Update: read our Desire HD and HTC Desire S full reviews to see if the older version still stacks up.
After unleashing the massively impressive HTC Legend, its bigger brother, the HTC Desire, is here - faster, bigger and more powerful and still packing the Android punch.
It might be the Nexus One rebadged, but this is a behemoth of a phone in its own right; has HTC tried to do too much?
Check out our HTC Desire video review:
We reviewed a Desire from T-Mobile, which is first in line to offer the phone on UK release, but we also checked out our findings from another Desire review unit straight from HTC, to really find out how it compared to the competition.
While the Legend was all about style and functionality in one tidy package - the HTC Desire takes a slightly different approach.
Instead of the gorgeous aluminium chassis, we're given a slightly more low-key brown case and a huge 3.7-inch OLED capacitive touchscreen.
Also read: 15 best mobile phones in the world today
But while the screen certainly is massive, the phone itself doesn't seem gargantuan. The screen reaches the edge of the chassis nicely, and the four buttons on the front of the HTC Desire are almost flush and set in attractive aluminium.
If you're looking for comparisons between this and the Nexus One, the first is highly obvious: the trackball is gone.
HTC has given the phone the Terminator eye once more (head back to the HTC Legend review if you want to know why we're glad it doesn't glow red and threaten humanity) which is basically an optical trackpad that registers finger motion over the sensor.
The phone is very slim indeed, with dimensions of 119 x 60 x 11.9 mm, and weighs in at just 133g. If you're counting, that's 2g heavier than the iPhone 3G and the exact same weight as the iPhone 3GS - and that makes it very pocket friendly indeed.
It has a rubberised chassis, which is a little hard to grip at times. We're not talking so slippy you'll be dropping it all the time, but it still can be a little difficult to hold in one hand, especially if you have dinky digits.
That said it sits very nicely in the hand, with a sumptuous curved chassis feeling very nice and making it easy to press the buttons on the front with the thumb.
There's actually very little button-wise on the HTC Desire, with only six in all. The front four buttons are standard HTC Android fare (Home, Menu, Back and Search) and the Terminator optical trackpad also clicks in as an enter key.
The up/down button on the left-hand side of the phone is flush to the chassis, as is the power button on the top - which sits next to the 3.5mm headphone jack atop the HTC Desire.
The power button also functions as the lock key, and is very nicely placed to press whenever necessary (and trust us, we've seen some horrors; we're looking at you, Samsung Galaxy).
That's it button-wise, as there's no camera key (instead the HTC Desire uses the trackpad to take a snap or two) which is a little sad - we still love a dedicated shutter button.
The USB slot is hidden at the bottom - no cover to keep the dust out, but on the plus side it's once again microUSB, banishing the memory of the horrid miniUSB port from HTC designs of old.
There's also a microSD card slot for extra memory - but that's hidden below the battery, and can't be taken out without turning off the phone.
The screen is simply to die for - we mentioned it was an OLED capacitive effort earlier, but that brings such glorious colour reproduction and 3.7-inch is a great size for media and the internet on a phone.
It's a little tacky under the touch - the iPhone for instance feels a little smoother - but we're being very, very picky with that, as it registers the slightest touch with ease.
The design is sleek, and the Desire certainly looks the business - sleek and compact, while still showing off the power of the OLED screen. Yes, it lacks the style of the HTC Legend, but we think it more than makes up for that in function.
In the box
HTC is excellent at keeping packaging minimal, and the Desire once again comes in a coffin-like box with the standard kit inside.
This means a microUSB cable, which plugs into an adaptor to make a wall charger, and the standard headphones which double as a hands-free kit.
HTC hasn't seen fit to update these, but they're functional and work well to use for calls and media, providing you don't have the same odd-shaped ears as us.
There's not a lot more, but with the minimal space in packaging you can see why HTC has kept the components down. We would like to see some PC software on a CD or memory card, but it can be downloaded from the site with ease.
