Back in February during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, HTC announced 3 new phones.
The HTC HD Mini, which was reviewed by Remo in April, the HTC Legend, which was reviewed by Mark in May and the HTC Desire.

In this review I’m going through the most important aspects of the HTC Desire. From the specs of the HTC Legend and the hardware of the device. The software (Android version 2.1), some multimedia possibilities and the general device properties, like battery and performance.

1. Specifications and First impression

• Processor:  1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor
• Operating System:  Android™ 2.1 (Éclair) with HTC Sense
• Memory:  512 MB ROM / 576 MB RAM
• Dimensions (L x W x T):  119 x 60 x 11.9 mm. (4.7 x 2.36 x 0.47 inches)
• Weight:  135 grams (4.76 ounces) with battery
• Display:  3.7″ AMOLED capacitive touch screen with pinch-to-zoom capability and with WVGA resolution (480×800 pixels)
• Network:  HSPA/WCDMA: Europe/Asia: 900/2100 MHz, GSM/GPRS/EDGE: Europe/Asia: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz,
• GPS:  Internal GPS antenna
• Connectivity:  Bluetooth® 2.1 with Enhanced Data Rate, Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/g, 3.5 mm audio jack, Standard micro-USB (5-pin micro-USB 2.0)
• Camera:  5 megapixel color camera with auto focus, flash, facedetection and widescreen photo capture
• Audio:  supported formats: .aac, .amr, .ogg, .m4a, .mid, .mp3, .wav, .wma
• Video:  supported formats .wmv, .mp4, .3gp, .3g2
• Digital compass for use with maps or geocaching
• Battery: Rechargeable Lithium-ion battery, Capacity: 1400 mAh
• Talk time:  Up to 390 minutes for WCDMA / Up to 400 minutes for GSM
• Standby time:  Up to 360 hours for WCDMA / Up to 340 hours for GSM
• Expansion Slot:  microSD™ memory card (SDHC compatible up to 32GB)
• Accelerometer sensor for auto-rotate and turn-to-mute

First Impression

When I unboxed the HTC Desire and first saw the device my thoughts were: “HTC build an iPhone. NICE! I’ve always wanted to see something like this”. As I took the Desire out of the box it appeared that the dimensions of the Desire are getting very close to the iPhone’s dimensions. Since I’ve been using my 3GS for quite some while now, I was getting used to the ‘larger’ design of a phone.

After pushing the power button the Android OS comes up pretty quickly, and a easy start-up wizard guides you through the very basics of the Desire. This is especially handy for the not-so-technical users. In fact not only the start-up wizard is user friendly, the whole device is very understandable for non-techies. So the first impressions of the HTC Desire are very well, lets go through to the next part: The Hardware:

2. HTC Desire Hardware Design

In this section of the HTC Desire review I will go through all the hardware aspects and de design of the device.

2.1 The front of the HTC Desire

The front of the HTC Desire looks very much the same like the Google Nexus One. But there are some differences.
On the top of the front there’s a speaker completely at the top. Below the speaker there’s the 3.7″ AMOLED Display which is really beautiful. Below the display there’s the biggest difference with the Google Nexus One.  There are four buttons, from left to right: The home-button, the Menu-button, The Optical trackball and the last button is only one button, but acts as two buttons; the Back-button and the Search-button.

Because in the past a lot of devices with a regular trackball seemed to be very sensitive for dust and other small filth, the optical trackball is in my opinion a good alternative for the ‘regular’ trackball. The optical trackball seems to be more sensitive than other trackballs in other devices. Normally this would be a good point, but I have the idea that the optical trackball it too sensitive.

2.2 The back

The back of the HTC Desire is almost completely the battery-cover and has a rubberish feel. The back also features the camera on the top of the back-side. Directly next to the camera there’s a strong LED-flashlight for pictures which are taken in dark circumstances. Next to the LED-flashlight there’s a speaker for hands-free phone-calls.

2.3 The top

The top of the device has only one button, which is the power button. The position of the power button is well-placed (on the left side of the top of the device).
For right-handed users it is possible to turn the desire on or off with their index finger of the right hand.  On the right side of the top of the desire there’s are 3.5mm audio jack.

So the top of the device is just the opposite of the iPhone 3GS (where the power-button is on the right side of the top of the device and the audio jack is on the left side of the top of the device)

2.4 The bottom

The bottom of the device only has a micro-USB connector for charging and/or synchronizing the device and a very little hole where the microphone is located.

2.5 The left-side

The left of the device has 2 buttons: The two volume-control buttons.

2.6 The right-side

The right-side of the device is completely blank and has no buttons or connectors.

3. HTC Desire Software

The HTC Desire runs on Android™ 2.1 (Éclair) with HTC Sense. An official update to Android 2.2 will be out in Q3 of this year. In the HTC Legend review – which was written by Mark Briggeman is a lot of information about Android 2.1 and every software aspect of the HTC Legend applies to the HTC Desire as well. For the software aspect of the HCT Desire I forward you to Mark’s Legend review.

4. Multimedia

The HTC Desire has – just like any other Android device – a lot of multimedia functionality.  In this part I’m going to show a few Pictures and a video shot with the HTC Desire.

4.1 Pictures

These pictures were taken with the Desire.

The picture quality  isn’t the best quality we’ve seen on mobile devices, but in my opinion for a mobile phone the picture quality is good enough.

4.2 Video

Below a video which was shot at a bright sunny day.

Desire Video

In my opinion the video quality of the Desire is more than enough for what I need from a smartphone. It isn’t HD quality, but I think the quality is more than enough for taking good video’s.

5. General Desire

5.1 Calling

Above all the Desire is of course also a mobile phone. Luckily the Desire does not fail in what it primary has to do: The calling.
The call-quality is above average for the Desire above other phones. I did several test calls and in my opinion the Desire  really stands out.

5.2 Battery

Something I am not very happy about is the Desire’s battery drain. The desire barely makes it through the day when using the device on an average to heavy basis. Although almost all the recent smartphones have this issue, in my opinion you should be able to make it through the whole day with one battery charge. I think it’s something device manufactures should really focus on when developing a device.

5.3 Performance and stability

The Desire is a real power-horse. The 1GHz processor gives the device enough power to run very smoothly and especially very stable.Quickly browsing through different Sense views and running several apps at the same time is not a problem at all and doesn’t seem to slow the device down. This is an aspect of the Desire which I like very much. A good user experience comes together with the speed and responsiveness of the User Interface.

Final Thoughts and Wrap-up

The Desire is called the Legend’s big brother and in fact it really is that. The biggest differences between the Desire and the Legend are the Screen size, memory and the Processor. This makes the Desire a very popular device. It has all the thing you’d expect in an advanced smartphone.

What I really like about the Desire is it’s speed and stability. The speed of the Desire is brilliantly fast and very responsive, something I’m very excited about. When it comes down to speed and stability there are only few devices where you can really rely on and the Desire is definitely one of them.  I’ve never seen a software-crash or hick-up.

If someone made me choose between the Desire or the iPhone 3GS (I haven’t tried the iPhone 4 yet) it would be a very hard decision for me. So hard that I think it’s not possible for me to make a decision. If I’d had to advice my girlfriend to take a new phone, I’d recommend her the Desire. Why? The Desire is in my opinion just a little bit more user-friendly and less geeky.I’ve seen more female Android users than female iPhone users. Somehow the Android OS is (I think) a little more user friendly for the non-geeks. If I had to choose an Android device at the moment, I’d definitely go for the Desire!