HTC Desire (U.S. Cellular) – Best phone from the service provider to date
HTC Desire was first announced at the Mobile World Congress 2010 and I expected this phone to arrive in the markets immediately. We had to wait seven months for it and I wonder why HTC held back this handset for so long. This phone might not have some of the greatest features that you’d yearn on a cell phone like HDMI port or front facing camera but the feature set is quite impressive and I was impressed by the performance. This is an excellent phone for U.S. Cellular whose lineup of smartphones has been lackluster of late. Till now, the only Android phone it has offered is Samsung Acclaim. In my opinion, this is the best smartphone that this carrier has came out with till now. This phone will come out in the US markets from August 27th and it will cost you $199.99 along with a two year contract and $70 mail in rebate.
Looks of this phone remind me of the Nexus One and it is a good thing because the N1 is really gorgeous. The handset is 4.7 inches tall, 0.5 inch thick, 2.4 inches wide and weighs around 4.76 ounces. It is not too big and not that small either. The screen of the phone is 3.7 inches and you get a resolution of 800×480 pixels. The display is really sharp and beautiful so videos, text, Web pages, photos, etc. will all look really good on the phone. The display is quite responsive and it supports pinch to zoom feature. This is a capacitive display and hence you will get an iPhone like experience.
HTC Desire has a physical buttons for search, back, menu, and home. On the left, there is a volume rocker along with a power button. On the top, there is a 3.5 mm headphones jack which lets you plug in any standard headphones on to the device. On the bottom, there is a microUSB port while on the back, you have the camera along with the flash.
The phone comes bundled along with wired stereo headset, USB cable, reference material, eight GB microSD card and AC adapter. The biggest difference between HTC Desire and the aforementioned HTC Nexus is that the former runs on HTC Sense instead of Android OS. I am a fan of Android OS especially because it is easy to get the updates. However, Sense is my favorite amongst all the custom skins because of the features it has which enhance the capabilities of the phone.
HTC Desire is runs on Android 2.1 and there will be Android 2.2 updates available later. U.S. Cellular hasn’t reveled when it will be done but I guess they should give it somewhere later this year. But till then, you will have to wait for the Flash Player 10 and other Froyo goodies. The Android experience on this phone is still very good and I liked the extras given by U.S. Cellular and HTC like My Contacts Backup, Navigator Deluxe, Peep, HTC’s Twitter client, etc.
