HTC Desire HD Androidphone Review: The Hungry Giant

    ★★★★ ☆


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

    Design


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

    HTC Desire HD
    Despite a slightly larger “shovel-like” Desire HD compared to HD2 (68x123x12 versus 67x121x11 mm), it is much more convenient in the hand. Other materials are affecting: the HD2 had too smooth soft-touch plastic and the same smooth, if not slippery, metal battery cover, and the new gadget had a slightly rough aluminum case with plastic inserts, which was already used in the usual 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 case 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 most successful way. The “main switch” on top is set too close to the front edge, and it is far from the first touch to the touch. The volume change rocker is completely sunk into the left end, and it is also quite difficult to find, but over time you can get used to it. here are the four mandatory “android” buttons under the screen are touch-sensitive, and this is not entirely good. Or rather, not at all good. I do not like it when, for the sake of "ryushechkam" under the knife is the functionality. There’s one solid giant button up there, but why touch these? And by the way, yes, in principle, in Android, I do not have enough buttons for receiving and hanging up calls.


    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 kind of took off the bottom cover, took out the SIM card and the SD-card ... where is the battery? User manuals are, of course, not our method, so it took me a while to make sure that the communicator’s power source is still removable. If you look closely, the long side plug has a small hook on its side, which seems to be made specifically for breaking off nails. Just below it lies the lithium-polymer rectangle. And between it and the socket there is still a bit of free space - why is there no place for a secret box? :)

    HTC Desire HD

    Display


    Before, it seemed to me that a 4.3 ”screen was too much. Too much for a phone and too little for a tablet. But, having walked with HD2 in my pocket for a long time, I realized that everything wasn’t so scary, so I didn’t cause any rejection from Desire HD. There are not many restrictions in this sense (it’s hard for people with short fingers, and they don’t manage to put all their pockets), but there are more than enough advantages: it’s easier to get to the large buttons on the screen, the movie on such a screen seems more beautiful, photos, games, maps, etc. There are no complaints about Super TFT - the viewing angles are in order, when you turn the picture almost does not fade. In the sun, the gloss naturally flashes, but there's nothing to be done about it. And under normal conditions, the colors are bright and rich.


    Power!


    The heart of Desire HD is the Qualcomm MSM 8255 GHz processor, and the brain is 768 MB of RAM. In other words, this is a very powerful communicator. There is no way to compare the performance of Desire HD and HD2 (well, unless you put Android on HD2, but for now it's some kind of perversion), so I launched the Quadrant Standart benchmark on regular Desire and on the new flagship.

    Performance HTC Desire HD
    The new flagship is more than one and a half times ahead of Desire.

    In terms of not synthetic, but in all-out performance, the phone also did not hit the dirt in the face. The claimed support for 3GP, 3G2, MP4, WMV, AVI and XVID is, the phone eats them and does not even choke HD-video.


    BY


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

    HTC hub

    It would seem that they made candy from Android using the Sense interface, what more could you want, where to go next? It turns out there is where! Starting from the original Desire, Taiwanese began to promote their own service, the HTC Hub, which allows you to control some of the handset functions from a special page on htcsense.com. It is very convenient, if suddenly the phone is missing somewhere in the apartment, click on the “Call” button in your account in order to “ping” the gadget in this way. 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 dessert - the ability to tick off “Like” applications in the Apps hub. Set checkboxes in the desktop browser, and a message appeared on your device suggesting you install them. Conveniently.


    Camera


    The eight-megapixel camera migrated to Desire HD from the overseas EVO 4G communicator. The module is powerful, it protrudes greatly outside the case (it will collect scratches, how to drink it!), In general, it makes the right impression.

    HTC Desire HD

    However, upon closer inspection, everything is not so great. The camera reacts terribly to changing light: just turn the lens slightly towards the light source and the screen darkens so that nothing can be made out.

    An example of shooting on a HTC Desire HD camera
    The final shots are obtained a little better - on the large monitor at least something can be disassembled, but still it does not work. I’m silent about night shooting. The flash helps only at a short distance, the rest is noises, noises, noises. Download image in full resolution

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




    And Desire HD does not have a hardware camera button. Desire Z has, but he doesn't. Sadness


    Working hours


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


    Competitor


    As a competitor to Desire HD on the Android platform, I would choose Samsung Galaxy S. The same big and powerful shovel, but with a super AMOLED screen. And now it costs to read 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 of HTC. And this is despite the fact that it is plastic and light through, and HTC is pleasantly weighty and metal. For me, the choice is obvious - this is the new Desire. Sense and the other little things that make HTC gadgets unlike the others are worth the money. But those who are not as finicky as I can doubt.

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