HTC Desire
Encyclopedia
The HTC Desire is a smartphone
developed by the HTC Corporation, announced on 16 February 2010 and released in Europe and Australia in the second quarter of the same year. The HTC Desire runs the Android operating system, version 2.2 "Froyo". Internally it bears a strong resemblance to the Nexus One
, but differs in some features.
, Cellular South
, Cox Wireless
, nTelos Wireless
, Cellcom, and United Wireless in southwest Kansas. In Canada, the device was released by Telus Mobility on 6 August 2010.
In Europe, the carriers are Elisa in Finland, Vodafone UK, Vodafone Ireland, Meteor Irl, BT Broadband Anywhere, T-Mobile UK, O2, Orange UK, 3, and Virgin Mobile UK. In Australia, it is exclusive to Telstra
. In Japan, Softbank
Mobile started sales in April. In Turkey, Vodafone started sales in late November 2010.
In South Korea, SK Telecom began sales in May 2010.
In Singapore, the official launch date was 14 May 2010, and the phone has been for sale by all carriers subsequently.
In mainland China, HTC launched its four flagship smartphones including the Desire on 27 July 2010. Unlike in other markets, the device will be shipped with Android 2.2 ("Froyo").
Many of the UK mobile networks have been unable to keep up with demand; Virgin Mobile UK, Vodafone UK, 3, T-Mobile UK and Orange UK are some of the networks experiencing very high demand. The ash produced by the 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull
led to some customers waiting a month getting their HTC Desires due to much of European airspace being closed.
In India, HTC and TATA DOCOMO, the GSM brand of Tata Teleservices Limited, announced a partnership to launch HTC Desire in India on 16 August 2010. However, as of mid 2011 onwards, the availability has dropped sharply. This decline in availability is not unusual in India where it becomes extremely hard (close to impossible) to find older model of electronic and computer devices once a newer model enters the market.
processor, includes a 5 megapixel auto-focus camera and an optical trackpad, and was among the first consumer devices to feature a large, full-color active-matrix OLED
(AMOLED) display.
During late Q2 2010, HTC made the decision to switch the Desire's display to a S-LCD panel, manufactured by the company S-LCD a co-operative between Sony and Samsung. Although this was brought on by a severe AMOLED panel supply shortfall, the new display greatly enhances text readability because of its improved effective resolution, one of the few complaints people had with the original Desire model. Compared to the original AMOLED display, the SLCD display has more accurate color reproduction, far less susceptibility to burn-in, similar peak brightness and optimal viewing angles, but a lower contrast ratio. The new SLCD display was claimed to have similar or better power efficiency compared with the original AMOLED display; however, this has proved to not always be the case because with AMOLED pixels' ability to completely turn off, black or dark pixels use very little power. However, in situations when the screen is predominantly bright (such as when viewing many web pages), the AMOLED display uses more power.
The hardware is capable of high-definition (720p) video recording and playback; the 720p video recording feature has been added to the HTC Desire when updating to the official HTC modified Android 2.2 firmware.
HTC has released a software update to upgrade the Desire to Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). Originally, they planned to do this in June 2011. However, on 14 June 2011, HTC announced via Facebook that there would be no Gingerbread update for the HTC Desire, citing memory constraints. This is because HTC had been unable to fit both Gingerbread and HTC Sense together in the phone's 250 MB system partition. However, on the 15th of June, less than 24 hours after stating they would not update to gingerbread, they released a statement saying the Desire would receive the gingerbread update after all with the possibility of some apps being cut. The update was finally released for download from HTC's developer website on the 1st August 2011, and is not available as an over-the-air update.
. The differences found in the Desire are:
Because of the strong similarity to the Nexus One "developer phone", the Desire enjoys a highly active third-party developer community. The Desire subforum is one of the most active at xda-developers
, and notably CyanogenMod
and MIUI
are available for the device.
awarded the phone 5 out of 5 stars and stated "In short, this is a phenomenal phone—one of the best we've ever had."
From TechRadar's 'Top 15 best mobile phones in the world', the HTC Desire is simply the best so far: "It's like a Nexus One
only better. For this reason, the HTC Desire has entered our top 10 at number 1, and the Google Nexus One has dropped out completely. It's tough at the top."
MobileTechWorld found the HTC Desire to be a fairly capable product that "manages to please casual users with HTC’s flashy Sense UI and geeks who love to tweak their handsets on a daily basis thanks to the Google’s Android OS."
