HTC Desire (U.S. Cellular) Review

December 14th, 2010

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Android phones are all over the place nowadays. The HTC Desire is one that stands out among the rest. Available for $99 on U.S. Cellular, this feature-packed Android 2.1-based smartphone will be sure to please anyone who uses this phone. Read our full review after the break.

Packaging and included accessories

The HTC Desire comes with the standard set of smartphones accessories; Nothing more, nothing less. You get a pair of earbuds (with a built-in microphone), which we honestly didn’t test because, if it’s anything like headsets you get with any other mobile device, they provide horrible audio quality and an uncomfortable fit. But, on the bright side, you do get a few extra foam tips and a shirt clip. We did, however, like the wall USB charger. It’s small, compact, and looks stylish. Also included is the micro USB cable for charging and syncing.

Hardware & design

The HTC Desire is fully loaded when it comes to specs and features. Here are the tech-specs:

1GHz Snapdragon CPU
512MB ROM
384MB RAM
microSD card slot (8GB card included, max is 32GB)
3.7″ WVGA 480×800 capacitive multi-touch display
Internal GPS
5MP auto-focus camera w/LED flash
Bluetooth 2.1
1500mAh battery
Optical trackball

The overall design, at first glance, looks similar to a Nexus One or a Droid Eris, all of which are made by HTC. The main differences here is that the Desire has 5 actual buttons: Home, Menu, Single-Click, Back, Search.

The display on the Desire is quite nice. The colors and truly vibrant and most users will not be disappointed. Pictures look great, and the display works nice out in sunlight (albeit the brightness has to be at its maximum). The screen is quite responsive and multitouch works like you’d expect it to.

The 5 physical buttons have a decent “click” to them, and the optical trackball works very well. It’s not something we really need, but we honestly used it quite a bit. It’s was almost natural to use the optical trackball when scrolling up and down web pages instead of using the touch screen. We don’t know why!

At the top of the phone, you’ll find the 3.5mm headset jack and the power button, one of which we wish had more of a “clicky” feel to. You’ll find the volume rocker on the left side, and the micro USB port on the bottom.

If you’re looking for a front-facing camera, well then look elsewhere. This phone only features the 5.0MP camera, which is on the back of the phone. To the right of the camera is the LED flash and the speaker.

The front earpiece is very good. The audio quality is superb and the volume can get quite high. The overall clarity is perfect, and can’t get much better than that. The rear speaker, on the other hand, isn’t as good. The audio will easily become distorted at 3/4 to full volume, and even at the max volume, it just doesn’t sound very loud.

If weight is something you’re worried about, then you’ll probably want the Desire to go on a diet. With the battery installed, it’ll weigh roughly 135 grams. Honestly, we like having weight to our mobiles. Compared to the iPhone 4, this weighs a little more.

Camera (photos & videos)

Embarrassingly, we forgot to take our photos and videos off of the Desire before wiping it clean for shipment back to HTC. But, you aren’t missing much. The 5.0MP camera isn’t the best performer. Photos are somewhat dull, and videos were disappointing. For video resolutions, you can choose between 720p and 640×480. When trying to even view the live camera with the 720p video recording mode enabled, the frame rate and overall performance of the Camcorder application really suffered. While most users should feel satisfied with the photos, users of Windows Phone 7 devices or the iPhone 4 will be disappointed.

Software

The U.S. Cellular version of the HTC Desire comes preloaded with Android 2.1 (Eclair). Android 2.2 (FroYo) brings a lot of really needed and convenient features. U.S. Cellular is in charge of the update, and they have no time frame as to when they’ll actually release Android 2.2, or even if they’re working on the update. Keep in mind that this phone came out in August for U.S. Cellular.

On the other hand, Eclair performs like a champ. Applications open within 1 second and are fairly stable. Since this is a HTC phone, Android comes preloaded with HTC’s Sense user-interface. Most phones by various companies (Samsung, Motorola, etc) are able to put their own user interface (different looking layouts, graphics, sounds, etc) onto their handsets. The problem for Motorola and Samsung is that their interfaces are just beyond horrible. HTC makes such a beautiful interface that makes me wish every smartphone had it. Graphics look nice and the included homescreen widgets are very powerful and welcoming.

But, keep in mind that cell service providers are also able to load up whatever they want onto their phones. The U.S. Cellular version of the HTC Desire came preloaded with a number of quite useless applications, such as Myspace, some ringtone creator application, and a odd and confusing GPS program (the stock navigation/maps applications in Android are great). So (we shouldn’t exactly be saying this, but we had no choice), in order to remove these, you’ll have to root your device, which is extremely easy for the HTC Desire. After that was taken care of, we can easily remove the applications that we didn’t want. And finally, after doing that, our phone was bloatware-free and had a lot of extra space freed up. Regarding space… For applications, you’re limited to the 512MB ROM. You aren’t able to load applications onto a microSD card until Android 2.2 comes to the phone (or, if you root it), so if you’re app-hungry, you’ll be sorry.

The Android keyboard was very good. Now, I do hold the unofficial world record in virtual cell phone typing (hehe), and I was able to type extremely fast using the virtual keyboard on this phone. Android’s auto-correct algorithm is really good (although not implement as well as on iOS). Enough of the iOS comparisons! Maybe…

Web browsing and multimedia

Using Android 2.1′s stock Internet browser, web pages loaded fairly quickly. Although, on the majority of our tests, they didn’t load as fast as they did on our iPhone 4 (and of course, we cleared the history/cookies/cache before beginning our tests). The Desire didn’t lose by much (maybe a second or two), it still loaded pages quickly and rendered them properly. Multitouch is nothing like you’d expect if you’re coming from an iOS device. Using pinch-to-zoom isn’t smooth and isn’t as intuitive. This isn’t a problem of the phone’s hardware, but more of the actual software (Android).

Listening to music is a breeze. HTC did a nice job customizing Android’s stock music application. While it also quite isn’t as good as on the iPhone 4, it’ll do the job and suits the need of most listeners. Video playback is also good.

Battery life

Battery life is so-so. Smartphones are becoming more and more advanced, and people want to do more with them. This requires more battery life. The 1500mAh battery should be able to get you through the day. If you go any longer than that, then you may not wake up to it still being on.

Wrap-up

All-in-all, the Desire is quite the performer. It packs a great design, great feature set, and is, in the end, a great smartphone. There are some drawbacks, but those are primarily because of the software and can be fixed with a good ‘ol root or a software update (to Android 2.2, which we hope U.S. Cellular is working on). We give it a 4.0/5.0.