Earlier this month we ran a competition on our Facebook page where one lucky fan would win themselves a Sim Free HTC Desire. That lucky fan was Mike Grove, and after spending a week with the phone on holiday in Pisa, here’s his review of the HTC Desire!
HTC Desire Winner Mike
HTC Desire Review
Upon opening the packaging and assembling the Desire it seemed to me that the back case is a little flimsy and slightly ill fitting. It feels like it could well snap a tag here and there were you to remove and replace it too often.
On the plus side, the brushed stainless steel buttons feel ‘quality’ under the fingers and the chrome logo and earpiece trim are nice finishing touches. The screen is bright and responsive and the colours are great indoors. Visibility suffers outside and worsens the brighter the sky is.
Camera
View-finding is via the screen and this makes taking pictures on bright sunny days a little awkward. The camera itself, however, is stunning. Pictures are clear and crisp in all lighting conditions. You can touch the screen to focus on any given area in the picture and the camera will adjust all the settings to accommodate that area. This is great for low light shots when the sky is darkening.
Face recognition ensures that the face in the centre or any face you touch on the screen becomes the focal point. That’s fairly standard for dedicated cameras these days but a great added bonus on this phone.
Contrary to popular belief (after a short search on the web for the features of this phone before it arrived) this phone DOES have video. Not only that but you can zoom and the auto focus and face recognition from the camera still work. It’s only mp4 at VGA resolution, but then it is only a phone.
Leaning Tower Of Pisa - Taken using the HTC Desire
Phone
As for the ‘phone’ features, there are some clever little ideas employed in the software that make things easy and help to lessen your learning curve.
A flick down from the top of the phone whilst in the home screen will give you a list of notifications, i.e. missed calls, text messages/emails received. This is a great feature as it means you can just tap the item in the list to go to the relevant event. The led will also blink green until you have done this either directly through the application or through the notification area itself. This is let down a little by the fact that sometimes it takes you to the last text message you had open rather than the one you just received. A little software glitch perhaps as this was not the case for every message.
The reception is great as are the wireless and mobile network connections and everything is easy to set up and switch on/off again should the need arise (like flying, perhaps).
Overall, the volume is lower than I am used to and this can make it easy to miss a call and difficult to hear a conversation if you are in a busy place. The supplied headset all so suffers from lack of bass compared to the standard iPhone headset.
Widgets
Whilst the desktop widgets (one per page up to 6 pages) are quite cool, they are a little unnecessary. You can have a page for, say, your calendar, or a news feed, or your email headers. The widgets themselves have no actual functionality but give a current display of the application that they represent. One or two taps will give you access to that application where you can actually interact with it.
The moving/’sense’itive backgrounds are cool but probably use memory that could be better employed elsewhere.
Email Setup
One thing that’s great about this phone is that it will let you set up your hotmail without a special app. It makes all the correct settings and all you have to do is enter your name and password. – Take note Apple! Adding other email accounts are almost as easy if you have the right server info etc.
Email set up on the HTC Desire
One thing that this phone will do is sync all your Google stuff (via a Google mail account) simultaneously. In fact you really need to have one to get all the benefits of this phones’ capabilities. It took me no time at all to link an existing Google account to a new one and suddenly my Google calendar events were all there in my hand. Wicked!
Another example of a great feature that sticks out for me, is that when you are typing in passwords you can check a little box that enables you to see what you have written after you have finished typing instead of the usual row of stars. This is very helpful for making sure you have typed it correctly and it turns back to stars once you press the enter key anyway. A clever idea methinks.
Apps & Marketplace
Android apps are accessible through the phones’ built in ‘Market’ app. I found that they downloaded and installed well and can be easily dragged to a bin area if you don’t want to keep them. The android app experience itself is a little overwhelming as there are so many. They also tend to look and feel cheaper than the iPhone apps.
One of the apps I did download and keep was the Ringdroid app. I have a particular ringtone that I made myself as a music producer that I always assign to my wife’s phonebook entry. This worked flawlessly and was done in a matter of minutes. You can take any part of any song you happen to have on your phone and assign it as a ringtone there and then. No hassle. Just run the app choose your tune trim the part you want and save it then you will find it in your ringtones list next time you look.
Summary
All in all I would say that I really like this phone. I would not have bought it myself (being a long-time iPhone user) as I have had ‘do all’ phones before that were clunky and slow and unstable – I’m looking at you Nokia! (n series in particular) phones like that were instantly sold on eBay to unsuspecting punters! The iPhone was the first phone of this nature that just worked.
I am reluctant to sell my iPhone – mainly for the iPod side of it, the music app on the Desire is the only area I have not really had time to try. Once I have, I suspect I will keep the Desire and flog the iPhone. I NEVER thought I would have said that. And I certainly will not be buying an iPhone 4 with its dodgy antenna etc. I could be tempted back with the iPhone 5 though perhaps…
Maybe there is an app for synching my iTunes to the desire? I have just heard about Spotify – an iTunes rival? We’ll see…
So there we go, an honest and interesting review on the HTC Desire from Mike. What do you guys think? Have you got the Desire? What are your thoughts? Let us know using the comments section below.