HTC Desire -android hardware

The most powerful Android phone ever. The screen is lovely, the design slick and the processor super-fast. 

The perfect phone to show Android at its very best 

Pros :




► Gorgeous screen

► Fast processor

► Speedy internet browser    


 

Cons :

► Bluetooth playback stutters

► Suspect battery life

► Can't delete whole inboxes




Desire by name and covetable by nature, this is about as close to perfection as Android phones get. The handset is slim and weighs the same as an iPhone 3GS, which makes it very pocket-friendly indeed. It has a rubberised chassis, which is a little hard to grip at times. There's very little button-wise, with only six in total. The front four are standard HTC Android fare - Home, Menu, Back and Search - and the optical trackpad also clicks in as an Enter key.

The screen is simply to die for - at 3.7in it's the perfect size for media and the internet on a phone.

The Desire rocks the latest Sense Ul on top of Android 2.1 and there are seven home screens (three each side of the default option) that can be customised with widgets, icons and apps as you see fit, to create a totally unique experience.
 


Brilliant browser

The browser is tip-top - pinching and zooming takes you in and out quickly and the text reflow software is brilliant. Flash video is also present and very much correct. We navigated to a number of different websites with embedded video, and it showed the content within the browser or via a dedicated Flash browser. We did encounter a slight issue - Flash video didn't want to work properly on the higher-end sites. It wouldn't support iPlayer ard some video was juddery.

We liked nearly every single thing on the HTC Desire - it just works as you want it to as a phone and as an internet tablet at the same time. The Sense UI, Leap view and social network integration is all seamless and useful, the live wallpapers are super-cool and the internet browser with pinch to zoom is fantastic. Music and video playback is rich and simple, the camera is probably the best we've seen from HTC, the overall experience is fast and intuitive. It would be quicker to list the few things we didn't like: Bluetooth music playback is a little patchy and the battery drains quickly if you leave everything updating in the background. Although this is a little annoying, once you take some things down or set them to manually update the battery life is a lot better.