I wouldn’t blog review that’s too technical or in depth, since there are multiple web site already done that and they are more professional when it comes to this regards. I do not have the privilege or $$ to afford me to review ever single tech that is available. Though I will love to give them a trial run and give some personnel opinion. Here are some of the site that you can visit for a more technical/ professional reviews, for more you need to do your own research :p
Here’s a fast quick snap to show you the difference between my old HTC Touch against HTC Desire, you can see that the Desire real estate is way bigger than Touch. The width is about the same and Desire is slighty thinner than Touch for a few mm.
Initially, I though I will take me a while to get use to the size difference, but surprisingly it only took a day to acquire the size and I don’t feel much difference bringing Desire compare to Touch. Of coz, the huge 3.8” screen is a joy to use.
The performance of Desire is real freaking fast thanks to the 1Ghz SnapDragon processor and 16million color display do make the whole OS look more colourful, more contrast and sharper than Touch. The hand on experience that I have with HD2 if not mistaken is pretty similar to Desire; and I remember that HD2 didn’t wow me with the colour contrast due to limitation of WM6 which only capable to produce 65k colour. . . Since I do not have a HD2 so can’t compare the performance, but I can pretty sure the core function of the OS is the same with Touch.
OK, the major beef I have against Desire thus far is the battery! I have tried various ways and cutting some of the active function and I can hardly get my battery pass 5pm without it running dangerously low. So far by 12pm i will have around 50%~65% with light usage of music listening, 1~2 OTA sync and etc which is pretty light usage. Desire somehow have problems with Bluetooth power management, bluetooth will eat my battery for lunch!!! Where my touch with bluetooth connected to my headset can still last me almost a day with phone call, sms, and music listening, for Desire wise it wouldn’t be able to last me pass 2pm. I was like “What the heck is HTC designer is thinking!!? Why give such a beauty to the mass and yet crippler it with battery life!!?” I think I will happily paid another %50~$100 more for another 4~5 hour juices from a single charges. Official spec mention that with 3G on, it can only last 8 hour. . .
Then the 2nd problems I have is the limitations of available in build storage, I have downloaded approx 40+ apps into my androids and the phone have left approx 20mb and it started to prompt low memory warning once I try to download a few more apps. Since Android wouldn’t be able to install apps into SD card instead so I am stuck with the apps I have, if I want more I will need to uninstall some of the apps to give space for it. Windows phone can install applications straight to memory even as far as I can remember. Froyo 2.2 update by right should fix this issues by allowing apps to install to SD card, but the problems will still persist since it require the developer to enable this functions on their apps. No wonder so many Android user choose to root their phone in order to gain the ability to install apps into SD card. For me once I got my hand on a 16Gig Micro SD Card, I will most likely try to root my device also, or even try up the unofficial 2.2 ROM that is available atm.
I have this phone for almost 2 week, and I haven’t physically connect my phone to PC even one!!! Given that I use my old memory card which already consist most of my data (pictures, music, documents etc), but until now I still not need to connect to PC it show the ability of cloud computing. I get my contact, email, calendar, RSS news, apps download, status and documents all in sync and updated through internet. My Touch can get very close to it but I will still need to connect to PC through USB cable for calendar, documents sync and applications installation. Try this with iPhone?
Android with HTC sense by itself is wonderful, it give you 7 pages of Home tag to put whatever programs, widget arrangement the way you like it. If not mistaken, Nexus one give you 5pages while some Android device only give 3, 3pages of home tag will kind of cripple your user experiences depends on how you use it. With windows mobile, you are stuck with one screen with limited usage, though HTC sense on winmo allow you have various tag but it still no ways as flexible as the android version.
Then the rest is pretty similar even if you want to compare to other phone OS, android, winmo, iOS, web OS, blackberry all can do phone call, SMS, email, you tube, facebook and etc. So which one work better I think is depends on user preferences, for music and video playback I will said iOS is the king. Push notifications with email, SMS, device security I think Blackberry is still one of the best? For Android I think their multitasking ability is one of the best? Since I didn't really try blackberry and web OS so I can’t commend on their multitasking functions. Web browsing I will said Android have a bit of upper hand due to flash handling. You can said and argue as much as HTML5 being is the future (which I 100% agree with you), but it will take at least a years to 3 for web to fully embrace html5 (lot’s of site not even adopted to the web 2.0 standard yet), so flash is here to stay. Who know how flash will turn out in 2~3years time? Personally I think html5 and flash will continue to co-exist with one another.
Android contacts linkage with your social site like facebook, twitter, my space is a functions that you will wish you have try it earlier. Once you take the time to import your contacts to google contact, they will try to link your facebook / twitter / my space / flicker account automatically. Of course you will need to setup your facebook / twitter account in your phone in order to work. For some case where the link wasn’t setup properly, you then have to manually link the contact one by one; but once this is done, you can see their status updates on the contact pages, and also some other info like birthday (if they updated that in FB and you didn’t have it on your Google contacts)
For all of you considering of getting Desire, my advise is that if you can wait for another 6 month or so, please do. Because by then I’m pretty sure better HTC android device will surface and better pray that it come with at least 8G built in storage (with that I don’t think you will run into any storage problems, but of coz do get additional micro SD card for your video / movie needs while the built in storage for the system & apps usage). But if you absolutely cannot wait, HTC desire is one of the best hand phone you can get yourself into.
That’s about it for this moments, if you feel like knowing more about it, do drop in a comment and I will see what I can do.
