HTC Desire HD Android Review: The Hungry Giant

★★★★ ☆

Desire HD is a hybrid of two excellent HTC communicators: HD2 and Desire. From them he seemed to take all the best: from the first - dimensions and form, and from the second - design and materials. Everything in it is good - a big bright screen, a new, even more productive processor, Android Froyo with Sense shell, but here is the battery ...

Design

To date, Desire HD is in fact the largest phone in the entire HTC family - monsters like Advantage and Shift will not be taken into account. Externally, it looks a lot like Windows HD2, only, firstly, it is insignificant, but still larger, and secondly, if you look closely, it still contains more features of the standard Desire.


Despite even a slightly larger Desire HD “shovel shape” compared to HD2 (68x123x12 vs. 67x121x11 mm), it lies much more comfortable in the hand. Other materials have an effect: the HD2 had an overly smooth soft-touch plastic and the same smooth, if not to say slippery, metal battery cover, and the new gadget had a slightly rough aluminum body with plastic inserts that were already used in the ordinary Desire. They are located exactly where the fingers are usually located, if you hold the device with your right hand - in the lower part of the body and on the left side, so an expensive toy is unlikely to accidentally slip out.

Buttons

There are only three mechanical keys on the phone, and they are located, in my opinion, not in the best way. The “main switch” is set on top too close to the leading edge, and it is far from the first time to the touch. The volume change switch is completely recessed into the left end, and it is also quite difficult to grope, but with time you can get used to it. Here are four mandatory "android" buttons under the screen touch, and this is not very good. Rather, not at all good. I don’t like it when functionality comes to the "ryushechkam" for the knife. Over there is one solid giant button, but why should I touch these? And, by the way, yes, in principle, I don’t have enough buttons for receiving and rejecting calls in Android.
')

Connectors

In this model, HTC decided to approach the placement of removable elements in a special way. The battery and card slots are in different compartments! At first it was even incomprehensible: I sort of took off the bottom cover, took out the sim card and the SD card ... where is the battery? The user manuals are, of course, not our method, so it took me some time to make sure that the communicator’s power source was removable. If you look closely, the long side cap on the side has a small hook made, it seems, specifically for breaking off the nails. Just under it lies the lithium-polymer rectangle. And between him and the panel there is still some free space - why not a place for the secret? :)

Display

Previously, it seemed to me that a 4.3 ”screen is too much. Too much for the phone and too little for the tablet. But, having spent a long time in my pocket with HD2, I realized that everything is not so scary, so Desire HD did not cause any rejection to me. There are not many restrictions in this sense (for people with short fingers it is hard to put in all pockets), but there are plenty of advantages: you can hit the big buttons on the screen, the movie on this screen seems more beautiful, photos, games, maps, etc. There are no complaints about Super TFT - the viewing angles are fine, when you rotate the picture almost does not fade. The gloss of the sun, of course, glare, but there's nothing to be done. And under normal conditions, the colors are bright and juicy.

Power!

The heart of Desire HD is a Qualcomm MSM 8255 gigahertz processor, and the brain is 768 MB of RAM. In other words, it is a very powerful communicator. It’s impossible to compare the performance of Desire HD and HD2 (well, except that Android can be installed on HD2, but so far this is a perversion), so I ran the Quadrant Standart benchmark on the usual Desire and on the new flagship.


New flagship more than a half times overtaken Desire

In terms of not synthetic, but real-world performance, the phone also did not lose face. The claimed support for 3GP, 3G2, MP4, WMV, AVI and XVID is there, the phone eats them and even HD-video does not choke.

BY

I am convinced that the main feature of HTC is not iron. Someone else, maybe ... But gigahertz processors, gigabytes of memory and other superdisplays of HTC gadgets wouldn’t deliver so much without well-designed software! Android in the form in which it is supplied by Google, even at this stage is not as convenient as we would like. Therefore, HTC diligently removes all the irregularities with a file, and then also polishes it carefully, so that there is no feeling that you bought a soulless lump of steel and plastic for 30 thousand rubles.



It would seem that they made candy from Android using the Sense interface, what more could you want, where to go further? It turns out that there is much! Starting from the original Desire, Taiwanese have begun to promote their own service, the HTC Hub, which allows you to manage some of the functions of the handset from the special page on htcsense.com. It is very convenient, if suddenly the phone got lost somewhere in the apartment, click on the “Call” button in your account, so that it “zaps” the gadget. And if the phone is completely lost, or “lost”, you can remotely erase all data from it or block it. In addition, Footprints, contacts and messages are synchronized in the background. For sweetness - the ability to tick "Like" applications in the Apps hub. I put ticks in the desktop browser, and a message appeared in the communicator with a suggestion to install them. Conveniently.

Camera

Eight-megapixel camera migrated to the Desire HD from the overseas communicator EVO 4G. The module is powerful, strongly protruding beyond the case (will collect scratches, how to drink to give!), In general, makes the desired impression.



However, upon closer inspection, everything is not so great. The camera reacts terribly to changes in lighting: you only have to turn the lens slightly towards the light source, and the screen darkens so that nothing can be disassembled.


The final pictures are a little better - on a large monitor at least something can be disassembled, but still it is no good. About night shooting generally keep quiet. The flash helps only at a short distance, the rest - the noise, noise, noise. Download image in original resolution

Video is also not a fountain. 720p, but what a! Pixels are solid ...




And Desire HD does not have a hardware camera button. Desire Z has, but it does not. Sorrow!

Working hours

Another sad moment is the battery life of the phone. Everything is not as scary as with a camera, but nevertheless ... Eight hours of battery life is not much at all. Rather, for such a powerful thing, in a very dense mode of use, probably not bad, but I still want more. I want at least 12 hours, but such indicators can be achieved only by turning off the push and switching to GSM only mode. Yes, this is an option, but such devices do not buy in order to abandon the functionality.

Competitor

As a competitor to Desire HD on the Android platform, I would choose the Samsung Galaxy S. It’s the same big and powerful shovel, but with a super AMOLED screen. And now it is worth reading a third less. But on the other hand, when he first appeared, they asked for much more money for him than for the current flagship HTC. And this is despite the fact that it is completely plastic and light, and HTC is pleasantly weighty and metallic. For me, the choice is obvious - this is the new Desire. Sense and other little things that make HTC gadgets different from others are worth the money. But those who are not as picky as I can be in doubt.