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Three days back I received my HTC Desire. This is my upgrade to Nokia 6120c after 2.5 Years. I forgot to take pics at time of unboxing so I’ve to box it again and take pics after two days.

It runs Android 2.1 with HTC Sense UI on 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 576 MB of Ram and a vivid 3.7-inch AMOLED touch-screen.  Android 2.2 Froyo is rumored to be released in June for this phone and will make it even more faster as demonstrated in Google IO 2010.

Hardware & Software

When it comes to specs HTC Desire is almost exact match of Google Nexus one. With 576 MB of ram (64 MB more than nexus one)  and Fm radio as extra features. Whereas Noise canceling and Voice-to-text features of Nexus One are missing.  Trackball of nexus one is replaced with Optical trackpad which is hardly useful and touch sensitive buttons (home, menu back and search) of Nexus one are replaced with actual buttons.  Another change is that you have to remove battery in order to get to SD Card.

The 1 GHz Snapdragon processor is not even fast but can run several programs in background without slowing down at all.

The 3.7 inch Amoled display is clear bright but because of reflected glare it is hard to see in direct sunlight. With 800 x 480 resolution the screen itself look superb showing backgrounds and icons in high-definition detail.

Android 2.1 means you can use multi-touch in the home screen, web browser, maps and photo gallery. So instead of scrolling through the seven home screens to find the one you’re after, you can pinch to view them all as thumbnails then tap to select the one you want. It’s a small feature but it makes using the phone much easier.

The on-screen keyboard is responsive and accurate but you need some time to get used to it.

Browsing Experience & Navigation

Fast Processor, Big screen and full featured Web browser with Flash support makes HTC Desire best web browsing phone available.

Copy and paste works very well: do a long press onto a piece of text and it will be selected with a pin on each end. Simply drag the pins around the part you want to copy or share then paste it into a text field by long pressing again. You can also open a new window, bookmark a page, or save the text to your SD card.

Turn by turn navigation of Google maps works perfect.  With GPS and Digital Compass it shows exactly where you are heading by auto rotating Map when you take a turn.

Camera & Multimedia

HTC Desire comes with 5Mp camera with autofocus and led flash light.  You can also touch-focus that means you can choose the focal point of a photo manually. Like many camera phones, you get shutter lag, and this certainly isn’t the best camera phone on the market, but it’s fine for quick photos to share online.  I still have to test it outdoor in day light, will make an other blog post when I do it.

The default music player that comes with Android is not very good but audio quality is Awesome.

De-Branding

As this phone came from Orange Uk, it had custom Android rom with a lot of bloatwares from orange.  In order to get rid of it I’ve to de-brand it to Stock HTC Desire rom.  The procedure is described here. Do it at your own risk!

Disadvantages

The main disadvantage of this phone is battery life.  Battery drains too quickly, while testing turn by turn Navigation of Google Maps battery was reduced by 10% after 15 minutes, and if you are doing cpu intensive tasks like playing videos, battery will last for just 5 – 6 hours, so you will have to recharge daily.

Final Thoughts

HTC desire is the nearest thing I’ve seen to a handheld computer. It offers more features for less price when compared to iPhone.  HTC’s Sense UI gives perfect user experience.  It connects you to the internet and social networks out of the box, multitasks with speed, is completely customizable with a lot of  free apps available in app store.  I’ll give it 9/10.

Here are the pics, Enjoy!

Box had some scratches but it was sealed pack when I received it.

With my 6120c

With siemens M65 & 6120c

by @FaizanAhmad