HTC Desire – totally and compellingly desirable (almost!)

HTC has been making smart-phones and PDA phones for a while now. We’ve tested quite a few over the years, some pretty good, and others not so. We present their recently announced, (in India), Android flagship device – the HTC Desire. At the very outset, (huge spoiler warning!), it is an amazing device with a few quirks that are nonetheless noticeable, just like tiny flecks of rust in hard-to-reach-recesses on a near perfect paint job. However, in case of the Desire, some of its quirks aren’t as inconspicuous. For when one looks a cellphone in this price range, it’s reasonable to expect a near-perfect device and a near-perfect interface. Sadly, we’ve learnt to live with imperfections – a human trait that also pervades the devices we build.

Don’t get us wrong – HTC has dished up tremendous hardware, shoehorned it into a very sleek device, and garnished this with a new-age platform and a king-size feature set. Desirable the Desire might be, but it’s still far from perfect. Although mostly minor, some of the quirks are rather annoying. A near-perfect device is a conglomerate of great hardware, great software and a great interface and the Desire has very minor, (but noticeable), issues on all three fronts.

The touch and feel: most(ly) desirable

We open the rather compact box and go “man, whatta beauty!” And it is. You can kiss the all-metal construction of the HTC Nexus One good bye but this is a beautiful looking device – slim and sleek with contours enough to give others phones an inferiority complex. Although the bezel is rather narrow, it’s not as narrow as the one on the Touch HD2 – and the latter still looks smarter owing to this. However, the Desire has a beautiful facia – a trim bezel of metal that tapers around the corners of the display with the pearl grey bottom region that houses all the keys, is, oh! So tasteful that you’ll be staring at it for a bit.

The keys have a matte chrome finish that oozes suave sex appeal, light years away from the garish chrome buttons some manufacturers insist looks hot. Even the shape of the keys is near perfect to our aesthetic senses. The earpiece consists of twin slits with a chrome trim, and this is, perhaps, the sexiest part of the phone, at least for this reviewer. And we haven’t even switched it on!

The rest of the body including the rear has the same pearl grey, smudge-resistant finish. The battery cover fits securely, but when you remove it, you realise how flimsy the plastic really is. More importantly, the clasps on the battery cover feel like they’ll break off given a dozen SIM-card removals – shoddy job HTC. Incidentally, the microSD card isn’t hot swappable, as battery removal is required before you can access it. The power-cum-screen lock button located on the top is designed to merge with the body, although a hint of unevenness in the region is a welcome ergonomic/usability cue.

The 3.5mm handsfree jack also sits on the top. On the bottom, a slight protrusion marks the micro USB port for data and charging. Even the rocker-type volume key on the left side fits nearly flush but is very usable. When viewed from the side, the bottom of the phone tapers slightly forward, like the HTC Hero, but the taper is far less severe. Back to the front…five neatly laid out keys, arranged in a strip occupy a position below the display bezel. From the left we have a home key, a menu key, an optical track-pad-cum-enter key, and a two-way key for “search” and “back” functions. All these are well laid out, and although they almost fit flush, they work quite well. Initially they feel a bit hard, but given a week of use, we have no complaints. The optical track-pad merits special mention. Although the actual tracking surface is very small as it’s embedded in the centre of the key, it works very well and is very accurate. Easily at par with the Blackberry track-pads, which are supposed to be the best out there.

By now, you’re surely curious about the display, aren’t you? After all, it’s what has been creating all the hype. Yes – the Desire’s display lives up to the hype. It’s huge – 3.7-inches, though not as large as the 4.3-inch one on the Touch HD2. Even better, the Indian market gets a super LCD in lieu of the AMOLED that the Desire was supposed to ship with. This probably has to do with sporadic supply issues of AMOLED displays, but we aren’t crying any. We’re talking about a sublime piece of glass here. In fact, several people in office commented that the display looks just like it does in photographs – bright and almost artificially perfect and wallpapers look as if they were painted on to the screen. Colours are crisp without being over saturated and the display has a great contrast and blackness level. Sadly, in sunlight legibility suffers – the display has very poor visibility in bright sunlight. Extreme viewing angles are possible, there’s absolutely no change in quality with different viewing perspectives. The caveat is you’re basically holding a 3.7-inch smudge magnet. Even two minutes of using the phone and you end up with a smudged display.

While the resolution of 480x800 pixels might seem archaic in comparison to the iPhone 4’s 640x960-pixel display; in reality, the Desire’s screen looks sharp and even fine text looks very crisp. You will spend a lot of time just admiring the display and opening apps just to see how they look on it. Equally wonderful is the sensitivity of the display – the capacitive technology used is of the highest quality – swipes, gestures, the on-screen keypad – everything works very well. One doesn’t miss a hardware keypad. Almost.

