HTC Desire S Sim Free Mobile Phone

my review :

I was looking to upgrade from my trusty Desire (a tough act to follow), but was concerned that this Desire S didn't appear to be all that different on paper. Now that I have decided to go with it I can tell you it is definitely a big improvement. I'm glad I didn't waste any more money on dual-core efforts. In my opinion you simply don't need them yet. I do not use my phone for serious 3D gaming. Even so this has the same chipset as the SE Experia Play, which is a phone geared up especially for gaming so it should cope just fine if that's your bag. I also find the 4.3 inch screens a bit too large for my liking. The 3.7 inch ones are just right. After some extensive use here are my in-depth findings, both positive and negative. Mostly positive though!

Usage:
This phone certainly doesn't struggle for the lack of a second processing core. It flies! The old Desire was fast, but this is on another level. The Sense 2.1 UI and 2.3.3 Gingerbread OS are a big improvement. There is ZERO lag between screens, when scrolling through long lists, and most notably when loading apps & running processes lists in the management sections in settings. This used to bring my old Desire to a crunching halt for a couple of minutes whilst it built the list up. The Desire S takes 2 seconds. This is down to a 30% more efficient 1GHz CPU, Sense 2.1 refinements, or Gingerbread 2.3.3 improvements. It doesn't look like much on paper, but along with more RAM it really does make quite a noticeable difference.

There have been some nice additions to Sense 2.1 which I am liking, for example the ability to apply different skins/themes without having to root the phone. It's now very easy to change the look and feel of your phone which I am loving. Battery life is another area where they have made big (and much needed) improvements. Even after the first few charges, the phone is taking 3 hours just to drop to 99%, and I'm typically getting 36 hours plus out of it with heavy use. I was lucky to get 24 hours out of my old Desire, and after 3 hours use it would have dropped to about 80%. Plus batteries generally improve over the first couple of weeks use (and I'll be playing with it less) so I expect it'll get even better. You also now get a nice graphical representation of battery use to help identify any severe drainage causes. Hoping for 48 hours uptime soon!

As I touched on earlier, it should deal well with any game you can throw at it. It plays Angry Birds Rio without any drop in frame-rate and it looks fantastic. All-in-all for the software side of things, I am very pleased with the steps taken since the old Desire by HTC. The fantastic free Google maps navigation is as good as ever. It did take a few minutes to get a GPS fix the first time I used it, but that is completely normal however, and it now gets a GPS lock in only a few seconds.

Be warned with the optional 3rd party navigation on offer though: HTC Locations. This requires that you download maps onto your SD card, then pay for a licence to activate the voice-guided navigation side of things. I can see the advantage of this over using Google maps; you don't need a data connection to download maps. Just a GPS lock is required much like a traditional sat-nav. However, I found that even after purchasing the full licence, it would refuse to work and just kept "force-closing" (android for a crash). The people who developed this software and who you buy the licence off (Route 66) didn't seem to give a monkeys. After the patronising advice of "try turning it off and on" and "try a factory reset" didn't work, they then shrugged and refused to refund me. This is NOT A FAULT OF THE PHONE THOUGH so I'm not taking off any marks for this. I just think you should be aware before spending £22 on the full licence like I did. Besides, Google maps navigation has recently been updated to download and cache all the necessary map data right at the start of your journey, so it will not leave you stranded should you loose your data signal part way through your trip anyway. If you still think you may start your journey where there is already no data signal (the only weakness of google maps) then please try the £3.50 (30 days) licence to check it works first! Just don't expect decent customer support from Route 66 if it fails! One good thing that did come of this Route 66 debacle was what happened after I did a factory reset. Normally, without 3rd party backup apps installed, all your apps are wiped out and you have to go back through and start putting them all on manually. Not any more. HTC were aware of how I had my phone set up prior to my factory reset as I'd signed up to HTC Sense, and upon logging back into my account after the wipe, all the apps started automatically re-installing. Even my wallpaper, ringtone choices and volume settings were remembered. I was slightly concerned that HTC also seemed to have "backed up" my wireless router's network key however, as that also worked straight away and jumped straight on my WiFi network without having to be told the magic word.

