HTC Desire HD review

HTC is the master of reusing and repurposing components to produce new phone designs, but with its latest Android smartphone, the Desire HD, it has truly surpassed itself. It’s one of three smartphones in HTC’s current line-up to share almost identical hardware, joining the Windows Phone 7-based HD7 and the older Touch HD2, based on the previous generation Windows Phone 6.5.

Despite the different name, then, the Desire HD is a familiar face, and boasts the same strengths and weaknesses as its brethren. Its huge capacitive touchscreen is the main attraction. Measuring 4.3in from corner to corner, it’s bright, clear and lovely to look at – among the most glorious screens you’ll find on a smartphone today.

The resolution, despite the HD in the name, isn’t anything out of the ordinary. It’s a standard 480 x 800 resolution (lower than the smaller iPhone 4’s 960 x 640 Retina display), but that doesn’t put much of a dent in its appeal. Since the screen is TFT (HTC’s S-LCD variant), it isn’t grainy as OLED screens can appear, and it makes everything from photos to video look spectacular.

Elsewhere, the 8-megapixel camera, again a match for its stablemates, has autofocus, a twin-LED flash and 720p video recording. It shoots good photos – although not as good as the iPhone 4 or Nokia N8 – and is fine for casual snapping, but nothing more. And aside from lacking the neat kickstand of the HD7, the design is familiar too; with four touch buttons below the screen and a solid, luxurious feel.

Greased lightning

The main difference is in the operating system. The Desire HD sports Android 2.2 enhanced with HTC’s Sense user interface, and this makes it the best of the three. It’s highly responsive, much more so than the original Touch HD2.

Web pages render in the blink of an eye, while menus, lists and maps respond to prods, pokes and swipes of the finger with breathtaking speed. In our performance tests, the full BBC homepage appeared in six seconds flat over a fast Wi-Fi connection, and it took the same time to complete the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark.

Those scores make the Desire HD the fastest smartphone we’ve ever come across, and it’s a joy to use as a result. You’ll never experience juddering menus like you will on some budget phones; everything just works, and on this size of screen HTC’s Sense Android skin takes on a new dimension.

New features in this edition of Sense include a recent applications menu, which runs permanently along the top of the pull-down notifications menu; a universal, colour-coded inbox; and the ability to take speakerphone calls while still displaying the satnav screen (more of which later).

Turn the phone off and, as long as you don’t pull out the battery, it will restart in an instant. HTC’s Wi-Fi hotspot utility lets you use your phone’s 3G connection to connect other Wi-Fi-enabled devices to the internet.

Flash Harry?

The advent of Android 2.2 also means long-awaited support for Flash 10.1. Visit www.pcpro.co.uk with the HTC Desire HD and you’ll be able to watch the embedded video on the homepage. Go to the sports pages on the BBC website and you’ll be able to watch or listen to various clips hosted therein.

It’s nice to have the full web at your fingertips, but don’t for a moment imagine it’s the perfect mobile web-browsing experience. Much of the Flash video we looked at was jerky and stuttered during playback, while buttons designed for the mouse cursor – such as play full screen and volume controls – were fiddly to press. Flash games suffer from the same indignity, since they’re almost all designed with cursor and keyboard control in mind.

Weaknesses

Also of dubious worth is the satnav software HTC trumpets loudly in its various ad campaigns. Developed in conjunction with satnav experts Route 66, this allows you to download and store maps locally, so if you get lost in an area of weak signal you’ll still be able to find your way to your destination.

Alas, it isn’t all it first seems. For starters, it isn’t free: as an example, you pay £3.49 for a month of UK and Ireland coverage, £15 for a year, or £23 for a lifetime subscription, with traffic and speed cameras costing more on top. If that wasn’t bad enough, the way the software works (or rather doesn’t) is worse.

We found the interface confusing, the performance sluggish and the address search utterly woeful. We struggled to locate several residential addresses in London, none of which we’ve had any trouble with on any other satnav device. Fortunately, HTC hasn’t removed the free Google Navigation, which works superbly on the Desire HD’s huge screen.

That’s a small irritation next to the Desire HD’s biggest bugbear, however: battery life is simply appalling. After our 24-hour test, during which we make 30 minutes of phone calls, download a 50MB podcast, play audio on loop for an hour and then leave the phone checking email, the gauge had fallen to a meagre 30%, and adding Twitter and Facebook updates to this will only make things worse.

It lags a long way behind the competition. The iPhone 4 and the standard Desire scored 60% in the same test; the Nokia N8 achieved 70%, and the Samsung Galaxy S 50%. Without being careful, or uninstalling some of the core apps and services, there’s little prospect this phone will last past a single day of moderate use. If you use it heavily it won’t even make that.

Conclusion

That’s a real shame, because otherwise the Desire HD is a quality smartphone. The screen is fabulous, Android 2.2 and the 1GHz processor give it an impressive turn of speed, and HTC’s Sense user interface and customisations set it apart from the Android crowd.

But with such poor stamina there’s no way we can possibly recommend it, especially at such a high price.

Details
Cheapest price on contract	£30
Contract monthly charge	£25.00
Contract period	24 months
Contract provider	www.e2save.co.uk
Battery Life
Talk time, quoted	9hrs 10mins
Standby, quoted	20 days 10hrs
Physical
Dimensions	68 x 11.8 x 123mm (WDH)
Weight	164g
Touchscreen	yes
Primary keyboard	On-screen
Core Specifications
RAM capacity	768MB
Camera megapixel rating	8.0mp
Front-facing camera?	no
Video capture?	yes
Display
Screen size	4.3in
Resolution	480 x 800
Landscape mode?	yes
Other wireless standards
Bluetooth support	yes
Integrated GPS	yes
Software
OS family	Android