Telstra HTC Desire Review

Telstra HTC Desire

Preamble

Writing up a holistic and fair-minded review of the HTC Desire was actually a much harder exercise than I anticipated.

To begin with, no matter how balanced and unbiased I say I am or try to be, the fact of the matter is that I spend more time with my mobile phone than with any other entity in my life. More than with any single piece of clothing, more than with my wallet or keys, and by a long shot more than with any person. My mobile is with me 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year.

My phone of choice for the past 12 months has been a black, 32 gigabyte iPhone 3Gs. I have had this phone for exactly 337 days today, and with the exception of a 45 minute window in January where I accidentally left it in a friends car (instantly causing a state of panic, but with thanks to Find My iPhone, I had it back before the end of the hour), I have not been more than 2 metres from my iPhone in that time period.

Needless to say, I love my iPhone. I have since the moment I got it. It's help me find my way when I've been lost, it's settled many disputes, it's left me never having one of those "Oh, where have I seen that actor before" moments, it's let me show people my adventures and share in theirs.

It's enriched my life in so many ways, and that's something that few pieces of technology can honestly say these days.

So my goal with the HTC Desire was to try and see if it could not only replace my use of my iPhone, but also exceed my expectations.

The First Impression

Unboxing the Desire is much like unboxing most pieces of gadgetry these days, you're giddy with excitement, and cannot wait to take the device out of it's little cocoon, and show it the light of day. Whilst most people don't care about the packaging, it is worth noting that HTC is getting very good at making it's product unboxing just as exciting as any Apple product. Everything is geared towards you getting the Desire in your hand and booted up.

Once booted, I experienced something I haven't experienced in quite some time. The screen made me smile. If you've used any modern touchphone (iPhone, Blackberry, Nokia) and you've not popped into a JB Hi-Fi or Telstra store to play with the desire, I suggest you do. The screen on it is just brilliant. It's brighter, the colours are better, it's crisper than any other screen you've seen lately.

The amount of pixels per inch is higher than you average laptop, higher than the iPhone, and WAY higher than any TV you've ever bought. The screen is the part of the phone you see and interact with more than anything, so having such a beautiful and clear screen just makes you want to USE this phone.

The customisation

Again, like most pieces of tech, the first thing I do is play around with the settings, open up all the applications that look interesting, and just get a general feel for how the thing works.

A few things came to mind after playing with the Desire for a good half hour. Firstly, I'm going to get this out of the way (and I know some people will get angry at me for saying this, but) the responsiveness of the touch interface just is not as good as on the iPhone. Things jitter more, or move a split second after you've told it to. Not all the time, but enough of the time that you notice it, and that can make a difference if you're the type of person who gets irked by little things like that.

Having been used to the iPhone paradigm of "your applications ARE your home screen", the idea of having an actually home screen that streams information and widgets was a bit foreign. But after I got over my Apple brainwashing, I realised that I actually really love the idea of having widgets and shortcuts on my home screen.

Needless to say, the discovery that I could put instant shortcuts to common things (such as sending an SMS to a specific person, or signing into a specific venue on Foursquare) started making me ask why the heck this feature isn't on an iPhone.

I happen to be one of those people who sync all their contacts to Gmail, so when it asked me for my Google username and password, it just brought everything down 100% hassle free. If you're one of those people who use a Mac (like me), I suggest using Busy Calc or similar application to get all your contacts into Gmail. If you're on PC, you should buy a Mac or ask someone else how to go about syncing your contacts into the cloud.

The Workflow

So after customising my Desire to a satisfactory level, my next key task, was to set up my Desire so I could use it with work applications, namely, setting up my email and calendars. My workplace uses Microsoft Exchange for mail and calendars, so I was pleased to discover than unlike other Android handsets (Hero, Nexus One, etc) the desire actually has full Exchange support. It lets you view multiple calendars, lets you accept, decline or even create calendar events. It does all the stuff that up until now made the Android a no-go for business use.

The mail application itself isn't quite as fantastic as I thought it would be, but then, the iPhone's mail app isn't the best either. The HTC mail application, despite being well designed and laid out, feels like it's wasting a whole bunch of screen space by rounding corners and making bubble effects of icons. I think mobile email is still one area where the physical-keyboard Blackberry handsets rule, and phone manufacturers need to remember the mindsets that people are often in when using these apps. You want to get through these emails as quickly and efficiently as possible, so don't waste my time with massive polished icons that add nothing to my experience.

Other than that small gripe, the productivity tools are fantastic, and very usable. The calendaring tool lets you instantly bring up maps of your meeting location, and all that jazz that you'd expect of a modern smartphone.

