HTC Desire review

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Verdict:

A beautiful and powerful phone, however the Desire can't rival the iPhone's build quality, and HTC's Sense software has some annoying quirks

Review Date: 22 Apr 2010

Price when reviewed: £387

Supplier: http://www.handtec.co.uk

Reviewed By: Barry de la Rosa

Our Rating 4 stars out of 5

User Rating

You also have access to the Android Market, with thousands of apps at your disposal. The only app installed by T-Mobile on our review sample was the trial version of QuickOffice, which lets you view Office and PDF files, but for editing you're better off using the mobile version of Google Docs using the Webkit browser.

The 5-megapixel camera has a flash, but low-light performance is typically poor, and no substitute for a proper digital camera. However, the screen is great for browsing photos, or watching video; the AMOLED display has vibrant colours and superb contrast. There's a slight controversy regarding its exact pixel count, as it uses a slightly different pixel pattern to ordinary LCD panels, but there's no doubting its image quality in the flesh.

We were pleasantly surprised by the Desire's battery life of almost 20 hours in our light usage test; with WiFi, 3G and GPS turned on, however, you'll get far less time between charges, so daily overnight charging is still recommended (as it is for all android smartphones and iPhones).

There's no doubt the Desire is a powerful and beautiful device, and HTC's Sense software adds many useful features to Android. However, its build quality isn't up to the iPhone's standard, and Sense's inability to work in landscape mode, plus its frustrating copy and paste mechanism, are annoying. The HTC Legend is far sturdier and much better value, while the iPhone is still the pinnacle of design and build quality.

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User comments

gee......are you an apple fanboy by any chance? I'm pretty sure the title was about reviewing the desire, not comparing it to the ageing iphone. Does iphone do multi-touch? btw, I have an iphone 3gs, which I really like, but next month im gonna get a desire.

By peteredward on 27 Apr 2010

Clarification

I agree with you Peter, this was written by an Apple fanboy! I have had my Desire for just over a month now and it blows my friends iphones out of the water!! The build quality is the same if not better than an iphone, additionally it has a much higher resolution screen than an iphone, a 5 megapixel camera, it can mulitask, has a 1Ghz processor and has flash support! Sorry Apple you have had your day for now!!

By Mallius on 9 May 2010