HTC Desire HD Review

Introduction:

HTC have become an incredibly popular Android propagator since the release of the original HTC Desire. More than ever, Android fan-boys and tech-enthusiasts alike are hanging on their every word, hoping their smartphone dreams will be realized in their next release. Now that the T-Mobile G2 (HTC Desire Z in Europe) has just received an awesome thumbs up here on phoneArena, it's time to see if its multimedia-centric sibling, the HTC Desire HD manages to enamour us with its huge 4.3-inch screen, cutting edge processor, 8MP camera and brand spanking new version of HTC Sense sprinkled generously over the already popular Froyo.

Design:

A clean, playfully styled box, around 4 inches wide, 4 inches deep and 6 inches tall will tease you when you first set eyes on it. A crisp, life-size image of the HTC Desire HD garnishes the box along with playful illustrations, willing you to open it, play with it, enjoy it. From the offset, this feels like more than a phone. Slide up the top part of the box, and as the bottom part glides down, HTCs latest offering gazes up at you, with plastic protective film smoothed over the huge, wonderfully clean screen, it leaves us itching to peel off all the plastic and unearth the innards of the HTC Desire HD. After looking for the battery in the box, and failing, we slid down the bottom panel at the base of the phone to reveal a SIM card and microSD card slot, but still no battery. Hmm. A quick look around the unit, and we made out the battery cover on the right hand side of the phone, checked inside, and hey presto, battery present. After removing the protective wrap around the battery, it was time to power up the beast and what was the first thing we noticed? Oh yes, THE SCREEN.



You can compare the HTC Desire HD with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

At a whopping 4.3 inches, this superLCD display lights up bright. Powering up the phone gives you a whiter than white screen with an itty bitty HTC logo in the center. For those with sensitive eyes, it could be a bit much. Giving everything a chance to load up, widgets, page transitions and response times all look very positive from the offset. The screen is crisp, there's no questioning that. Given the nature of Super LCD, it's a smidgen sharper than AMOLED, and this seems to come through with the super-sized HTC Desire HD screen. At a resolution of 400x840, it's pretty much the minimum resolution we'd expect from an Android phone with a screen this size, that said, this doesn't detract from the initial impact of the screen. When using the HTC Desire HD in isolation (i.e. without a Super AMOLED screen by its side), you would be forgiven for thinking that it's a colour reproducing titan. This is largely due to the size, and the brightness being pretty spectacular. Naturally, being phoneArena however, one of the first things we did was grab a Super AMOLED Samsung Galaxy S. There is a comparative dullness with the HTC Desire HD screen in direct comparisons. This isn't enough to warrant any complaints, but it is there. On the plus side, this might please some people who find AMOLED displays to be over-saturated.

Brightness options can be controlled through the menu or a home-screen widget with three set levels, low, medium and high. At night, the lowest brightness setting can be used comfortably. Indoors and in the day, the middle would be appropriate, and outdoors, full brightness is needed to counter the glare, which is inevitable with a screen as slick and shiny as this one. Movie watching also really benefits from full brightness, with details and movements looking far more discernible. In turn, for the sake of enjoyment, we tended to leave the brightness at full whack. This makes a very noticeable indent in power consumption however, so with heavy use, don't be surprised if your HTC Desire HD is flagging before the evening's out.


Physically, the HTC Desire HD is a glorious amalgam of aluminium unibody and glass fronted fascia. Four capacitive buttons sit directly below the screen with an HTC insignia directly below them. The buttons are sufficiently sensitive and provide haptic feedback to the touch. We were concerned they would be too close to the screen, yet we didn't find ourselves accidentally pressing them as we have on other handsets. Moving from the bottom to the top of the screen and we come to a cavity accommodating a mean looking grill (the speaker) with a tiny notification light to its right. The phone's top side houses the power button. On the phone's base is a microUSB port and a 3.5mm headphone jack as well as an in-call mic. The left side contains the volume rocker while the right remains a smooth empty surface. On the back of the HTC Desire HD is the 8MP camera, dual LED flash, loud speaker and centred chrome HTC insignia. The styling of the phone is patchy. Now, that's not to say it's patchy in terms of bad, but it is styled using patches of two shades of metallic grey. This accommodates the multiple removable parts (the battery cover and the SIM card/microSD card cover) all of which are the darker shade of grey along with a rectangle surrounding the camera. The remainder of the HTC Desire HD, (the aluminium part) is the lighter shade. This two tone styling appears to have become HTC's trademark look of late, with a number of their Windows Phone 7 handsets taking on a similar styling. Our concerns lie with the removable covers. While these secure onto the phone well, there is a sense that these may weaken given time, especially at the bottom due to small gap between elements. Only time will tell how durable it actually is.