The camera although still 5MP is yet another improvement. The most noticeable one being that it doesn't take the picture 3 seconds after pressing the shutter button any more! Pictures are taken much faster so you are less likely to miss the moment. The colours are more accurately represented, and generally less correction is required afterwards over the old Desire. Pictures in low light or fast-moving subjects still result in under-exposure or blurred shots respectively though. I was hoping for a `sport' mode with high shutter speed but it seems I'm the only one! The LED flash effective range is again only roughly 12 feet and still does make people look like they're being interrogated by torchlight. If you want a proper camera though, buy a dedicated camera. The camera on this phone serves it's purpose: to take amusing pictures of your mates when they have fallen over after too many sherbets, and uploading them straight to Facebook or wherever before they've had chance to get up and make you delete them.

Now for the only slightly concerning issue; the WiFi signal drop issue. You may have heard of this one. Due to the aluminium uni-body construction, HTC have located the WiFi aerial behind the small rubber cover at the top of the phone near the camera lens. Relax. It's no where near as severe as the comical i-Phone "death grip" issue, but be warned that if you cover your hand over this area it will cause the WiFi signal to drop about 30%. Not such a problem at home when you are typically close to your router. But when on only a very weak signal to begin with, you certainly should be aware of this potential issue. This will only likely occur when holding the phone in landscape orientation, so try to be mindful not to completely cup your hand over this area. Holding it by the corners (like I do anyway) and there are no problems. The WiFi signal does NOT drop when placed down on a flat surface though. Interference seems to be limited to your hand. I'm pleased to report that the 3G side of things suffers no ill effects no matter where you hold it so we can still laugh at iPhone 4 owners. If anything my Desire S is getting a stronger 3G signal in my office than the old Desire did.

Call quality is very good and I've had no dropped or missed calls. The bluetooth synced with my speaker pod straight away and has a comparable range to the old Desire. The built-in loud speaker has had some improvements to sound quality, but still don't expect high fidelity. It's only really meant to help you carry on playing Xbox when your wife rings you. They always seems to know when you're having a good round don't they? For that purpose calls come across loud and clear.

Build quality:
The build quality feels impressive. It's aluminium uni-body construction feels vastly more robust that the old Desire. It's a pleasure to hold with a comforting weight to it, and you feel sacrilegious putting a case on it. It looks much smarter too in it's matt black paint job. Gone is the dodgy coppery-brown paint from the old Desire. I'm paranoid though so it's in a case when out and about, but can't help but remove it when back at home. I can understand why the few people who bought the HTC Legend really liked it now.

The screen is made of Gorilla Glass this time around so is much more scratch-resistant than the old Desire. Again it's up to you to make the call on fitting a screen protector. Search for Gorilla Glass on any popular video streaming website to find clips of people TRYING to scratch this screen! It's impressive what it will stand up to.

I have found that I struggle getting the battery cover off and on. It is quite firmly in place when it's just come out the box, and you worry that you may break it using excessive force. Once it's off and your SIM card is in, you'll find it's also a bit tricky to reattach. Follow the instructions though and you'll be fine. You shouldn't have to do this often either.

There is a very small gap between the bottom edge of the glass screen and the aluminium casing which lets a tiny sliver of the backlight show through when in a darkened room. But you have to angle the phone just right to see it, normal viewing angles don't show it, and it's easily forgivable considering the rest of the phone's build quality.

I thought I would miss the optical track pad and hardware buttons from the old Desire more than I actually am. The software buttons perform well, and moving the cursor around text using the touch-screen is handled well with only the occasional miss-selection. Occasionally the haptic feedback (vibration) to confirm a press of these software buttons has stopped for a few seconds. I haven't figured out what causes this, but it starts working again soon enough. A small bug in the ROM perhaps. The `Back' button on my old Desire was starting to wear out and become unresponsive when I upgraded too, so I suppose that concern is gone with this phone.

A minor problem for me is the location of the micro-USB charger socket on the left-hand side of the phone. I appreciate that it was probably the only place left to put it after taking the battery cover and aerial locations into consideration, but it does mean my car holder and office dock are now useless! I need to find one that does not clamp the phone by the sides or I can't plug it in. It also means that any office docks will hold the phone in landscape orientation. Fine for watching videos or TV (something I don't do very often) but for general use moving around the phone's UI whilst it's docked is not ideal as Sense 2.1 still doesn't rotate it's home-screens to landscape mode. Maybe it'll will be remedied in the up-coming Sense 3.0 update. In the mean time if you MUST have your home screen rotate, Launcher Pro, an alternative launcher from the marketplace offers this feature.

