HTC Desire review

The HTC Desire runs Android 2.1 and has the latest version of HTC’s Sense user interface sitting on top. This gives you a very user-friendly touch screen system. We especially like HTC’s Leap feature. Pinch-zoom on any main screen or double tap the Home key and you get thumbnails of all seven main screens. Tap one to go to it. Alternatively you can just finger-sweep the screen to move sequentially through screens.

Each of the seven screens can be populated with widgets, which include shortcuts to applications, individual contacts, web bookmarks and folders. It would be easy to have entirely separate screens for work and leisure related activities.

Mobile email is a key feature of any smartphone and the HTC Desire supports not only POP3 and IMAP accounts but also Exchange too. It can handle password protection and remote data wipe for enhanced security, which is a benefit business users and consumers alike will no doubt be pleased to see present.

The social side of things features highly too, of course. HTC’s own Twitter app HTC Peep is pre-installed and a new application called FriendStream brings together interactions across Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. The handset will also bring together your Google, Outlook and Flickr contacts in one place too, and flicking through them to decide who to contact and how is straightforward.

Standard Android features such as GPS, Wi-Fi and HSPA are all present, of course. Google Maps is pre-installed, and the HTC Footprints application lets you geolocate a place for swift return to it later on. This is something we’ve seen before in HTC devices, but it never gets the shout-out it really deserves.

The five megapixel camera shoots a decent picture and benefits from an LED flashlight and auto focus. Face detection and geotagging are among its capabilities, which add to its appeal.

We had no problems with call quality during the testing period. However, battery life could be an issue. As ever with high-end smartphones you need to have 3G data in use pretty much constantly and are likely to want to use GPS and Wi-Fi fairly heavily too. These are battery drains, and the 1400mAh battery is likely to struggle to get through a full day.

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