HTC Desire
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The much-hyped Nexus One has been something of a glorious failure in the world of Android: the experts at HTC created an exemplary handset but Google’s insistence on selling it solely through its own web portal – a choice it has since rescinded after lacklustre sales – stymied the commercial aspirations of the device.

The HTC Desire – which is essentially the same phone but in different clothing – can therefore be seen as the Nexus One’s rebirth and resurrection. The phone has been available for a few weeks now and there have been reports of stock shortages due to incredible and unexpected demand.

One might, therefore, be tempted to merely take the Nexus One review and slap a different name on the top, but there are a few key differences which separate the two siblings.

Heart’s desire

In terms of pure aesthetics, the Desire well and truly lives up to its name. While the Nexus One was not a repulsive phone, it did feel like it was designed by committee. The Desire is a far more pleasing proposition, boasting the look and feel of a true smartphone heavyweight.

Much of this is due to the removal of the cheap-looking trackball controller which made the Nexus One look slightly awkward. In its place is a touch-sensitive optical pad – identical to the one seen on its stable mate the HTC Legend. As always, precious few apps actually require you to use this interface but it’s nice to have all the same.

In terms of technical specifications, the Desire lacks the Nexus One’s noise cancellation hardware, omitted due to its high cost. However, it does benefit from slightly more RAM (576 MB DRAM over 512 MB) and the troublesome touch-sensitive menu buttons have been replaced with physical equivalents which are a lot more satisfying to use.

Stop making sense

Being a pure HTC phone, it should come as little surprise to learn that the Desire is packing the company’s proprietary Sense User Interface. As ever, this software complements the features of Android 2.1 perfectly, with exclusive widgets, intuitive menus, and additional home screens. It’s currently the best iteration of Android available on any handset in the world and that looks unlikely to change any time soon.

However, as HTC Hero owners will be painfully aware, such individuality comes at a cost. Because Sense sits on top of the Android code it has to be updated by HTC itself, which means the Desire is bound to miss out on the latest
updates. Indeed, Android 2.2 has already been pushed out to the Nexus One but it looks likely that the Desire will have to wait until at least the latter half of 2010 before it gets a dollop of Froyo goodness. Fragmentation is a key issue with all Android phones that aren’t branded as “Google Experience” handsets so this is hardly a problem that is unique to the Desire, and given the strong sales of the device we’d imagine that HTC will move Heaven and Earth to ensure its flagship phone is at the vanguard of Android developments for the foreseeable future. Regardless of this, if you’re the kind of person who craves being on the front line then you may want to consider the Nexus One over the Desire, as the former is virtually guaranteed to get the latest Android-related updates before the latter.

Android’s angel

Moving away from such tiresome concerns, every other element of the Desire is a close match for the Nexus One. It has the same touchscreen display so the issues regarding multi-touch confusion apply here also: when you’re touching two points on the screen they sometimes switch positions. It’s a lamentable shortcoming of the hardware behind the screen itself rather than a software bug, so it’s unlikely that Google or HTC will be able to apply a fix. It remains to be seen if this will have a massive impact on what kind of games make it to the device, but so far the Desire is performing admirably, with Gameloft’s cutting-edge titles like Gangstar and Real Football 2010 playing particularly well.

For all of its niggles and problems, the Desire is nevertheless an astonishing phone which gets a lot more things right than it does wrong. It has already usurped the Nexus One as the world’s favourite Android phone and hopefully this emphatic commercial and critical admiration will be followed by swift and timely firmware updates from HTC to ensure that this alluring piece of technology doesn’t fall by the wayside as its predecessor the HTC Hero unfortunately did.

HTC Desire

While it’s not quite the perfect handset we’d have hoped for, the Desire manages to outshine Google’s own Nexus One with its luscious curves and impressive user interface. Hopefully, HTC will update it to Android 2.2 as soon as possible and then there really will be no comparison
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Damien  McFerran
Damien McFerran
Damien's mum hoped he would grow out of playing silly video games and gain respectable employment. Perhaps become a teacher or a scientist, that kind of thing. Needless to say she now weeps openly whenever anyone asks how her son's getting on these days.