Tags: HTC, HTC Desire, HTC Desire Giveaway, HTC Sense[ × ]

HTC has positioned themselves as a driving force in the Android handset market, making some impressive gains this year according to the information technology research company Garner.    In the second quarter of this year it’s reported that HTC has increased their growth 139.1% year on year and made the 8th place in the worldwide handset rankings.

I had a chance to test drive HTC’s Desire for a few weeks, making this my third steamy affair after the Nexus One and The Legend.

HTC Desire -Android 2.1 (Éclair) with HTC Sense

For starters, I’m a huge fan of HTC Sense, HTC’s user interface built upon the Android OS.  Sense is highly intuitive and brings some serious polish to an Android device.  It includes a series of widgets, themes and a new web-based control center to manage and customize HTC devices.

Also, Sense provides numerous options to add various preloaded themes (social, travel) and widgets allowing users to quickly trick out the style of their homescreens.    And notifications are displayed under the curved dock when the phone is in lock mode.

I’ve posted a more detailed look at HTC Sense in the last hardware review of the HTC Legend explaining the HTC themes, widgets and apps including; Footprints, People, Music Player, Friend Stream, photos and HTC’s pinch-to-zoom homescreen feature.

Look At That Body!

If you’ve held a Nexus One in your hand you’ll find it similar.  The size and appearance of this device was clearly inspired by their earlier Nexus One model. The Desire does however feel a bit softer, possibly even a touch more rubbery than the Nexus One– it’s a sexy piece of mobile machinery.

Home, Menu, Search and Back tactile buttons are located at the base of the device with the optical joystick used for onscreen navigation.  I find the optical joysticks provide better control than the trackball and it saves you from mucking up the screen upon every action.

Unlike HTC’s Nexus One and Legend the design of the case removal is a bit different.  With the Desire, the entire backing of the device pops off instead of an individual slot.  And it appears they’ve modified or added extra protection to the power connector input with some reinforced casing.  Under the backing you’ll find an expansion slot for a MicroSD (up to 32 GB) and a re-chargeable Lithium-ion battery capable of approximately 350 hours of standby time.

The display is smokin –everything looks wildly vibrant on its 3.7” screen.  Live wallpapers look crazy-beautiful moving on the homescreen.  The video quality looked so impressive I thought I’d do a quick video comparison with the iPhone 4.

After playing a few YouTube videos on both devices, it was clear there was a loss of definition and crispness on the Desire — though anyone would have a hard time stacking up to the brilliant display of the iPhone 4.  It remains to be seen what the new HD version of the Desire will bring.

CPU Power & Storage
The desire sports a 1GHz Snapdragon processor and has 512mb of ROM and 576mb of RAM.   Baby it’s fast.  Flipping through homescreens and apps is super snappy, I wasn’t able to produce any lag and I really tried my hardest.

Web Experience
On the HTC site, they’re claiming users will see up to 7.2 mbps down and 2mbps up on 3G.   The use of the Snapdragon processor as I’d mentioned, brings some serious speeds to this device — web surfing included.   Unlike idevices, the Desire has a built-in flash player.  Flash video compatibility is still currently a big win for the Android OS.

Another notable and handy feature is the text selection menu which is activated on a web page by highlighting a piece of text.  Text selection offers quick translation to 23 languages and Wikipedia search to name my personal faves — a great tool for the web.

Taking Pics
This device has a 5mp rear facing camera with auto-focus and flash.  And, in case the lighting situation isn’t ideal, (and it usually isn’t), the camera app is equipped with onscreen options built-in.  Brightness, zoom, saturation, sharpness are just a few of the tweakable settings.

Recording Video
I shot an example of the video quality outdoors using the default settings and auto white balance. The only setting that I modified was the resolution which I set to WVGA (800×480).  The quality is really solid and makes me even more eager to try HTC’s newest handset, The HTC Desire HD.

The Bottom Line:

The Desire is highly intuitive, the display is beautiful and the body is similar– but even better than my beloved Nexus One.   Building upon the already amazing design of the Nexus One was an intelligent move by HTC, the addition of the Snapdragon processor and bump up in RAM is all gravy.

***HTC DESIRE GIVEAWAY***

SECRET PHRASE:  ” I want 2 get my Android-on with the HTC Desire ”

Instructions:
Just tweet the SECRET PHRASE to @iPhonegirl to win.
I would love it if you followed me on Twitter but please send the tweet as a reply not a DM.

You have between Oct 19th at 5pm 2010 EST to Oct 23rd at 5pm2010 EST.

The full details are posted here –> HTC Desire Giveaway (Sorry folks,  you must live in Canada to win)

Note:  If you’re not familiar with this site, I AM @iPhonegirl, just so you know we’re not asking you to spam some Apple fangirl about Android .. lol

***HTC DESIRE GIVEAWAY***

New to Android? When you’re inside the mobile-tech-bubble (as I am) it’s sometimes hard to gauge if a device or app is user-friendly to newbies so it never hurts to try something out on a non-tech-savvy friend.  And, for the most part, after pushing the Desire on a few friends they were able to figure things out pretty quickly.  So, If you’re new to Android, picking up a device with HTC Sense may be a good fit for you.

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