The HTC Desire : The Basics Explained | The Communication Blog

Friday, July 2, 2010

The HTC Desire : The Basics Explained

By Mark Walters

Taking a quick glance, one would think that the HTC Desire is almost a design twin to the Google Nexus One. It's almost the same inside, too. With the HTC Desire you get a 1GHZ Qualcomm Snapdragon Processor, GPS, A-GPS, a microSD, 512MB of flash and 265 MB of Ram. It also has the same sized (3.7") WVGA AMOLET screen and great curve, with a power button on the top of the device.

This device also has a proximity sensor and a compass so it's readily usable for augmented reality apps as well as HSDPA. The handset is Wi-Fi and Bluetooth ready. There's a 5 megapixel camera with an LED flash and the ability to capture 800x 480 video, which is slightly boosted from that of its predecessor. Both offer screen shortcuts to options like home, menu, back and search.

So what's the difference between the two phones? There actually aren't that many because HTC actually manufactured both phones. So, although, the Nexus One is officially a Google phone, for all intents and purposes it's actually a HTC handset. But HTC wouldn't ship an identical product with a different name though would they? Of course they wouldn't!

The HTC desire replaces the mechanical trackball on the front of the Nexus One and the touch sensitive buttons on the screen with hard shortcut keys and a button that provides more precise optical navigation. This move has been happening across the industry. BlackBerry, in fact, has done the same thing. Trackballs tend to be a little delicate and nobody wants the trackball to break while they're paying for an 18 or 24 month contract.

You'll get the HTC Sense UI which is also found on the HTC Hero if you purchase the HTC Desire. You obviously won't be getting that on the Nexus One as it's not an HTC product. The Sense UI is faster and much improved, incorporates other contact features, and serves to make the Nexus One look even more boring than it did before. Sense sports a "helicopter view" which works about the same way as Expose works on a Mac. Pinch the homescreen and it will display all the homescreen pages that you have running at the moment. You can tap the screen to capture the one you need or pinch back out because Desire supports multi-touch.

Which should you buy? There's really not a whole lot of difference between them. It mostly just comes down to personal preference. But if you really can't make up your mind, the fact that the HTC Desire was released after the Google Nexus One, may give it a little bit of an advantage.

About the Author:

The Communication Blog
Bookmark and Share

No comments:

Post a Comment

 

The Communication Blog Copyright © 2009