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Your comments (122) Click to add a new comment
ihearthtc
August 23rd 2011
122. i got this phone for over a month now.
i honestly love this phone.
the screen is very bright and its fast as well.
the pros:
the 1GHZ processor, the LED screen, the price and
the internet browsing = superb.
if you love web browsing and watching videos, then you will love this phone.
and the screen is very bright. and multi-tasking on this phone rocks.
i could entertain phone calls (using head set of course) while i browse the net or read books without the slightest compromise on speed.
its pocket friendly unlike the samsung galaxy s which is much bigger in dimension. and it has bigger RAM compare to iphone 4.
the friendstream is very nice (twitter and facebook updates/browsing in one sweet app).
cons:
i have to say that the first thing that i didnt love about this phone is the battery life.
i have to turn off the 3G in order to save battery.
installing 3rd party softwares (android booster, etc) will help you maximize its battery life, but i think it would be much better if they could fix this problem.
come on, you cant always have your charger with u right?
and i also didnt like the low internal memory that goes with the phone.
sure, it has expandable memory card slot.
but 512MB? come on. not all apps could recognized SD card.
all in all, i think this phone is powerful.
i havent experienced any let downs when it comes to receiving calls or messages.
almost all apps are free to maximize its range and the phone is sophisticated.
plus, it doesnt cost that much.
i would definitely recommend this phone to anyone. and i am a very proud owner.. :)
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red
August 4th 2011
121. had this phone for 13 months it took me a full month to decide to upgrade or stick with it as my 12 month contract was up firstly what a phone never had anything go wrong on this phone brilliant phone never let me down yes were all aware battery last a day but what smart phone really lasts longer it did everything very well internet multitasking photos video games lovely phone to hold so much better than an iphone 4 i did upgrade for a SGS2 and what an upgrade ......
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gumbung
July 19th 2011
120. What should we do so we do not run out of phone memory? sell it and replace with a better way? it's not the best answer if we only have limited funds. we need to do is to move the applications that have been installed in the internal memory to SD card. but the way that is usually done by most people, require rooting in the device, which can of course remove the warranty. but this does not require rooting in our device. you may see a complete tutorial at android-marked.blogspot.com
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santanu1477
June 16th 2011
119. I am an user of HTC Desire for last 10 months and here are the major disadvantages I have faced for which I have decided not to use a HTC device any more in future.
1. Microsoft & Google hate each other, it is evident in Android. If your enterprise runs Exchange email, you should think many times before buying HTC's android based phones. Initially it took me 1 month trying many hacks on my phone to get the calendar to sync with Exchange. However after the initial success, almost every 15 days thereafter the account used to stop syncing by giving some weird reason such as "sync protocol error" etc. The only way to get around was to delete the exchange account from the phone and reconfigure the whole thing. It was such a productive exercise on a smartphone whose intention is to improve your productivity. Yes, I know there are applications like "Touchdown", but they are not free. In case the phone has a problem, its better if the manufacturer bundles this app free of cost with the phone.
2. Quite a few times, the exchange account reconfiguration created a new issue where the empty contact list on the phone (since the exchange account were deleted after it stopped syncing) went back to exchange account and deleted all entries from the exchange as well!!!! Since I had my contacts backed up on some other device, I was able to survive. But, what a piece of marvel this HTC phone is, you can very well understand yourself.
3. Android market has some hundreds of thousands of application and the number is growing, but it doesn't matter if you carry a HTC phone in your pocket. The reason is the super brilliant engineering that HTC did on it's phone's memory design. HTC phones has a RAM, ROM and SD card slot. In comparison iPhone or Samsung Galaxy has RAM, very large FLASH based ROM and may be an additional SD card slot in case of Galaxy. The HTC ROM holds Android OS and many application that doesn't support movement to SD Card slot. And in fact, even if an application support move to SD card slot, still a portion of that application resides on the phone ROM. HTC Desire has some 500MB+ ROM, but just the basic android loaded, it shows free ROM as some 110+ MB and after loading a few applications (may be 10-15), you will run out of ROM space. So there will be many applications or games which will be teasing you from the Android market, but Alas, you don't have space in the phone on a phone that is priced in the same range like a Galaxy where you have a 16GB based Flash ROM which can hold may be 50 times more number of apps than a HTC.
4. One of the most pathetic battery in the market. Doesn't even provide 2-3 hrs of talk time. For a minimal use on a 2G network, even with 3G, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth disabled, be prepared to charge in it every 12 hours.
5. Extremely poor quality speakerphone, virtually non usable.
6. No future android upgrades, Android 2.3 has been denied on this phone. This trend may continue in future.
7. This is my 7th mobile phone and for the first time, all of my friends started complaining immediately after switching over to the HTC phone is "your phone comes unavailable" so many times. Don't know if some other HTC user has also faced this problem
8. Poor support, almost non existent. A couple of times try from my side was just waste of time.
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mjerry
June 13th 2011
118. I'm sorry but I miss my Nokia E71.
This phone should be fantastic but it fails at so many levels.
