83
Criteria
Comments
Rating
- Reception and call quality No comments
- Display No comments
- Battery life No comments
- Camera No comments
- Ease of use No comments
- Design and form factor No comments
- Portability (size / weight) No comments
- Media support No comments
- Durability No comments
- Ecosystem (apps, accessories, etc.) No comments
Detailed review
HTC have in the past 5 years gone from a relatively unheard of ghost manufacturer into a designer and maker of quality phones, the Nexus One is an example of just such a phone which has become hugely popular amongst Android developers.
In 2010 HTC launched the orignal Desire which was greeted with open arms in many countries including my native England where it has become the phone of choice for none iPhone users.
HTC have now decided to carry on the Desire series of phones with the slide out qwerty Desire Z and the larger screened Desire HD which, as you can guess from the title of this post will be the subject of our review.
Hardware
The first thing you notice after removing the HTC desire from it’s box is the large 4.3 inch (10.92cm) display which is of the SLCD variety. Whatever your views on the screen size debate there can be no denying that the Super LCD display is beautiful with wonderful colour representation that can be used in bright sunlight with no problems.
The chassis of the phone (with a nod in Apple’s direction) is of unibody construction with the rear of the device departing with the clean styling of it’s younger brother the Desire and instead being made up of what looks like 3 individual sections, these sections, 2 of which are detachable for accessing the battery, micro SD card and sim card slot.
Moving around the phone starting at the bottom we have the typical Micro USB port for data access and charging located slightly to the right of the center along with a 3.5mm headphone jack, slightly left respectively. Some people prefer their headphone socket to be on the top of the device some people find it easier on the bottom, I find the location of the Desire HD to be fine in any use case. Slightly to the right of the USB port is the microphone which I have found to be excellent in call and have no complaints with.
On the left hand side of the device is a volume rocker control which sits near flush to the casing. The fact that it sits flush to the level of the case can make it particularly difficult to turn the volume up and down, you get used to it and pretty soon you are able to do it without problem but it’s certainly not the same as the better designed volume rocker of the Desire.
On the top of the device is the power/standby button which is also flush with the exterior shell, whist it too suffers from the same issue as the volume buttons it is helped by the fact that you don’t need to use the up/down movement rather than the simple on/off of the power/standby button.
The right hand side of the device is left bare.
As mentioned earlier the rear of the device seems to be made up of four parts but of these only 2 are actual detachable from the main body of the phone. The phones sim/micro SD cover is a sizeable piece of plastic located on the bottom end of the phone it requires a good amount of lateral friction to remove and gives the phone a cheap and nasty feel.
The Battery door located on the upper right hand side of the phone is of similar design however is not removed with horizontal friction but by way of a small insert which those of us without long fingernails will struggle to remove, when removed however it is equally as cheap and nasty. It’s a shame HTC could not have just gone for the same design as the Desire which was perfectly adequate.
There is a raised camera lens which significantly juts out of the phone and when laid on it’s back the phone rests on this by design a small cutout for the speaker and dual flash finishes the rear of the device.
The business end of the Desire HD is home to it’s 4.3 inch screen 4 capacitive buttons which you will either love of hate. In practise they are positioned well and are not in the way as were the buttons on the Google Nexus one. There is a speaker grille with a built in LED for notifications as well as an indicator of charging/battery low etc.
Software
HTC have succeeded where many other manufacturers and carriers have failed and managed to craft Android into a wonderful OS. HTC Sense is an excellent and polished Android front end (if a little bit bloated) but the Android core features that have been removed by HTC have been replaced with suprior features such as the smart dialler calendar applications.
If there is one thing the Desire HD and in fact any HTC phone does well it’s social networking integration. Users are asked to sign into a multitude of networks at the initial setup and contacts are then ‘Matched’ to social networking contacts of the same name, these matched contacts are then represented throughout Android as single place where users can see a streams of photos from Flick and Facebook as well as status updates, exchanged emails, call history and text messages. These features are easy to use and useful.
