you take pictures of where you go and make a diary of sorts with notes on each picture. The latter takes posts from your Twitter and Facebook and puts them in one timeline for you to peruse. There is also an app called 'App Share' that lets you send applications that are on your device to another Android phone. Like other HTC Android phones, the Desire also supports Java applications, which are stored in the app called 'Java'.

With the introduction of Froyo, you can now also install applications on your memory card. However, this functionality depends on that application and you cannot install just any application on the memory card. Applications that support this functionality automatically install on the memory card when you download them.

In Froyo, you can go to the application manager and see which applications have been installed on the memory card. Hopefully, a lot more applications will include the ability to install over the memory card in their future versions because the Desire only has 512MB of built-in memory, which won't last too long if you install a lot of applications.   

The HTC Desire runs on a 1GHz Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon processor and has 576MB of RAM. With such powerful hardware under the hood, it is no surprise that the phone is very fast. The interface is generally very smooth and very rarely will you see any kind of lag or slowdown. Having said that it cannot match the iPhone 4 when it comes to smoothness of the interface, which despite the higher resolution display, runs at a buttery smooth framerate. The large amount of RAM is useful when loading large web pages or when running multiple applications at the same time. 

Connectivity

The HTC Desire is a quad band GSM handset. It also supports HSDPA and HSUPA services as well as GPRS and EDGE Class 10. Other connectivity features include Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR and A-GPS. It also includes a digital compass to assist the A-GPS in certain applications. The call quality and network reception was good and a dedicated mic for noise cancellation wasn't missed. There is one major issue though with the earpiece. Since it is so small, it is easy to cover it with your ear. And if you do that, you won't be able to hear a thing. You need to hold the phone in a way so that the earpiece is pointing directly towards the inside of your ear.

The Desire comes with three messaging applications. The first one is for SMS and MMS and the other two are for emails. One of them is a GMail app and hence can only be used for GMails. The other is a generic mail app that you can configure with any other email service. As far as typing is concerned, you get a choice of three keyboards by default to be used in portrait mode. One is a full QWERTY keypad, one is a standard phone keypad and one is a combination of both, which reminds one of the SureType keypads on BlackBerry phones. The last two keypads have the option of a predictive text input, so you don't have to press individual key multiple times. All keypads get an auto-correct mechanism, which automatically suggests you options as you type. If you misspell a word it can also automatically correct it.

It's also pretty accurate and works well. In landscape mode, you only get the option of the full QWERTY keypad. Since the display on the Desire is pretty large and auto-correct works well, typing is not a problem on the phone. Having said that I preferred to use Swype keyboard; not because it was faster but because it was more convenient.

I have always liked the web browser on the Android but the one on the Froyo is just amazing. Not that it adds more features but just the speed at which it operates is mind-bending. Connected to our 16Mbps office Internet connection over Wi-Fi, the browser blazed through webpages in a way that would leave Internet Explorer 8 scratching its head. And it's not just about speed but how well it renders the pages, which look exactly as they would on a computer.

Pinch to zoom is fully supported and works splendidly. You can also double tap on the screen to zoom in on a particular potion. The browser automatically fits the text to fit the width of the page. This does tend to affect the layout of the page at times. Older Android browsers had the option to turn this feature off, but I could not find it on the Desire.

One grouse I had with the browser on the Desire was that it did not allow more than four windows to be open at a time. I'm assuming this is done to prevent people from opening many windows and then slowing the phone down but I feel four is too small a number and it should have been at least six.

Now a major addition to the browser is Adobe Flash 10.1 support. This is full-blown version, the real deal and not the Flash lite that many phones had before. But before you get all excited, let me tell you all is not rosy. The Flash performance has improved compared to older mobile devices but not to the level where you can compare it with Flash performance on desktop computers. Let me tell you what the problems are. First of all it tends to make the browser slower. Page loading takes longer than usual since the browser is still loading the Flash content even though everything else has finished loading. It also makes scrolling a bit sluggish and whenever you are scrolling past a Flash element on the page, you can see the browser noticeably slow down a bit.