All in all HTC has done a pretty good job. The HTC Desire HD feels solid, utilises interesting means of securing the battery and cards, and looks sweet as in the process. The screen is big, bright and beautiful, despite delivering less saturated colours than a Super AMOLED screen, and the handling is very comfortable. While the lower card cover doesn't inspire us with as much confidence as we may have liked, overall, we love handling this phone.

Interface and Functionality:

"It Makes Sense".

This is HTC's tagline delivered along-side anything to do with their new UI and general user experience, HTC Sense. On the surface, it seems like a spruce up of a GUI we've become quite fond of. With some very useful bespoke widgets such as their news reader and calendar, the functionality you get out of the box with an HTC unit is truly astounding. These widgets have been re-worked for each new device, saving users from digging around for, say, an RSS reader widget that fills their whole screen (which sounds far easier than it is). This is, and has been truly priceless for anyone who isn't an Android fanboy/girl who want to dig deep into the Android Market and skin every crevice of their phone. HTC have improved the in-phone experience with their new Sense UI, improving caching of maps and compass orienting for example amongst a host of interface changes such as optimizing the menu that appears with a long press of the home screen to offer more options. More interestingly however, they've worked on an out of phone experience. With our HTC Desire HD hidden in another room for example, we logged onto our HTC Sense account on our PC and made it ring remotely. This works every time provided there's a network connection, even when the handset is on silent. It also enables settings to lock the phone and wipe information from it remotely. We think this is sci-fi awesome - well done, HTC.

HTC Sense takes a smidgen of getting used to if you've never used it before, however is no more challenging than vanilla Android. In fact, it’s easier. For example, you can personalize the homescreen and add icons without a long-press of the homescreen. Instead, just tap the paintbrush and palette symbol on the bottom left of the homescreen - very intuitive. As already mentioned, there are plenty of pre-loaded HTC widgets which are very functional further improving usability. For those of you who want a list of HTC Widgets, in alphabetical order - your wish is our command: Bookmark, Calculator, Clock, FM Radio, Friend Stream, HTC Likes (app suggestions), Locations, Mail, Messages, Music, My Shelf (ebook shelf), Navigate, News, People, Photo Album, Photo Frame, Search Anywhere, Stocks, Sync All, Tips for Home, Twitter, Weather.



Tap the "Phone" button, centered in the bottom of any one of the 7 homescreens and the dialler is pulled up. This works wonderfully, enabling you to numerically enter a name (i.e. bob as 262), with the HTC Desire HD displaying it instantly. Behind the dialler are all your contacts, so minimize the dialer, and intuitively, you're left with your contacts - great. The phonebook works well once you learn how to control it. By this, we mean that HTC Sense pulls in ALL your contacts from EVERYWHERE by default. This feels overwhelming at first, however, open "People", press "Menu" and then tap "View" and you can select which contacts to display (Google, Facebook, SIM etc). Once done, your contacts are a pleasure to  thumb through. As for voice recognition, it works better than most, but still gets it wrong every so often.

Now onto the keyboard. We would go so far as to say, the HTC Desire HD gives one of the best on-screen keyboard experience we've used to date. We could actually close our eyes, carry on typing and the magical contraption would figure out what we were trying to type for nigh on a paragraph. Good haptic feedback, amazing predictive text, comfortable, intuitive key spacing all make for greatness. Now onto our little gripe. With the experience being so good for text entry, number and symbol entry requires a long press on a key. This long press is too long, breaking the speedy entry and what could have been a near perfect keyboard experience. Nevertheless, overall, amazing.


Organizer tools performed very well indeed. Running Android 2.2, the HTC Desire HD is perfect if you use Google calendars and contacts for example, it all functions as would be expected from a high-end Android phone (great), with the added sprucing up that comes with bespoke widgets courtesy of HTC, such as calendar and calculator. There is also a swish alarm interface, a flashlight and voice recorder along with all the other organizer tools you would expect.


Naturally, with a lot of HTCs widgets requiring network access, if you put one of them on every homescreens and let your HTC Desire HD Sync to its hearts content, you will notice a fair amount of lag. We even found HTC Sense having to close down and start up when we turned up the heat every now and then suggesting that for all it's offerings, it isn't as stable as it could be. Use the widgets wisely however, and manage your phone's connections (which you'll want to do anyway to preserve battery juice) and you shouldn't find it an issue.

Camera and Multimedia:

The camera has some very cool functionality. Being 8MP with autofocus, the HTC Desire HD kicks things off to a solid set of specs, and with a dual LED flash, we're expecting good things. The inclusion of a range of special modes: Distortion, Vignette Depth of Field, Vintage, Vintage Warm, Vintage Cold, Greyscale, Sepia, Negative, Solarize, Posterize and Aqua work very nicely, some are gimmicky, but others such as 'Vintage' are adding a quality to the image we really like.




