HTC Desire HD Mobile Phone Review

The latest mobile phone out of HTC the HTC Desire HD, this mobile phone reminds me of the HTC HD2 minus the Windows mobile operating system. As far as I am aware with the Froyo update the now ‘standard’ HTC Desire supports full HD.

My first impressions of the HTC Desire HD, it’s beautiful followed by it’s huge and it is heavy, its cold and feels good in my hand.

The 4.3 inch capacitive touchscreen display has an impressive 800 x 480 pixel count and under the hood is 1Ghz snapdragon processor, 768Mb of RAM and a needed 1.5Gb of internal storage which can be added to via microSD cards up to 32Gb.

Turning the phone over, the back has a convex camera lens which rises from the case ever so slightly. The camera is 8 mega pixels, auto focus and a dual LED flash. This handset is capable of taking good 720p HD videos. There is also a speaker grill on the back and inscribed on the bottom of this mobile phone mentions Dolby Mobile and SRS virtual surround sound technology being inside this handset. The sound quality is superior to other handsets though they don’t beat a good set of headphones . . ever . .

Battery life, the Desire HD features a 1230mAh battery that is ‘quoted’ as giving 5 hours talktime and 20 days standby time on 3G, we didn’t have long enough to test out the actual battery life of the HTC Desire HD but recommend to purchase a spare or keep a charger at work / in the car just in case, all new smartphones are juicy and when you first get them you will use them a lot more than normal so they may seem to run out of juice more quickly.

Of course, the HTC Desire HD also has GPS and Google Maps Navigation integrated, the 800 x 460 display makes this device a very good mobile phone with in car navigation. HTC have also created there own free voice guided satnav software which seems to be cached on the phone itself, I know only to well the perils of using Google Maps for in car navigation!

As well as having GPS connectivity the phone boasts 3g mobile connectivity up to 12Mbs, Bluetooth and wireless giving it the full connectivity package. What more would you expect from a high end smartphone?

The HTC Desire HD is a unibody design cased entirely in aluminium making it durable and light (though the HTC Desire ‘standard’ is smaller).

Android devices such as this one have full access to the Android Marketplace which is home to literally thousands of applications for just about everything. HTC have also launched HTCSense.com which allows you to synchronise your phone with there online servers creating a backup facility for you. HTCSense.com has a remote lock feature which displays a message including the owners telephone number. Other features of this service allow you to wipe it should it actually be lost and forward your calls and messages to another number.

Conclusion

In conclusion I really like it, if I was upgrading or looking for a new contract it would be between this the HTC Desire Z & Samsung Galaxy S i9000. The Desire Z comes with a slide out qwerty keyboard making it a more suitable business phone, inclusion of Dolby technology, more RAM and internal storage are a welcomed addition compared to the HTC Desire which has awful sound quality through loud speaker and not enough space to store all the apps you want ( this was addressed in Froyo 2.2 ‘apps to SD card’ update BUT many applications still have to be installed to your internal storage including the recently released Skype for Android ). The design and feel remains the same as Android and HTC Android enabled smartphones, so upgrading from an older model is relatively easy to adjust.

HTC Desire HD
Design
Slick aluminium unicase design
Weight
Quite heavy and not overly pocket friendly
Features
Full connectivity, internet, camera etc
Battery Life
Better than the HTC Desire on paper
Phone Cost
Not cheap at all, estimates say this phone may be on par with iPhone4

Overall
High end smartphone with every feature you could want