How did HTC become so popular - it's a con.
Battery - a joke. Usually 6 - 12 hours
GPS - a joke. Up to 15 minutes to lock
Speaker - tinny hard to hear
Antenna - poor reception, blocked by hand when held
Poor sync with outlook - unreliable incomplete
Poor calendar
Poor gallery - all photos displayed - no folders
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jamtraff
May 17th 2011
117. I have had the HTC Desire now for about 4 months and nothing has gone worng with it at all. i love the way its so fast when browsing the internet and the phone itself looks amazing. I would definatly rate this phone 5 stars. :)
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milkpowder
May 13th 2011
116. I think this is one heck of a phone. I've owned mine since April 2010 and the developer community have been great. With the latest and greatest custom ROMs, the phone is certainly maturing well. I'm currently on a 2.3.3 ROM with Sense 2.1/3.0, and previously, an AOSP 2.3.4 ROM. These highly optimised ROMs really breath new life into the phones, and are not any buggier than the overladen stock factory OS. In this day an age, it is software that makes and breaks a phone. Most "superphones" have great hardware nowadays anyway. In the case of the Desire, the developer community has fully embraced it and we as users have greatly benefited.
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looty
May 8th 2011
115. Ive given this one star out of 5 because i love the internet on this phone. However the problems i have encountered are horrendously irratating and never ending!!! I have had this phone for about a year now, and the screen keeps freezing, the phone cuts out during phone calls, the phone sometimes wont let me make phone calls even though i have full signal, sometimes it wont let me turn if off, and today its turning itself on and off. Tmobile blame HTC and HTC blame Tmobile. Tommorrow im going to take it to the Tmobile shop and throw it at someone if i have to!!
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taoranga
April 30th 2011
114. I own an HTC desire for about a year now.
There is no real multi-touch in the HTC desire, google "htc desire multi-touch problem" and see videos (same problem as in nexus one phone) - compare it to competitors and see the difference.
Also, HTC customer service is the worst I've ever encountered - you'll state your problem, they will pretend not to understand and will suggest shipping for repairs, repairs will do nothing and return the product as it is, I have struggled for 2 months before giving up.
Had I known about all this a year ago I would have skipped this product and HTC altogether.
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harlan
March 18th 2011
113. i just took my desire back before the 30 days was out. i didn't find the battery life as advertised. i had to take my eyes of the road to make a call...wouldn't do it one touch with my planatronic voyager pro. about half the time on voice recognition made calls it would venture on to the net and fetch a number...bypassing my contacts....find one there and call. during this trial i had many occations to use my sons i phone. i fell in love with the it.....longer battery life....smother screen...more predictable touch screen and hands free phone calls. what i see is apple came up with great ideas....produced a product that everyone is trying to one up. they still have the more noticiably refined product.
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nhenshall
March 5th 2011
112. I think this phone is overrated. It is a lovely phone, but you have to like onscreen keyboards. The music player in it is rubbish and the FM radio is a non-event. Battery life is so bad you have to carry a charger around, or at least a cable and leave it plugged in at work, so you miss calls. Then your colleages start teasing you "mobile phone, it's mobile?" I traded mine for the Sony Ericsson MiniPro which has a keyboard and much better battery life. Also the music player is better. It's not for everyone, but you need to keep an open mind. If you are considering an iPhone, consider this as well. For me, the killer was the keyboard. It takes a LOT longer to belt out sms messages on an onscreen keyboard and I do that a lot, and email. My wife loves her HTC Desire. To her, its a fashon accessory. Fair assessment I think. I think the same of the iPhone.
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sophuk
February 28th 2011
111. I bought an HTC Desire in summer '10 through Carphone Warehouse. It has caused me no end of frustration. It reboots itself at any time and gets stuck on the HTC logo and is unusable for a period of half an hour until it's cooled down. Carphone Warehouse have confirmed it's a phone fault but I have to give the phone to them and wait up to 2 weeks to get it repaired/returned. There were no repair phones available at all and, as this would leave me without a phone running my own company, it was not a viable option. I pay my bill to O2 for their network, and they were even less helpful. When HTC were contacted re using their courier service to get it repaired and save me more wasted journeys, they were also unable to provide me with a temporary replacement. I'm very disappointed, extremely dis-satisfied, and wouldn't trust another HTC as a result. I'm on a high tariff but am not getting the service I'd expect. Any suggestions anyone? It has the latest operating system and I tried a factory reset before I went back to Carphone Warehouse. It has the P/N 99HKZ009-00D - could this be a faulty batch? Thanks.