Under the hood: beauty and the beast

Show with the go, beauty with brains - that’s how we like our phones. Those who read the last sentence of the first paragraph must’ve gone “this guy on weed?” Seems like, doesn’t it – imperfections with its hardware? As it turns out, its strongest point is also one of its weakest. So HTC took a fast Snapdragon Q8250 CPU running at 1 GHz and added 576 MB of RAM to feed it with data and instructions – no complaints. The Desire is lighting quick – the interface, switching between applications, switching through photos, browsing – you just cannot slow the phone down. Admitted its overkill for a phone, but then Android is all about applications and this is one Android platform that will gobble up all the apps you can throw at it, sans burps.

The Desire features HTC Sense, their interface first made available for the Jurassic WM 6 platform. Sense is akin to jewellery on a gorgeous woman – the living wallpapers, easy shortcuts, weather animations – gimmicky and a very welcome part of the experience of owing a powerful, high-end handset. Although Android has a fairly good menu system, and the Sense UI is not as omnipresent as it was on the HTC Touch HD2, it’s still welcome, if not totally necessary.

Initially the Desire came with Android 2.1, but we noticed no slowdowns. In fact, updating to Android 2.2, (a 93-megabyte download), didn’t make a noticeable impact on performance. One of our gripes with the Desire’s hardware was the battery. Run apps and fiddle around with that gorgeous slab of glass, and the battery level nosedives. And here lies our only bone of contention with the Desire’s hardware – its battery. Although an on-paper spec of 1400 mAh might sound fine, it’s a little on the skimpy side. A bigger battery would mean the appearance of less-desirable love handles, figuratively speaking. Oh did we mention the lack of a hardware QWERTY? But then, this would add bulk too.

Interface: and then there were applications

Interfacing is a strong point. The on-screen keypad on the Desire is a QWERTY and works pretty well. If you’re looking for applications totinker around with, you’ve come to the right place. There is a wealth of applications to play with, and the Android platform has detailed settings that allow you to mess with literally everything. Little things like monitoring applications that are eating up the most resources, and personalising each of the seven home screens will have you riveted to the lively interface for hours. The icons, the interface itself and the beautiful display add to a highly usable experience that is gimmicky yet practical and satisfying. Owning a high-end device is more than just a sum of its features and performance, there has to be a zing factor, and in this regard, the Desire’s interface doesn’t let down.

The bundled Facebook and Twitter clients work very well. There are a lot of options to try out, and loads of applications can be downloaded from the Android store. Incidentally (and quite expectedly) syncing with Gmail is a snap. Browsing is also a wonderful experience on account of the snappy response, quick browser and lovely display. The browser supports pinch zooming, and frankly this is quite useful. Browser performance is good – it is fast, and when zooming in, text aligns/reflows with the display dimensions very quickly.

The address bar is locked at the top of the screen and isn’t visible when scrolling down – this minimalist interface is nonetheless pretty powerful thanks to the menu button that allows access to a lot of options in the browser. Although the browser boasts of Flash support, its support for Flash videos is rather dubious. A document/spreadsheet/presentation viewer is also part of the deal, as is a pretty sweet PDF reader. We tried using the Desire as an e-book reader and came away quite satisfied.

Performance: shades of brilliance

The display is stunning in every aspect. Enough said. The touch interface is very sensitive, but even then, the on-screen keypad is not perfect. Sure it’s usable, but the iPhone might just be a smidgeon better. And no on-screen keypad will ever make up for a great hardware one. Video playback is about as good as it gets. The display and fast innards combine to ensure as good an experience with video, as we’ve seen on a cellphone. With the Froyo update, the camera records videos up to a resolution of 720p. The videos are clear, although there is blur when moving due to the lack of a proper image stabilisation system. Colours are rich, and in bright light, you won’t complain. Indoors the quality drops.

The five-megapixel clicker provides decent clarity for a cellphone camera, but it’s not the best around. There is a loss of fine detail, even with indoor lighting, and only in bright sunlight does the camera perform really well. The flash unit is very intense, and illuminates a dark room, up to a distance of eight feet pretty well. It’s not exactly as good as a Xenon flash, but not too far off. The problem is not with the flash intensity, rather the flash doesn’t tone down for close shots and these appear overblown with artificially bright highlights; the flash algorithms appear to be screwed up.