Smartphone
A smartphone is a high-end mobile phone built on a mobile computing platform, with more advanced computing ability and connectivity than a contemporary feature phone. The first smartphones were devices that mainly combined the functions of a personal digital assistant and a mobile phone or camera...
developed by the HTC Corporation, announced on 16 February 2010 and released in Europe and Australia in the second quarter of the same year. The HTC Desire runs the Android operating system, version 2.2 "Froyo". Internally it bears a strong resemblance to the Nexus One
Nexus One
The Nexus One was Google's flagship smartphone manufactured by Taiwan's HTC Corporation. It became available on January 5, 2010 and uses the Android open source mobile operating system...
, but differs in some features.
Availability
In the United States, the device is available from, Alltel, U.S. CellularU.S. Cellular
United States Cellular Corporation, d.b.a. U.S. Cellular , owns and operates the sixth largest wireless telecommunications network in the United States, behind Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, Sprint Nextel, T-Mobile USA, and Metro PCS. , they serve about 6.1 million customers in 126 markets in...
, Cellular South
Cellular South
Cellular South Inc., doing business as C Spire Wireless, headquartered in Ridgeland, Mississippi, is the eighth largest wireless provider in the United States. C Spire has approximately 900,000 customers in Mississippi, the Memphis Metropolitan Area, the Florida Panhandle, parts of Alabama...
, Cox Wireless
Cox Communications
Cox Communications is a privately owned subsidiary of Cox Enterprises providing digital cable television, telecommunications and wireless services in the United States...
, nTelos Wireless
NTelos
nTelos is a wireless telecommunications company based in Waynesboro, Virginia, United States. nTelos is a provider of PCS services to customers.- Wireless services :...
, Cellcom, and United Wireless in southwest Kansas. In Canada, the device was released by Telus Mobility on 6 August 2010.
In Europe, the carriers are Elisa in Finland, Vodafone UK, Vodafone Ireland, Meteor Irl, BT Broadband Anywhere, T-Mobile UK, O2, Orange UK, 3, and Virgin Mobile UK. In Australia, it is exclusive to Telstra
Telstra
Telstra Corporation Limited is an Australian telecommunications and media company, building and operating telecommunications networks and marketing voice, mobile, internet access and pay television products and services....
. In Japan, Softbank
SoftBank
is a Japanese telecommunications and internet corporation, with operations in broadband, fixed-line telecommunications, e-Commerce, Internet, broadmedia, technology services, finance, media and marketing, and other businesses....
Mobile started sales in April. In Turkey, Vodafone started sales in late November 2010.
In South Korea, SK Telecom began sales in May 2010.
In Singapore, the official launch date was 14 May 2010, and the phone has been for sale by all carriers subsequently.
In mainland China, HTC launched its four flagship smartphones including the Desire on 27 July 2010. Unlike in other markets, the device will be shipped with Android 2.2 ("Froyo").
Many of the UK mobile networks have been unable to keep up with demand; Virgin Mobile UK, Vodafone UK, 3, T-Mobile UK and Orange UK are some of the networks experiencing very high demand. The ash produced by the 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull
2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull
The 2010 eruptions of Eyjafjallajökull were volcanic events at Eyjafjöll in Iceland which, although relatively small for volcanic eruptions, caused enormous disruption to air travel across western and northern Europe over an initial period of six days in April 2010. Additional localised disruption...
led to some customers waiting a month getting their HTC Desires due to much of European airspace being closed.
In India, HTC and TATA DOCOMO, the GSM brand of Tata Teleservices Limited, announced a partnership to launch HTC Desire in India on 16 August 2010. However, as of mid 2011 onwards, the availability has dropped sharply. This decline in availability is not unusual in India where it becomes extremely hard (close to impossible) to find older model of electronic and computer devices once a newer model enters the market.
Hardware
The phone uses a 1 GHz ARMv7 "Snapdragon"Snapdragon (processor)
Snapdragon is a family of mobile system on chips by Qualcomm. Qualcomm considers Snapdragon a "platform" for use in smartphones, tablets, and smartbook devices.The Snapdragon application processor core, dubbed Scorpion, is Qualcomm's own design...
processor, includes a 5 megapixel auto-focus camera and an optical trackpad, and was among the first consumer devices to feature a large, full-color active-matrix OLED
Active-Matrix OLED
AMOLED is a display technology for use in mobile devices and televisions. OLED describes a specific type of thin-film display technology in which organic compounds form the electroluminescent material, and active matrix refers to the technology behind the addressing of pixels.As of 2011, AMOLED...
(AMOLED) display.
During late Q2 2010, HTC made the decision to switch the Desire's display to a S-LCD panel, manufactured by the company S-LCD a co-operative between Sony and Samsung. Although this was brought on by a severe AMOLED panel supply shortfall, the new display greatly enhances text readability because of its improved effective resolution, one of the few complaints people had with the original Desire model. Compared to the original AMOLED display, the SLCD display has more accurate color reproduction, far less susceptibility to burn-in, similar peak brightness and optimal viewing angles, but a lower contrast ratio. The new SLCD display was claimed to have similar or better power efficiency compared with the original AMOLED display; however, this has proved to not always be the case because with AMOLED pixels' ability to completely turn off, black or dark pixels use very little power. However, in situations when the screen is predominantly bright (such as when viewing many web pages), the AMOLED display uses more power.