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bushbaby
February 1st 2011
110. The desire is the best I have owned....ok... other than the battery life.
My frustration is the contacts programme. In my previous htc's I was able to search by company or persons name. I use it for business and have all my contacts syncronised, about 1600 of them. Not being able to serach by company is very frustrating.
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gundamrofl
January 18th 2011
109. darkan9el, get your facts right. This phone's been out for so many months. You can't expect it to be perfect. That is why they let you update to Froyo which has Apps2SD. Though some apps can't move, that's why you have custom roms. -_-"
HTC Desire HD has 1.5gb internal so you can't be raging that they aren't trying. They f*@# up on the battery part badly, though.
That's a rather awkward situation scarletfan. Have you tried to put your SIM on another phone? what is their receptions?
I think you may have some apps running in the background AND maximum brightness with live wallpapers PLUS always screen on would massively drain the battery fast. Based on your current usage, I suggest : Change your auto-lock screen timeout to 15/30seconds, you may use a live wallpaper. Reduce the brightness. If you are constantly on 3G that will also drain the battery a lot. Off when you're not using. Use the Power Setting widget. :)
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scarletfan
January 12th 2011
108. The Desire is a great phone except for the battery and the signal stregnth. I have to charge the battery every day when only used for about 4 texts, 3 voice calls totalling about 10 mins and about 10 mins browsing. Both my other phones, a Nokia and Samsung both on O2 like the HTC, never show less than 3 bars on the meter. The HTC shows on average No signal to 2 bars. Anyone got a solution to this or is this the norm ?
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enver
January 10th 2011
107. I bought HTC desire based on so much good reviews. But surprisingly very fundemantal calendar is not working. When you want an event to be reminded to you at a certain date and time with an alarm, alarm just not coming on and hence you miss the event. I consulted with service and be informed that alarm in this case is not working due to software issue and will be possibly fixed in this month. Can Anyone explain to me this? How you can grade this phone such a high level with such a simple flaw?
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darkan9el
January 4th 2011
106. Ok, after using this phone for several months, its apparent it is competent at what it is designed to be... but; and I hate to say this, because I say it with a heavy heart, there is one; soooo big its tantamount to design incompetence, fault that its pretty much renders this phone a total waste of time.
What is this issue...? SPACE!!! or should I say the total lack of it. This may seem odd from someone who actually has a 32Gb card installed in his Desire but this counts for nought due to the 1980's sized 512Mb of internal ROM memory allocated to store either all or part of any and all programs installed on this device.
This design flaw is the only thing that stops this phone being an iPhone killer, I have no idea who thought 512Mb was a good size to use but whomever it was should be sacked because I will never buy another HTC until this ridiculously small amount of ROM is increased to a size more akin todays requirements.
I am just sick to death of having to uninstall apps when I want to download anothe app only to find the Market will not download anything until I have at least 15Mb free, the fact I ONLY have 15MB free is, in itself a joke.
I would love to hear why HTC chose 512Mb and for them to give a valid argument for it because I can see no reason to give a phone such a small amount of essential ROM and at the same time allow people to have a 32Gb card; talk about mental torture.
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randorolian
January 1st 2011
105. Had this phone for around 9 months now. Absolutely loving it! Such a nice OS to use, and the added on HTC Sense overlay is lovely.
Battery life isn't all that impressive, but it's managable. I would reccomend buying a spare battery, and take it with you if you're expecting to be using it extensivly.
Even after 9 months, I still see this phone as one of the best on the market.
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hotzi
December 23rd 2010
104. well as for battery life, ya when i first got my htc desire phone i felt wow, battery life sucks and u prolly wont see anything like this on iphone, but i was wrong and everyone is wrong who think that. The good thing HTC Desire does is doing the multi tasking rite, unlike iphone. so u got alot of apps running at the same time(ex. live wallpaper, emails updated every 5mins on maybe 4 or more different accounts,auto check android software update,sync htc weather, GPS my location,etc) all of these wow its not just the app that's running that kills battery but also the 3G network or even WIFI data u r consuming. Iphones multitasking as everyone know only works with apps that r written to support multitasking, cons of that u prolly already know....
so if u want good battery life on a smartphone u got to stop using the "smart" part of the smartphone^^
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