HTC bundles a plethora of software further to the standard Android fare the most notable of which is but no limited to the clock application, news app (with Google Reader support) and Spotlight like Search Anywhere app.
The browser is especially worthy of commendation. On previous phones including but not limited to HTC devices the browser has been a real let down and the need to download to a third party solution has been strong, however, the browser app on the HD is fast, clean, responsive and cruicially it loads any page without problems.
The phone comes with a huge 1.5GB of internal storage space so you aren’t going to get that lovely ‘Low disk space’ notification. 768MB of RAM keeps the phone snappy when paired with Qualcomm’s 1GHz 8255 processor.
It is worth pointing out that the initial software release was not without the odd bug or two and one particular bug seems to slow the phone down to a crawl with normal usage, a process running in the background which should normally shut itself down does not rendering the phone nearly unusable after a short period of time. The solution for this was a simple one; enable USB Debugging mode in the Android Application settings page.
The 4.3” screen is gorgeous and I’m personally glad it’s not AMOLED, I don’t like the saturation levels on AMOLED panels anyway.
Battery life is excellent despite the many reports of terrible nature floating around online, I find that I get a full days usage which is similar to most smart phones.
I do have some complaints; namely the speaker which is pretty much the worst I’ve come across this decade.
Also the removable battery door is not a good design, especially if like me you like to experiment with custom ROMs and need to remove the battery often.
That said there is some excellent hardware with a fast processor and excellent design and material choice such as the non slip coating which has kept the phone firmly in my hand even when wet.
Software wise HTC have given the usual selection of widgets and applications and it’s more than likely that the average Joe will stay within the Sense world and it will be of great benefit as Sense offers things like matched contacts and the Friendstream application which make it easy to stay on top of things.
Overall from my perspective the HTC Desire HD is the best phone on the market today. A beautiful screen, nice camera, speedy hardware and excellent software all stacked on Android 2.2 make this a super phone.
The only thing about this phone I would change would be the speaker and the battery door.
Pros:
Big screen
Fast hardware
Great camera
HTC Sense
Cons:
Battery door mechanism flimsy
Speaker volume terrible and tinny
Expensive
In 2010 HTC launched the orignal Desire which was greeted with open arms in many countries including my native England where it has become the phone of choice for none iPhone users.
HTC have now decided to carry on the Desire series of phones with the slide out qwerty Desire Z and the larger screened Desire HD which, as you can guess from the title of this post will be the subject of our review.
Hardware
The first thing you notice after removing the HTC desire from it’s box is the large 4.3 inch (10.92cm) display which is of the SLCD variety. Whatever your views on the screen size debate there can be no denying that the Super LCD display is beautiful with wonderful colour representation that can be used in bright sunlight with no problems.
The chassis of the phone (with a nod in Apple’s direction) is of unibody construction with the rear of the device departing with the clean styling of it’s younger brother the Desire and instead being made up of what looks like 3 individual sections, these sections, 2 of which are detachable for accessing the battery, micro SD card and sim card slot.
Moving around the phone starting at the bottom we have the typical Micro USB port for data access and charging located slightly to the right of the center along with a 3.5mm headphone jack, slightly left respectively. Some people prefer their headphone socket to be on the top of the device some people find it easier on the bottom, I find the location of the Desire HD to be fine in any use case. Slightly to the right of the USB port is the microphone which I have found to be excellent in call and have no complaints with.
On the left hand side of the device is a volume rocker control which sits near flush to the casing. The fact that it sits flush to the level of the case can make it particularly difficult to turn the volume up and down, you get used to it and pretty soon you are able to do it without problem but it’s certainly not the same as the better designed volume rocker of the Desire.
On the top of the device is the power/standby button which is also flush with the exterior shell, whist it too suffers from the same issue as the volume buttons it is helped by the fact that you don’t need to use the up/down movement rather than the simple on/off of the power/standby button.
