Guy Adams on Technology

I was only nine months into my eighteen month T-Mobile contract which subsidised my HTC Hero but the new generation Android smartphones were too much to wait for. The HTC Desire is one of the top five smartphones in the world today, devices I’m calling super phones. The addition of Android 2.1 meant it was the next logical device for me.

Hardware

For me the thickness of a device is important, my phone lives with me no matter what, its used for business and personal life and needs to not be bulking or difficult to carry, it must be able to slip into a trouser pocket and be unnoticeable until its required. At only 11.9mm thick its slim enough to achieve this and despite it being taller than a Apple iPhone, it feels smaller to hold. The 3.7 inch AMOLED screen feels bigger than it is whilst using the device but doesn’t seem to impact how big the phone feels to touch, probably due to the narrow bezels down the sides of the screen.

The Desire comes packed with a 1Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor which seems to be the standard for these high end super phones now, 576MB RAM, a full 64MB’s more than Google’s own Nexus One from which the Desire was spawned.

The optical joystick doesn’t move at all but instead senses movement over it, this works well for precision movement when editing text or wanting to move the text cursor in just a couple of letters. It makes up for the lack of precision on the capacitive screen which most smartphone manufacturers are favouring these days.

The feel of the device is of quality, as we have come to expect from HTC devices. The matt black finish on the back provides enough grip in your hand for you to be confident its not going to slip and the gently rounded corners enable you to hold it for extended periods without feeling uncomfortable and in both horizontal and vertical positions.

One of my favourite aspects is the screen, the first time you turn on the device your blown away by the crisp vibrant colours of the 480 x 800 pixels display, the difference between it and other devices I have used recently is staggering, it makes the Hero display look bland and flat. Using the capacitive touch screen is a learning curve for anyone who has come from a resistive touch device, for me it wasn’t a problem as the Hero’s screen was also capacitive, the accuracy isn’t such an issue on the Desire as it was on the Hero. The added screen space means you don’t need to be so precise and I have hardly found myself hitting the wrong button by mistake which shows this. The outdoor readability was poor until I discovered the hardware controls for turning up the brightness, three settings provide dim, medium and high settings all of which can be access from one button in the form of a widget.

As I have previously mentioned the camera is a significant improvement from the Hero. There is no lag when you press to take a picture which was a big issue for me on the Hero. The inclusion of an LED flash is very welcomed, it seems to fire twice when taking pictures in low light situations, a pre flash just before the picture then a simultaneous flash with the picture. Its not intrusive and has so far seemed to light a scene enough but not too much, although I would doubt its effectiveness outdoors in open spaces. The LED flash also means that whilst view finding there is not external light which can make for a difficult line up of the perfect photo.

Above are two photos taken using the Desires camera, both taken in an almost pitch black room, the only light source in the room is the TV, the left with the LED flash and the right without out.

My biggest concern before I received the Desire was the battery life, with the 3.7 inch screen and the additional processing power I assumed longevity would be less than the Hero. I’m by no means a light user when it comes to a smartphone, with an Exchange and Gmail account configured for push, two additional IMAP emails accounts being checked every hour, FriendStream checking for new tweets and facebook status updates on an hourly basis, an hours worth of calls, moderate text usage, MeeBo instant messenger connected all day and around 30 minutes of browsing the device still has 10% battery left by the end of the day. This is with the screen brightness set to medium, wifi on and managed by the operating system and location services turned off. The Desire has proven to be better on battery life than the Hero which has surprised me considering the additional horse power.

Software

The Desire comes with Android 2.1, Google’s latest revision of its operating system. Its also loaded with HTC’s Sense user interface which sits on top of the operating system much like TouchFlo did with my previously owned Windows Mobile devices. The user interface is a evolution from its previous incarnation which was present on the HTC Hero, a few nice additions like pinching on the home screen provides a ‘helicopter’ overview of all seven of the panels. Widgets out of box are similar to that of the Hero, with the added inclusion of FriendStream. This aggregates your social network feeds from Twitter, Facebook and Flickr into one big feed meaning you don’t need to check several different applications or websites to catch up.

After the screens impact on you the next thing you notice is the speed of the device, never does it feel like its under load or struggling to copy with a task or application. Its a world apart from any previous device I have owned and in recent comparison with a friends iPhone, browser cold boots, page rendering and zooming were all quicker on the Desire.  This brings me on to browsing which is powered by the WebKit powered Android browser. When browsing the real web you certainly feel like the 1Ghz processor accelerates page rendering times, zoom and text reflowing are quick and very smooth. The browser can handle flash in websites which even includes several popular Facebook games, like ‘Whos got the biggest brain’. That alone shows the ability of the Desire when it comes to the real web, its the closest desktop browsing experience I have come to from this form factor.

I’ve not tested much video playback, mainly YouTube videos which have always been smooth and shown no signs of stutter or lost frames per second.

A video taken on the HTC Desire and uploaded straight to YouTube from the device, I’ve embedded it here but I recommend you watch it on YouTube in its full glory.

Conclusion

Right from day one of using the device I couldn’t help but be surprised by the speed, it really strikes you when compared to other phones and even the likes of the Apple iPhone. Thats a massive statement and its shows this devices presence when every major mobile network provider has signed up to offer the device to their customers. Using the device has been nothing other than a pleasurable experience and its ability to get things done in such a speedy manner certainly has impressed me.

[UPDATE] I’ve posted a follow up to the Desire review on some of the low lights so far with the device.

Tags: Android, HTC, HTC Desire