As far as standalone performance of the camera, it's unfortunately a mixed bag. Focusing is a bit of an issue, with shots out of focus roughly 10% of the time. Colour reproduction is on the whole okay, however inconsistent. While some shots, such as that of the post box produce a decent level of saturation, others look dull, and others washed out. Detail isn't too bad at all in well lit environments, however, any night shots don't even need to be zoomed into to notice the crackle. Exposure is also very inconsistent. The camera interface allows for touch to focus, which also controls what we presume to be spot metering, and there is an exposure bar which can be adjusted, however, in automatic, we found that the HTC Desire HD got it wrong more often than we would have hoped. This is mainly an issue when there is a broad dynamic range, for example with the macro shot of the fence being dark, and the light creeping through the the rest of the shot. Noise on the phone's camera isn't handled too well at all. Evident even in daytime shots such as that of the Windows Phone 7 billboard, in which the black visibly suffers from grain. This leads directly onto night shots, which as mentioned, aren't particularly usable unless the subject is well lit. Macro shots weren't too bad at all. There is a focusing distance of about 4 inches, and we found that this is one of the phones stronger points. This mode worked especially well with the filters, as can be seen with the flower shot with the vintage filter looking rather attractive. Indoor shots are entirely dependent on lighting.



The camera performs pretty well in well lit, and even in environments with medium lighting, however, as soon as the lights go down any lower, it struggles a lot. The twin LED flash does an okay job of remedying the situation, but by this point, suffice to say, if you're looking for a camera phone to replace your digital camera, the HTC Desire HD isn't it.

At 720p and 25fps, video recording is on the whole, good. Detail is visibly lacking when comparing video with some other HD handsets such as the Nokia N8 and colours are also over saturated on the HTC Desire HD2 as you will see from the sample, however, video looks much smoother overall, so it's a trade-off. Video effect options are limited to: greyscale, sepia, negative, solarize and posterize.

HTC Desire HD Sample Video:



Onto the music player. It's usable, employs the popular cover-flow-esque interface that's cropping up in most OSs these days, and supports your usual viewing tracks by artists, albums, playlists, even linking in directly to the inbuilt DLNA if you so choose. Audio quality is good. We were using a pair of Monster Turbines and found the sound relatively indistinguishable from an iPod, however, the Dolby Mobile and SRS Wow HD offer a nice amount of roundness to the sound the HTC Desire HD can produce. Unfortunately, we were unable to activate these features for audio and video players that aren't the system's standard. This means that for, say, Spotify or an additional video player, this advanced functionality isn't available.



The loudspeaker plays back music well considering the sound's being pushed through a tiny grill on the back, though it isn’t a quality of sound that can be listened to comfortably for a considerable length of time.The HTC Desire HD will play back DivX, H.264, MP4 and Xvid files out of the box. Unfortunately, HTC haven't implemented the standard of video playback that can be found on the Nokia N8 or C7, with DivX and Xvid only playable up to 640x480 without audio sync issues. That said, we found it played back H.264 and MP4 up to 720p well.
Once a movie is on it in a format the phone likes, preferably at its native resolution of 800x480, all we can say is wow. Okay, maybe that's not all we can say, but you get the idea. We were able to get immersed in a movie, wherever we were when using the HTC Desire HD. The Dolby Mobile audio and SRS Wow HD does make a difference, and coupling that with the huge screen made us forget we were in a packed train watching Avatar on our phone, and left us feeling all shades of blue and CGI. Other than when using the Dell Streak, which is arguably not even a phone, the HTC Desire HD topped out for movie playback immersion. A note which was alluded to earlier, when watching a movie, it's much, much more enjoyable if the brightness is set to full.

Internet and Connectivity:

Aimed at the European market, it has all the bells and whistles someone (in Europe) might hope for. There's a GPS on board to take full advantage of all HTC Sense has to offer, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and quad-band GSM, as well as dual band 3G. In addition to this, you also get the DLNA functionality, which should work with a Windows 7 PC or another DLNA enabled device.
Email, as can be expected, is pretty typical for an Android phone. HTC have incorporated enhanced usability in terms of widgets and Sense immersion, while and the core emailing experience is very good. We set up our Gmail account on it in minutes, and Android brought all our Google contacts, emails and calendar information onto the phone very easily.


If there was anything the HTC Desire HD Screen is perfect for other than browsing photos and videos, it's surfing the web. A responsive screen coupled with speedy responsive scrolling through even larger sites makes this an incredibly good, pocketable web browsing device. Thanks to Froyo, the real high point comes when browsing Flash sites, with the HTC Desire HD manning up to the challenge incredibly well, especially when playing embedded video. The other great thing is that unlike, say, Symbian^3, which left us installing Opera Browser to maximize the web browsing potential, like the rest of the features on the HTC Desire HD, web browsing is at a high point out of the box.