The right hand side of the device is left bare.
As mentioned earlier the rear of the device seems to be made up of four parts but of these only 2 are actual detachable from the main body of the phone. The phones sim/micro SD cover is a sizeable piece of plastic located on the bottom end of the phone it requires a good amount of lateral friction to remove and gives the phone a cheap and nasty feel.
The Battery door located on the upper right hand side of the phone is of similar design however is not removed with horizontal friction but by way of a small insert which those of us without long fingernails will struggle to remove, when removed however it is equally as cheap and nasty. It’s a shame HTC could not have just gone for the same design as the Desire which was perfectly adequate.
There is a raised camera lens which significantly juts out of the phone and when laid on it’s back the phone rests on this by design a small cutout for the speaker and dual flash finishes the rear of the device.
The business end of the Desire HD is home to it’s 4.3 inch screen 4 capacitive buttons which you will either love of hate. In practise they are positioned well and are not in the way as were the buttons on the Google Nexus one. There is a speaker grille with a built in LED for notifications as well as an indicator of charging/battery low etc.
Software
HTC have succeeded where many other manufacturers and carriers have failed and managed to craft Android into a wonderful OS. HTC Sense is an excellent and polished Android front end (if a little bit bloated) but the Android core features that have been removed by HTC have been replaced with suprior features such as the smart dialler calendar applications.
If there is one thing the Desire HD and in fact any HTC phone does well it’s social networking integration. Users are asked to sign into a multitude of networks at the initial setup and contacts are then ‘Matched’ to social networking contacts of the same name, these matched contacts are then represented throughout Android as single place where users can see a streams of photos from Flick and Facebook as well as status updates, exchanged emails, call history and text messages. These features are easy to use and useful.
HTC bundles a plethora of software further to the standard Android fare the most notable of which is but no limited to the clock application, news app (with Google Reader support) and Spotlight like Search Anywhere app.
The browser is especially worthy of commendation. On previous phones including but not limited to HTC devices the browser has been a real let down and the need to download to a third party solution has been strong, however, the browser app on the HD is fast, clean, responsive and cruicially it loads any page without problems.
The phone comes with a huge 1.5GB of internal storage space so you aren’t going to get that lovely ‘Low disk space’ notification. 768MB of RAM keeps the phone snappy when paired with Qualcomm’s 1GHz 8255 processor.
It is worth pointing out that the initial software release was not without the odd bug or two and one particular bug seems to slow the phone down to a crawl with normal usage, a process running in the background which should normally shut itself down does not rendering the phone nearly unusable after a short period of time. The solution for this was a simple one; enable USB Debugging mode in the Android Application settings page.
The 4.3” screen is gorgeous and I’m personally glad it’s not AMOLED, I don’t like the saturation levels on AMOLED panels anyway.
Battery life is excellent despite the many reports of terrible nature floating around online, I find that I get a full days usage which is similar to most smart phones.
I do have some complaints; namely the speaker which is pretty much the worst I’ve come across this decade.
Also the removable battery door is not a good design, especially if like me you like to experiment with custom ROMs and need to remove the battery often.
That said there is some excellent hardware with a fast processor and excellent design and material choice such as the non slip coating which has kept the phone firmly in my hand even when wet.
Software wise HTC have given the usual selection of widgets and applications and it’s more than likely that the average Joe will stay within the Sense world and it will be of great benefit as Sense offers things like matched contacts and the Friendstream application which make it easy to stay on top of things.
Overall from my perspective the HTC Desire HD is the best phone on the market today. A beautiful screen, nice camera, speedy hardware and excellent software all stacked on Android 2.2 make this a super phone.
The only thing about this phone I would change would be the speaker and the battery door.
Pros:
Big screen
Fast hardware
Great camera
HTC Sense
Cons:
Battery door mechanism flimsy
Speaker volume terrible and tinny
Expensive
good review!
1 person found this review helpful