After the Froyo (Android 2.2) update, the booting time from button press to home screen took 36 seconds; four seconds faster than Android 2.1. Although, we seemed to get a little more battery life after the upgrade, we couldn’t be sure, but the difference is no more than five per cent. The battery performs well, it’s just that it’s a small unit – 1400 mAh is not sufficient for a phone with such hardware and a large display. Even Nokia’s archaic E71 ships with a 1500 mAh battery.

The Desire is endowed with a loud, but tinny loudspeaker. Although volume levels are good, it distorts a bit, and sounds strained at peak decibels. The N95 8 GB still has the best loudspeaker on a phone we’ve tested till date, and the Desire is miles behind. That being said, it’s better than the speaker on the iPhone 3GS. The earphones sound a lot better. The bass seems decent, although the treble is a little sparkly, but overall, sound quality is very acceptable. On a side note, the earphone driver enclosures are too large to fit most ears comfortably. Bluetooth speed, that was measured when transferring an MP3 file, was 185.6 kilobits per second – higher than most phones we’ve tested.

Call clarity is good. But the antenna is not. In zone three, we faced disconnected calls on more than one occasion, accompanied by a loss in vocal clarity. In zone two, there were sporadic periods of silence, but this wasn’t happening with any regularity and that made us suspect a service provider issue. In zone one, as expected we had no issues – voices sounded natural, and there was no issue with clarity. Although a minor thing, it would be nice to have finer gradients on the tower indicator, for example, Nokia phones have seven. HTC has only four. The speaker is loud on-call, but at maximum volume there is jarring and the voice distorts. The earpiece is also pretty loud, but doesn’t distort. When using the loudspeaker, the battery cover vibrates.

Conclusion: perfection is a flawed concept

At this point, I took a few minutes to stare into space and contemplate. I’d been yearning to purchase a touch-screen device for the last six months, but have been biting back the temptation because I haven’t come across the perfect one. Or, let me rephrase: the right one for me, just so that you don’t get the impression that I’m hard to please, because I’m not. But it’s difficult to find a touch-based cellphone sans quirks. As desirable as the, err…Desire is, it’s not without the odd annoying hiccup/flaw/quirk. And I’m not talking about the simple addition of a slide-out QWERTY keypad. Yes, that would fix a couple of things, but it would also add weight and bulk, while leaving other issues unresolved.

A higher capacity battery would also be nice, but this too, isn’t without demerit. Then there’s the issue with the mediocre antenna performance – how can manufacturer drop in a sub-par performing antenna into a 25,000 plus rupee handset? And why neuter a device’s multimedia capabilities with a poor loudspeaker? Why ruin aesthetics with a poorly constructed battery cover? It seems some capers have been cut on the way, and this totally detracts from the overall appeal, (not to mention the concept), of a flagship.
The price we got for the Desire was an MOP of Rs. 28,900. This is the price being offered by Tata Docomo, who is bundling the device with a data plan that offers 500 MB of free data usage every month for the first six months. Not a bad deal, since the Desire was selling for the same amount via ahem…questionable channels.

So it isn’t cheap. But for the most, besides the quirks mentioned above, it is an excellent device. Don’t get our nitpicking wrong, and don’t go off taking only what you read in the conclusion or the scoring beneath it.

A beautiful display, a nearly flawless interface and lightning-quick hardware, in an attractive body – the Desire exemplifies its name. If only the handful of quirks were ironed out, we’d be pleased to live with it. HTC has just announced the Desire HD and the Desire Z. The latter has a slower CPU than the Desire, but features a slide-out QWERTY keypad and might just be what the doctor ordered, if the Desire isn’t quite your cup of tea. There is also the Nexus One, with its metal body, but then track-ball sensors spoil easily in comparison to optical trackpads.And the Sense UI, (absent on the Nexus One), has matured into a tasteful and functional embellishment that is fun to work with.

Sadly recommending the Desire is not easy, despite its frequent brilliance. The high-end segment sees hardware getting outdated every other month, and three months from now, we could well see another device thrash the Desire in all respects, in fact the new arrivals could well do that. But this by itself, doesn’t make it any worse a device, and obsolescence in inevitable. The jury is out on this one. The Desire is a worthy device, but you’ll see a new crop of Android 2.2 devices soon, and feature sets and hardware will only get better. We recommend waiting and watching, unless you have to buy a high-end handset now – in which case the Desire will make (most of) yours come true.

Specifications: OS: Android 2.1 (upgradeable); Display: size: 3.7-inch; colours: 16-million; resolution: 480x800 pixels; CPU: Qualcomm QSD8250 (1 GHz); RAM: 576 MB; ROM: 512 MB; expansion: microSD; Camera: 5-megapixel (720p video recording); battery: 1400 mAh; weight: 135 grams

HTC Desire – totally and compellingly desirable (almost!)

HTC has been...