The hardware is capable of high-definition (720p) video recording and playback; the 720p video recording feature has been added to the HTC Desire when updating to the official HTC modified Android 2.2 firmware.
Software
The Desire was shipped with Android 2.1. HTC made an update to Android 2.2 (codenamed "Froyo") available on the following dates:- Europe: 1 August 2010
- SE Asia: 30 August 2010
- India: 1 September 2010
- Japan: 8 October 2010
- US: 8 February 2011
HTC has released a software update to upgrade the Desire to Android 2.3 (Gingerbread). Originally, they planned to do this in June 2011. However, on 14 June 2011, HTC announced via Facebook that there would be no Gingerbread update for the HTC Desire, citing memory constraints. This is because HTC had been unable to fit both Gingerbread and HTC Sense together in the phone's 250 MB system partition. However, on the 15th of June, less than 24 hours after stating they would not update to gingerbread, they released a statement saying the Desire would receive the gingerbread update after all with the possibility of some apps being cut. The update was finally released for download from HTC's developer website on the 1st August 2011, and is not available as an over-the-air update.
Comparison with Nexus One
The Desire internally bears a strong resemblance to the Nexus OneNexus One
The Nexus One was Google's flagship smartphone manufactured by Taiwan's HTC Corporation. It became available on January 5, 2010 and uses the Android open source mobile operating system...
. The differences found in the Desire are:
- A different body shell
- An optical trackpad in place of the trackball
- Hardware function buttons instead of touch-sensitive buttons
- FM radio activated (FM radio in Nexus One is disabled by default but can be activated through hacked firmware)
- No second microphone for enhanced noise cancellation
- No dock pin connectors, instead micro-USB is used
- 576 MB DRAM instead of 512 MB DRAM
- Dual band HSPA/WCDMA: 900/2100, 850/2100 or 850/1900 MHz depending on vendor instead of 850/1900/2100 tri band
- HTC SenseHTC SenseHTC Sense is a graphical user interface developed by HTC Corporation for mobile devices running Android, Brew and Windows Mobile.Based on the TouchFLO 3D design, HTC has referred to HTC Sense as both a user interface in itself and also as a user experience layer on top of TouchFLO 3D.Announced June...
interface (not present in the Nexus One) - All support and updates directly through HTC rather than partially through Google
Because of the strong similarity to the Nexus One "developer phone", the Desire enjoys a highly active third-party developer community. The Desire subforum is one of the most active at xda-developers
Xda-developers
xda-developers is a community of over 4 million users worldwide, started in 2003. The site's main purpose is discussion of Windows Phone, Android, and WebOS phones. They are also one of the first places that Windows Mobile and Android users come for general information of the device, ROM upgrades...
, and notably CyanogenMod
CyanogenMod
CyanogenMod is an after-market replacement for the firmware of over sixty cell phones and Internet tablets. Based on the Android mobile computer operating system, it offers features and options not found in the official firmware distributed by vendors of these devices.Features supported by...
and MIUI
MIUI
MIUI , developed by Xiaomi Tech, is an aftermarket firmware for cell phones based on the open-source Android operating system. It features a heavily-modified user interface that does away with the Android app drawer and has drawn comparisons with Apple's iOS...
are available for the device.
Reception
The HTC Desire has received extremely positive reviews. CNET UK reviewed the phone on 29 March 2010 and awarded the phone 9.2/10. TechRadarTechRadar
TechRadar is an online publication focused on technology company which looks and reviews the most available tech today. TechRadar is owned by the Future plc company, the sixth-largest in the United Kingdom. It has a great number of reviews. Such as: Tablet Computer, Smartphone, PC, Macintosh,...
awarded the phone 5 out of 5 stars and stated "In short, this is a phenomenal phone—one of the best we've ever had."
From TechRadar's 'Top 15 best mobile phones in the world', the HTC Desire is simply the best so far: "It's like a Nexus One
Nexus One
The Nexus One was Google's flagship smartphone manufactured by Taiwan's HTC Corporation. It became available on January 5, 2010 and uses the Android open source mobile operating system...
only better. For this reason, the HTC Desire has entered our top 10 at number 1, and the Google Nexus One has dropped out completely. It's tough at the top."
MobileTechWorld found the HTC Desire to be a fairly capable product that "manages to please casual users with HTC’s flashy Sense UI and geeks who love to tweak their handsets on a daily basis thanks to the Google’s Android OS."