The second problem comes with the way websites are designed. Almost all the Flash content on the web has been designed for computers where the means of input are keyboard and more importantly mouse. You will often find drop down lists and items that require you to hover over them with the mouse pointer to see additional options. You cannot do that with a touchscreen. There is no way to hover with a touchscreen. Online Flash games, which again require mouse inputs, load perfectly on the browser, but there is no way you can control them. So even though you have means of loading the content now, there is still no way you can make use of it.

To be honest, when in the time I was using the phone, I kept the Flash plugin disabled. I am not looking for the full web experience when browsing on a mobile device. I don't really care if a particular video on the page does not load. If I do want to watch it and if it is a YouTube video (and chances are that it will be) then I can just click on it and watch it in the YouTube player. It's not necessary that I must watch it on the browser. In fact it's better to watch it in the player, as it looks much better. A lot of time, most of the Flash content on webpages are just ads. I don't want to spend extra time and resources waiting for the ads to load; I can very well live without them.

Don't get me wrong. I don't have anything against Flash. I'm not even saying that it is not suitable for mobile platform. But the problem is that the current web content is not ready for consumption on mobile. Most of the content has been optimized for use on a computer and fails miserably when accessed from a mobile device. And if they had to redo it for a mobile platform, I'm assuming most developers would go for HTML5, which is an open standard and works beautifully on all the new browsers without the need for a plugin than go for Flash, which is proprietary and requires a plugin. 

Multimedia

Camera

The HTC Desire has a 5 megapixel with autofocus and LED flash. Like I said, the lens does not have a cover, so it can get damaged pretty badly. Secondly, and more annoyingly, there is no shutter button. This means you have to rely on the optical trackpad to take pictures. Considering the location of the trackpad, it becomes highly inconvenient to use it as a shutter button. You often tend to shake the camera, which may result in blurry pictures. HTC should have at least placed an on-screen button like on the iPhone, which would have been easier to use.

The camera tends to focus automatically if you keep the camera stationary for a while and will refocus if you move it. You can disable this feature if you want to. You can also touch anywhere on the screen and tell the camera to focus at that particular point. It does not have dedicated macro mode, which is a shame.

I had bit of a problem with the focusing on the Desire. It fails to focus on smaller objects on the screen and unless the subject occupies a sufficient portion of the viewfinder or if the background is particularly featureless, the subject will be out of focus. As you can see with the shot below, the small flower is out of focus but the leaves behind are perfectly in focus. What's worse is that the camera actually tells you that it has focused on the subject, complete with a green reticule and sound, even when it hasn't. If you are outdoors in bright sunlight, you will often assume that the camera has indeed focused since you won't be able to see the display clearly.

As far as the camera quality is concerned, I liked the colors, which looked natural and pleasing. As far as the details were concerned, I wasn't quite as impressed. They looked slightly smeared, quite likely the work of the noise reduction algorithm, which does its job well but takes away some of the details from the images. Overall image quality is quite decent but nothing great.

With the Froyo update, the Desire has also gained the ability to record videos in 720p resolution. Video quality was strictly average. It looks great on the phone but not so much on the computer screen. At times it tends to get a bit jerky for no apparent reason

Music Playback

The default music player on Android is a bit sad and Froyo hasn't done anything to change that. So it's good that HTC has seen it fit to include their own music player on the Desire. Although it does not bring much in terms of features, the interface is definitely an improvement. HTC has skipped the equalizer presets though, which is strange, as their Windows Mobile phones do come with those.

The audio quality of the phone is excellent and there isn't anything to complain about there. The phone can also go pretty loud. The bundled headset has playback controls built into it but fails to deliver in terms of audio quality and is uncomfortable to boot. The loudspeaker on the phone is neither very loud nor has particularly great audio quality.

The Desire also comes with an FM radio. The application is well designed but unfortunately the reception strength of the phone is very poor. I compared it side by side with a Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 mini pro and a Philips GoGear player, and while both the X10 and the GoGear managed to get proper sound, the Desire failed to pickup any signal at all. Unless you are outdoor and standing in an open area you will mostly never get proper stereo sound out of any radio station.


