HTC Desire HD: A Loving Affair

Ever since we saw the HTC Evo roll out across the US, we’ve been longing for a taste ourselves. The original Desire was welcomed with open arms and put the Taiwanese manufacturer firmly back on the map. (The rocky lifespan of the HTC HD2 did more damage to the company than anyone would like to admit) And so they did it, HTC brought their Evo 4G across the pond, and with a swift name change to piggyback on it’s predecessors success, it became the HTC Desire HD.

The Desire HD works the same premium metallic moulding of the unibody variety as the original Desire and Legend but unlike its fellow Androiders, the bodywork is no longer seamless. Harsh grooves in the frame provide a modern twist on the heavy-duty industrial styling, while the front panel is swallowed up by the 4.3” sheer glass display, which is a darn impressive platform to work on. The Super LCD capacitive technology plays some part in making this device a pleasure to use and despite what many a critic might say we think it easily equals its AMOLED counterparts. It does however, fall short when pitted against the Super variety but that’s to be expected and yes we know it’s pedantic but the Desire HD does have an extra 0.3” on the souped up Galaxy S. This extra room, believe it or not, improves handling or so we like to think, especially when taking full advantage of the multi-touch gestures such as pinch zoom. Ten minutes in and the Desire HD’s screen is just as responsive as when it was first turned on, however, some of this success has to be attributed to the 1GHz Snapdragon processor lurking within.

Harnessing the power of the dragon HTC use this natural resource to fuel the HTC Sense UI and keep Android 2.2 ticking over nicely. There’s enough juice to power the HTC Desire HD for almost 500 hours, and that includes sharing it among all those spangly apps that are sitting tight. There are a few new ones which are worth mentioning the first is Car Dock, which as you can probably guess helps users get to grips with their handset in the car, it’s particularly handy for those who want to crack open the maps function and use the HD as a navigation tool. Couple the Car Dock with the capability to pre-cache maps and forget the phone, you’ve got a ruddy decent sat nav right there. Another new feature is media sharing, fire this function up and you can flaunt your latest pics, vids and music across your TV and PC via DLNA. Nothing groundbreaking we know, but as that big ol supermarket keeps telling us, every little helps.

The merge of Android and HTC across the interface hasn’t strayed that far from the original Desire, that 1GHz processor we’ve been raving on about purrs along, allowing you to whip across screens without needing to engage your brain or put any pressure on your fingertips. This quality has been rolled out across the entire handset and where it really comes into it’s own is the web. Internet browsing is fantastic. The detail and sharpness is better than expected from an LCD screen and added features such as text reflow make usability second to none. Basically what this feature does is allow the user to zoom in (via pinch zoom or otherwise) and it’ll resize the text perfectly to fit the screen. It doesn’t sound like much, but the HD gets the ratio perfect every time and without any blurry edges.

The media inventory is satisfactory, it’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but considering this was meant to be an upgrade from the original we expected a little bit more. The music player doesn’t seem to have been touched since it made it’s first appearance on the Legend, but in it’s defense it is easy to use and it does the job. There’s an added bonus of SRS surround sound enhancement and Dolby Mobile, so if you’re into your music you’ll have a few extras to ensure sound quality is at its best. The HTC Desire HD’s packing an 8megapixel camera with all the trimmings, including autofocus, dual-LED Flash, face detection and geotagging. It also supports video recording at 720p allowing you to capture and playback footage in HD.

The only downside to the Desire HD is the meager 1.5GB of internal storage. Considering this is a supposed multimedia device, we can’t imagine any media geek settling for less than 2GB. Yes, there is of course a microSD slot, which could potentially bump you up to 34GB, but even so plenty of less-deserving smartphones have a least 2GB internally.

It’s difficult to look at the HTC Desire HD as an individual, it will always be compared to the original, and in some respects that’s no bad thing. The Desire sent HTC hurtling into big boy territory and anything that can build on that success will always get the thumbs up from us. All it needs to do now is brush over the memory bloop and attempt to stand out from the rest of the already overcrowded Android market.