The Marketplace

Now that everything was in place, and my phone was essentially where I wanted it to be, I thought I'd start by getting some fresh apps onto the device. I'll start by saying this, the Android Marketplace truly does feel like a marketplace. Other than a couple of filters, it feels hard to find good apps. You pretty much need to search for anything you want to find. There doesn't seem to be that same showcasing of interesting apps that you get in the iTunes store, nothing to inspire me to just browse for apps rather than search for specific ones. None the less, the selection is pretty vast, and there's more or less and app to fill any need you may have.

The downside of being an iPhone user, is that you go into Android expect certain apps to be there. Tweetie for example (now known as Twitter on iPhone) is beyond a doubt one of the best Twitter applications out there, but sadly, it's not available in Android. Twicca seems to have settled in as my Tweeting application of choice.

Despite there being a wide selection of applications, including some phenomenal Android-only applications (Google Goggles, Barcode), the quality of Android apps feels to be a little lower than that of iPhone apps. They all seems to be slightly less polished, slightly less thought-through and slightly more rushed. Almost like the iPhone apps felt back when the App store first opened, which is why I hold hope that this is only a temporary state of affairs for the Android Marketplace.

So most of the apps I would want and use are now installed. I have my three most important apps (Foursquare, Facebook, Twitter) and a handful of fun different ones that I'll only every use once a month (Urbanspoon, Ustream, etc..). What I notice is missing from all this, is the games. I hunted down a few interesting games, but again, the quality of gaming on Android doesn't seem up to par with the iPhone experience. Whenever you talk to somebody who's just bought a new iPhone, they're almost guaranteed to tell you about some interesting game they've installed as one of the first points of conversation, "Oh, I installed Bookworm, and it's awesome, and my score is blah blah blah". Android doesn't seem to have that effect, and I'm not sure if it's because all the game developers haven't embraced the platform yet, or because games aren't pushed as much by Android or what, but the selection just isn't as good.

The Surprises

After several days of use is when you start to get the real surprises by the device. The things that you might not have known to be possible, that make you smile and go "damn, that's cool". My first one of these was after installing a little app that adds a microphone icon to the keyboard. It essentially lets you voice-to-text anything anywhere across the device. So when I am in the car, driving along the motorway and I want to write somebody an SMS, I just press the little icon, and say what I want to say "Hey, just on the M4, running about 15 minutes late" and it translates my voice into text! Purely amazing, and infinitely useful, especially if you spend a fair bit of time in the car.

Now, the more you say, the longer it'll take to turn it into text, but it usually does it in no more than 20 or so seconds, and usually pretty accurately (as long as you speak slowly and clearly). I truly hope that this is a feature that can be built into every phone with in the next few years, as I found myself using it more and more often.

A bad surprise I discovered was the keyboard. Now, yes, it is a software keyboard, so much like the iPhone, if you're not used to it, it takes a bit of a learning curve. But after a full week of use, I just could not get the Desire's keyboard to do what I want it to. It constantly thinks I press different letters to the ones I do, and it has a predictive input algorithm (kinda like T9 on the old Sony Ericssons) that just always gets it wrong. And the space bar isn't long enough, so all my words are separated by full stops instead of spaces.

My biggest surprise was actually a comparative one. After using the Desire for several days almost non-stop, my iPhone's screen looked completely washed out. The colours looked dull, the blacks looked grey, and it just my iPhone look dated. Again, the power of a brilliant screen should not be underestimated.

The Verdict

All in all, I'm not almost three weeks with my Desire, and I have to say, I plan to continue using it. Not on it's own, but in tandem with the iPhone. Having been an Optus customer for the past two years, and Vodafone for 10 years before that, using the Telstra Next G network has been eye opening. I cannot remember ever having been able to make a phone call from a lift or a carpark before, and data is just blazing fast. The HTC Desire is a fantastic piece of hardware, and with the pace at which Google is updating Android, I think most of my gripes will be answered within the next release or two, and is enough to keep me using the handset.

Would I recommend the Telstra HTC Desire to you? Well, that depends. If you want a modern smartphone, but hate Apple or hate iPhones, then yes, without a doubt. I would buy it in a heartbeat over any BlackBerry or Nokia out there and don't even get me started on Samsung/LG phones.

If you are looking to buy a new iPhone and want to be swayed? I'd say if you're the kind of person who likes to tinker, and wants to be able to highly customise your phone, then yes. If you just want a phone, and don't care for customisation, but want to be able to do multiple things with it, then I'd still say go with the iPhone.

If you have an iPhone right now, well, this device will certainly build on many aspects of the iPhone that you have and love, but will fall short if you're addicted to specific apps.

So that's my thoughts on the HTC Desire, and a big thanks to Telstra for letting me be part of the reviewing experience. If you have any specific questions about the handset or my experience you want to ask, just hit up a comment below, and I'll respond.