You probably all already know the reasons to get (or not to get) an iPhone 4 or a Motorola Droid X, but what about the often forgotten HTC Desire?
A HTC Desire Review can offer you an indepth look into the phone, however if you haven’t got time to read every little detail then here’s a helping hand of the HTC Desire top 5 features, which may entice you to buy this smartphone over the rest…
5. Android OS
Before we start going under the hood of Desire and looking into the technical specifications and hardware lets begin with our first top feature. At number five is the Android OS.
Things are looking good for Android at the moment. As we've covered recently, Google have allowed Android users to create their own apps online and for those who can't be bothered with designing apps themselves, a quick dip into the Android App market will unveil some great looking apps.
Swiftkey promises to revolutionise the way we type (apparently improving text and email speed by 50%) and it's free, as are some other great apps like retro cam (a fun photo editor) and Google Maps navigation, (satnav with turn by turn voice directions.)
Plus there's version 2.2 approaching which is sure to offer some exciting new features from Google.
4. Sense UI
In terms of the Desire what makes the Android OS so useful is the level of customisation on offer. To add a widget all you have to do is simply long-press the screen and a list of programs, widgets and folders will be presented to you. Android works so well on Desire because it runs alongside HTC's intuitive 'Sense 'user interface.
With so much going on in new handsets HTC's simple and intuitive Sense UI helps to push it above its competitors. Navigation is easy and at the core of sense are 7 different screens allowing you to completely modify your phone to suit your needs. You can manually shift from screen to screen but one of the best features of Sense is leap; hold down the home-screen for a couple of seconds and thumbnails of each screen appear allowing you to quickly locate and enable to correct screen which is great for multitasking.
3. Snapdragon Processor
None of the features of the Desire would be able to run as smoothly and efficiently as they do without its secret weapon the 1GHz Snapdragon processor. It's regarded as one of the fastest and best processors around at the moment and the desire would be nothing without it, it's that simple.
2. Touchscreen
Next up is the touch-screen. HTC have kept it simple with buttons. Replacing the traditional trackball is an optical track ball thus relieving the problems seen in the Blackberry Curve with the ball jamming and breaking. There's also home, menu and back and that's it.
Leaving the bulk of the handset as the 3.7" touchscreen and though there have been complaints about the screens clarity in bright sunlight, The Desire offers a sharper image than the HTC Legend due to its higher pixel density (240 dpi versus 160 dpi.) The AMOLED screen is large but overall the phone doesn't feel too bulky and it all fits together nicely.
1. Web Browser
At the core of latest smartphones is web browsing and web browsing is what the Desire does best. Pages always render fully zoomed-out and fitted perfectly across the whole screen plus there's flash support. So the basics are down, fast, good quality internet browsing but that's to be expected from a high end handset.
What make the Desire experience so good are the extra features crammed into the browser; the little things that truly make the smartphone smart like the ability to search a word on Wikipedia or translate text directly in the browser. Highlight the text as if you wanted to copy it and you will be prompted with three options, hit the search and there you go.
Copy and paste is standard too. Simply long press on any bit of text and two draggable pins will appear to select the text you want. Simple but very useful.
Is it what you want from a handset? What features do you like and what features would you like to see? Leave a comment below…
If you are looking to buy a HTC Desire then check out some HTC Desire Deals here.
One thought on “HTC Desire's Top 5 Features: Better Than the iPhone 4 or Droid X?”
The desire is a completely stunning phone, lovely to look at and great to use – for me, the big selling point over iPhone is the battery life, and the quality of the phone and screen. Droid X always feels a little bit too large for me.