Images and Video

I like the gallery on the HTC Sense. More than the way the display the pictures that are stored on the phone itself, I like how it also pulls in images from your Facebook and Flickr friends. Of course, pinch to zoom is supported and you can swipe to scroll between images. You can also instantly upload any image in your gallery to any of the social networking websites using built-in or third party applications or send the file over Bluetooth.

The video player is far from impressive. It does not play DivX or Xvid files by default and even if you encode the files in the format the player understands the videos still stutter a bit and do not play smoothly. It's better to install something like RockPlayer, which plays these formats and plays them well.

Battery Life

The HTC Desire has a 1400 mAh Li-Ion battery. Considering the kind of features the phone has, the battery should have been bit larger as clearly it wasn't sufficient to provide the phone with even one day of battery life. If you use the phone the way it is supposed to be it won't even last six hours on a single charge. On weekdays when I don't use my phone often I could make do with charging the phone every night, but on weekends when I use my phone a lot for web browsing, checking mails, using Twitter and Facebook and for clicking photographs I have to charge the phone twice at least. And I'm not even talking about 3G, Wi-Fi or GPS usage here. Clearly the battery technology needs to step up with the needs of modern smartphones or we will often find ourselves charging our smartphones more than using them.

Competition

The Desire is a bit late to the party in India, which means it is against some stiff competition. Here are some of the phones it goes against:

Samsung Galaxy S
 

The Samsung Galaxy S is the current leader of high-end Android phones. It has almost everything one could ask for. A stunning 4-inch high resolution display, powerful hardware and excellent multimedia performance. Its only Achilles' heel is that it lacks an LED flash and for now is running on Android 2.1. But the latter will soon be taken care of with a 2.2 update that's on its way. It does offer a few more benefits over the Desire but at the same time it is also much bigger, which some people may not like. It's also more expensive.


Sony Ericsson Xperia X10
 

A beautiful design, massive display, superb camera and a powerful hardware, but cursed with an outdated operating system since launch, the X10, unfortunately, got less attention than it should have. But come October and it too will be getting a 2.1 update and 720p video recording, which should bring it up to pace with the competition. If camera performance matters most then the X10 should be the one to consider.


Motorola MILESTONE XT720

 

Although the hardware is not in the same league as the other phones here, the XT720 does pack in an 8 megapixel camera with a Xenon flash, a rarity these days on mobile phone. Besides it also has 720p video recording and HDMI output for watching them directly on the big screen. However, we haven't reviewed the XT720 yet, so we cannot say how good the camera really is. But looking at Motorola's track record with phones like the ZN5, I am assuming it is going to be really good. Also, it is a bit cheaper than the other phones here as well.


Motorola MILESTONE
 

A bit old now and the hardware is clearly not on par with the other phones here, but the MILESTONE comes with a full physical QWERTY keypad, something that every other phone here lacks. If that's something that matters to you then you can choose to go for the MILESTONE. Not to mention the fact that it is a bit cheaper than the others here as well. 


Verdict

The HTC Desire is priced at Rs. 26,000. Overall it is an excellent device. It looks and feels great, the display is brilliant and I loved the browser and the general speed of the interface. None of the flaws with the device are deal breakers. The battery life is a bit of a bummer, but to be honest that's the case with almost every smartphone these days.

Before the Desire came out I was convinced that the Galaxy S is the best Android smartphone that you can you buy, but now I'm not so sure. Both the Galaxy S and the Desire have their ups and downs and in the final tally get almost identical points.

The Samsung's display is more attractive and the multimedia performance is better but the Desire has a richer look and feel and doesn't feel like a slate as the Galaxy S does. It also has an LED flash, which the Galaxy S crucially lacks. I also prefer HTC's Sense UI over Samsung's TouchWiz interface. Not to mention the fact that the Desire is bit cheaper as well.

In the end I guess it boils down to personal preference and what you want in your phone and what you are willing to sacrifice. I personally like the Galaxy S because it can playback all my AVI and MKV files without me having to encode them for the device and I don't really care about a flash on a phone. But I also know people who have purchased the Desire because they liked the smaller design and look and feel of the phone over the Galaxy S. So now it's up to you to decide. Do note that you can't really go wrong with these phones as they both represent the best that Android currently has to offer.