HTC Desire Z review

HTC's next Android wunderkind wanders in sporting a QWERTY keyboard

The definitive HTC Desire Z review
The definitive HTC Desire Z review

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The internet on the HTC Desire Z is as good as HTC can manage, and that's high praise in our book.

The Webkit-enabled browser is one of the best around, thanks to coming with a large number of functions, such as text wrapping, Flash 10.1 support and the ability to share web pages through a ridiculously large amount of sources.

HTC desire z review

We'll deal with Flash 10.1 first - it's pretty good in our eyes, and nearly all videos played without an issue. We didn't really manage to watch BBC iPlayer without an issue, but other than that nearly everything played smoothly.

HTC desire z

We still think this needs some tweaking though, as the HTC Desire Z struggled to display video in full screen without needing to think about it hard, and only sometimes would the option to go full screen appear when you wanted it to.

HTC desire z

We actually found ourselves turning off Flash video to conserve the battery, or at least setting the plug-in to only work when we demanded it. This made pages a mite quicker, and is certainly one of the best ways to optimise your internet browser.

We're noted fans of the Bookmark system on HTC Android phones, with large thumbnails for your favourite sites and the ones you visit most often. You can also access history by holding the Back button, which is a nice feature too.

HTC desire z

The sharing option is simple - if you want to send the web page link (or selected text) you simply hold the relevant section or open the menu and select 'share'. This enables you to send the link via MMS, Twitter, Facebook or similar without much in the way of slowdown.

In short, the sheer functionality, speed and features of the browser on the HTC Desire Z mean that if you're not too bothered about the slightly smaller screen then you should definitely think about this as the best browser/keyboard combo.

Gareth Beavis
Formerly Global Editor in Chief

Gareth has been part of the consumer technology world in a career spanning three decades. He started life as a staff writer on the fledgling TechRadar, and has grown with the site (primarily as phones, tablets and wearables editor) until becoming Global Editor in Chief in 2018. Gareth has written over 4,000 articles for TechRadar, has contributed expert insight to a number of other publications, chaired panels on zeitgeist technologies, presented at the Gadget Show Live as well as representing the brand on TV and radio for multiple channels including Sky, BBC, ITV and Al-Jazeera. Passionate about fitness, he can bore anyone rigid about stress management, sleep tracking, heart rate variance as well as bemoaning something about the latest iPhone, Galaxy or OLED TV.