The old Desire has an AMOLED screen. This one has a SLCD. The colours on this SLCD screen are more realistic in my option. When held next to my old Desire, although the AMOLED screen seems to have (very) slightly smoother edges, the colours were over-saturated and the screen has a very slight yellowish tint to everything. I had not noticed this until holding next to the Desire S. I tested this by taking the same picture with each phone of my back garden in strong light on a sunny day. I set the camera settings identically. Held up next to each other, the picture on the Desire S looked very close to the actual scene, where the old Desire would have required some correction in colour saturation and exposure to match this. I can confirm that both screens are still pony in strong sunlight though! :(

I am not going to knock any points off for the aforementioned WiFi drop issue. If you want a smart, solid, aluminium uni-body construction, these are the inevitable side-effects. And they are manageable. The Samsung Galaxy S II has none of these issues, but it's made of creaky, cheap, badly fitting plastic and feels like it would break if you frowned at it. Drop the Desire S and you are only likely to damage your floor!

To sum up then I would rate this Desire S as a resounding success as it has managed to improve in both form and function from it's predecessor. OK it's not quite the headline-grabbing flag-ship smart-phone the old Desire was this time last year, but I don't think it's trying to be, and I think that is only down to the lack of a dual-core processor. These I believe to be so bleeding-edge right now I doubt anyone could come up with a reasonable argument for their use. If anything the advent of these dual-core monsters will help drive down the price of these still very impressive single-core smart-phones for us users who have no real need to calculate Pi to a billion decimal places in under 2 seconds whilst streaming HD video to their 3D-TV and posting nonsense on Twitter. I would rather more R&D went into battery technology instead of throwing more and more processing power our way. It seems to be languishing behind the leaps and bounds the phone and processor industries are making.

One other review here described it quite succinctly as "Evolution, not Revolution." Couldn't agree more.

HTC Desire HD

Can HTC out smart Samsung and Apple?

As saw as we saw the announcement of the HTC Evo roll out in the US, we knew we wanted our big Android handset on this side of the pond. The HTC Desire HD however owes more to the HD2 - the seminal Windows Phone from HTC - both in terms of looks and specification. Fortunately Pocket-lint was at the global launch of the HTC Desire HD in London to bring you first impressions of the new superphone.

You get the same, lush, premium unibody design that came along with the Desire and theLegend, although it isn't seamless like those models, but this makes it look industrial. The build quality is excellent, as we've become accustomed to with HTC.

Can HTC out smart Samsung and Apple?

As saw as we saw the announcement of the HTC Evo roll out in the US, we knew we wanted our big Android handset on this side of the pond. The HTC Desire HD however owes more to the HD2 - the seminal Windows Phone from HTC - both in terms of looks and specification. Fortunately Pocket-lint was at the global launch of the HTC Desire HD in London to bring you first impressions of the new superphone.

You get the same, lush, premium unibody design that came along with the Desire and theLegend, although it isn't seamless like those models, but this makes it look industrial. The build quality is excellent, as we've become accustomed to with HTC.

With a phone this big you'll want to know the measurements. It sits pretty at 123 x 68 x 11.8mm which, despite the 4.3-inch screen, isn't all that big, but noticeably wide. It will slip into your pocket fairly easily, but for some it might be a little large. It is larger all over that the Samsung Galaxy S, which we see as a natural rival, and the metal construction adds to a premium feel as well as the weight: the Desire HD weighs 164g, the Galaxy S just 118g, with its plastic body.

With a phone like the Desire HD, it is only fair to start with the display. It might strike some as odd that HTC hasn't changed the screen resolution on the Desire HD – it is no more HD in that sense than the Desire, the Legend or the Desire Z. It is an 800 x 480 pixel resolution display and whilst it looks good, you know that the iPhone crowd will be waving their high-res devices in your face.

That might not matter in real terms, as the size of the HTC Desire HD makes it a great device for browsing the Internet or watching movies on your travels, but it isn't as adept at rendering fine text as the iPhone is. We also examined the Desire HD with its Super LCD next to the Samsung Galaxy S and the Super AMOLED display: the Samsung device offers more punch, with deeper blacks and more vibrant colours. But this is just a first impression, and shouldn't be taken as a final damning judgement - the Desire HD does look fantastic in its own right.

The device may be capable of displaying "books" but the small size means it's something of a stopgap. You're not going to put it to any serious reading, but a bit here and there on the train might just work. We'd still pick an ebook reader for dedicated reading - and save the smartphone for more dynamic pastimes.

Another new feature of HTC Sense is the ability to block callers. If you are being plagued by a particularly annoying salesman, you can simply block their calls. We've had a look at some of the other new HTC Sense features over in our HTC Desire Z First Look, and as both devices run the same operating system, it is well worth taking a look at that too for comparison.