Where the HTC Desire HD excels in terms of connectivity is with regards to HTC Sense. Once again, HTC have blurred the lines, this time between connectivity and software.  While we've covered the feature set HTC Sense equips you with, it turbo-charges the phone's standard connectivity features. Take the GPS, Sense makes it more usable, caching maps and making the world revolve around you using the in-built compass. Now let's take the network connectivity. On its own - useful; with HTC Sense - unique, giving you connection to your phone, even when you don't know where your phone is. We really cannot stress enough, for any gripe we may have with this phone, and it's certainly not perfect, there is just an abundance of positives.

Software:

When it comes to software, HTC have re-skinned Android with Sense in a way that blurs the lines between software and interface. For example, HTC Friend Stream is deeply rooted in the interface, but also provides additional software support in the form of an app. The navigation app is also enhanced, featuring improved caching and interaction. This makes the whole experience of using an HTC Sense phone feel more integrated.

Social networking integration, as mentioned is extremely pervasive on HTC Sense. On the surface, you've got Friend Stream, a widget and app that pulls your Twitter and Facebook updates to a big, clear tile on your homescreen or a respective standalone window in app format. Dig a bit deeper however and you find HTC has found a nifty way of merging your phonebook with your social networking contacts. Initially requiring confirmation that the contacts it suggests to merge are indeed one and the same, given time, it can become an asset to heavy social networkers, for example, making accessing a friend's Facebook and Twitter accounts through their single contact location a piece of cake. The feature is more intuitively integrated than MOTOBLUR or Sony Ericsson's Timescape and earns HTC another thumbs up.


Additional software includes Adobe Reader, Amazon MP3, Car Panel (a Nuvi Phone type interface making everything you might need in a car more finger-friendly), Connected Media (a DLNA type application), HTC Hub (access to HTC content), HTC Likes (suggested Android Content), Locations, Reader, Search Anywhere, SoundHound (a Shazam type music identifier), Peep (HTC's Twitter client), Qucikoffice, Stocks, Weather and YouTube.
Needless to say, Android Market provides an abundance of apps to improve functionality, and HTC Likes is a great way to identify the good ones.

Performance:

When it comes to speed, the HTC Desire HD has a 1GHz processor trucking everything along. The HTC Sense widgets weigh heavily on the phone. The fact they're so useful means they are worth it, but the phone does lag every so often. Symbian fan-boys, please cover your ears, now: despite occasional lag, we would nevertheless take the added functionality of Android with HTC Sense coupled with some lag, over the all-in-all more stable Symbian^3 with its clunky interface and dated functionality.

With active noise cancellation, call quality on the HTC Desire HD is very good indeed. When calling from the phone, the in-call speaker delivers great audio quality, with the person on the other end sounding audible. When talking on the HTC Desire HD, the listener found the call quality good with no complaints. With reception also being good, it works reliably as a phone. HTC's dialler and contacts tools are also easy to get to grips with and use daily.

Battery life is without a doubt the HTC Desire HD's weakest area. With regular use and at mid to full brightness, the phone would usually struggle to make it to the evening before prompting us to put it into power saver mode. Quoted at 9.16 hours of talk time (5.3 hours 3G) and 18 days of standby time. However, if you have an HTC Desire HD, you will want to use it a lot, because it's so functional. You will want to crank up the brightness, watch a movie and surf the web while listening to music and getting directions when you're done. This means your battery may not make a whole day if you don't show some restraint (notably with screen brightness). For all this functionality however, it could be a worthwhile sacrifice depending on the kind of user you are, and whether or not you’d think of getting a spare battery.

Conclusion:

The HTC Desire HD is more of an exciting phone than it is a perfect phone. We're as excited about how HTC are evolving Sense UI, as we are about the hardware. As it happens though, the hardware and software are married into a wonderful mix, so well done, HTC. You're not really getting the best of anything. The Nokia N8 has a much better camera, the Samsung Galaxy S has a richer screen of a similar size and the iPhone 4 has a way better app support. What the HTC brings together however is the best amalgamation of everything, with a mouth watering injection of innovation to go with it. It's certainly one of our favourite candy bar Android devices at the moment. Battery life being the only big drawback, the HTC Desire HD is nevertheless on our highly-recommended list. Alternatives would be the iPhone 4 as mentioned for an alternative operating system, the Nokia N8 for a stronger camera experience, or an HTC Desire Z if you're enamoured by much of the functionality mentioned, but want a QWERTY keyboard.

HTC Desire HD Video Review: