HTC Desire Z Review

Introduction:

The HTC Desire Z is the Europe/Asia version of the T-Mobile G2, which we reviewed a short while ago. As heirs to the now legendary G1, the first ever Android phone, the Desire Z and G2 have a lot to prove already. Google’s mobile OS started out in a timid underdog manner, almost as a side project in a response to the then year-old iPhone, to become the mobile juggernaut it is now, in just two short years. G1 had a lot of geek-cred on its side, and received the attention of numerous rogue developers, who are usually attracted to underdogs. They put thousands of hours coding pro bono, just to feel a part of something new and unique.

Fast forward two years, and developing for Android is lucrative enough to have filled the Android Market with more than 100 000 applications. HTC is no more the obscure Taiwanese maker of Windows Mobile handset, but a smartphone powerhouse, that has been crowned among consumers as a king of design and software innovation, dishing out award-winning handsets as if there is no tomorrow. The HTC Desire Z is one of them, and HTC hasn’t spared a bunch of “firsts” in its hardware and software symbiosis, so let’s get to the skinny of its real world performance…

In the box:

• HTC Desire Z handset
• Warranty card and quick start guide
• Stereo headset with microphone
• AC adapter
• microUSB cable
• 8GB microSD card

Design:

HTC's build quality is legendary, and the HTC Desire Z makes no exception. The screen part and the battery cover are made of brushed aluminum, the rest is soft touch grey plastic to allow for signal to penetrate easily to the antennas. The phone is thin enough for a slide-out QWERTY handset, at 0.56” (14.1mm), but the heft is considerable - 6.35 oz (180 g) is no laughing matter. We usually say that a heavier feeling in the hand contributes to the overall impression of solidity, but here it's at the point of becoming unpleasant.



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

The display half is mostly occupied by the 3.7” Super LCD screen with 480x800 pixels of resolution. It has very good color gamut, improved contrast and viewing angles, and, at maximum brightness, is very usable in direct sunlight, compared to previous generation LCDs. Only Motorola's DROID army, and, of course, the iPhone 4, are trumping it in terms of resolution, but the technology used there is the same.

Embedded in the black frame underneath the screen are four tiny touch keys for the typical Android functions – home, menu, back and search. The other element below the screen is an optical trackpad, which allows you to swipe through the homescreens, navigate around in menus and websites, and press it to execute the desired action. It's a good way to lessen contact, hence smudges on your touchscreen, but its functionality in the homescreens is somewhat limited to just scrolling them left and right, so you'll have to inevitably use your fingers on the display there. When the alarm goes off, it lights up the area around the optical trackpad for some visual stimulation as well. The screen half also hosts the two-stage camera key at the right side, which needs to be held for a split second at full press to enter the camera interface.


The keyboard half is where the fun begins with the HTC Desire Z. We didn't experience any issues with the innovative Z-hinge in terms of efforts to push the screen half away, or snap it back into place – it feels elegant and solid at the same time. We see where HTC is coming from when it said this mechanism allows for the keyboard half to be almost flush with the screen, thus avoiding the thumb-bashing that usually occurs on QWERTY slide-outs. However, we don't think it is that much of an issue, and a simple spring-loading mechanism would have sufficed. We would get the point of a Z-hinge, if we could tilt the screen up, but in this case, meh, just one more thing that could easily break. Especially worrying is that the thin cable, which connects the LCD display to the chipset, is exposed upon opening and closing, but, hey, a company has to stand out somehow, right?


The keyboard itself left us with mixed impressions. It looked superb in pictures and in person – spaced out chiclet layout with four rows of keys is becoming the norm in physical keyboards, instead of a single sheet with buttons, and the HTC Desire Z is no exception. The space between the domed plastic caps, though, is not sufficient to have your thumbs dancing across the keyboard, while hitting the correct letter each time. The keys feel rather stiff on a new handset, and travel is a bit shallow in practice, there is an elevated rim surrounding the keyboard pit.


The notorious thumb-bashing occurs quite frequently when using the upper row. It would be funny to watch a typing competition between two gals with long finger nails, though. Other than those drawbacks, the keyboard has a nice layout, with programmable keys to fire up anything you choose, and function keys on both sides. Also, long-pressing a letter reveals its accented versions, so oftentimes you don't even have to change to the French layout to type in French.

The thicker keyboard half is where most of the other design elements are located – there is a whole piece volume rocker, and exposed microUSB port on the left side, a standard audio jack and lock/power key up top, and a latch slider for removing the battery cover on the right. The cover is made of brushed aluminum, and has a slit for the speaker grill. The back also hosts the 5MP camera with an LED flash up left, but there is no front-facing camera on the handset.



Great design by HTC, as usual - the HTC Desire Z is surely an attention-grabber with its brushed aluminum/soft touch coating combination, and the Z-hinge. The weight, however, is significant, when we consider that the physical keyboard is only decent, and we could have easily gone with just the excellent virtual one. What's a G1 heir without a keyboard, though?

Interface and Functionality:

HTC Sense has one of the best touch interfaces out there, but it was left out intentionally on the T-Mobile G2. Slating it as a follow up to the first ever Android handset, HTC and Google probably wanted to stay as close to the stock Android 2.2 experience, as possible. HTC Desire Z, on the other hand comes with full blown HTC Sense, and the newest version to boot. This latest edition can for now only be found on the HTC Desire HD and HTC Desire Z, so it is worth reviewing the updates to one of the most beloved OEM customizations there are. We will review only the new stuff, as we’ve extensively written about the previous version already.

Sense UI crams so many options in it, that it is probably an antithesis of the iOS simplicity. Still, we didn't feel the diversity overbearing, even for a moment. On the contrary, personalization and the ability to customize the interface are taken to a whole new level now.

First off, the new Sense UI is extremely fast to load – it literally takes five seconds to shut down the phone, and then another five after we pressed the power button to get it up and running. HTC Sense obviously goes into some sort of hibernation to achieve that, since after we took out the battery and re-inserted it, the phone booted up completely in about a minute.

The initial setup includes entering your details, and adding all the accounts that you would want to sync, plus registering your phone on HTCSense.com. We will just mention here that to the excellent social integration features in the People app, which aggregates your phone contacts with your Facebook, Twitter, Exchange and Gmail peeps, you can now add feeds and updates from your HTCSense.com buddies, once the service is populated, of course.


Probably the most important new addition to Sense UI is the introduction of cloud-based services for it via the new HTCSense.com website. After registering on the site, the link sent to your email asks you to login on the handset, afterwards you are good to go. Besides backing up your phone information there, you can set and share footprints with other HTC users on Google Maps, or use the HTC Hub to check for recommended applications and updates to your existing ones.

Dashboard is the default section on HTCSense.com, which shows your handset’s whereabouts on a map, and that's where you can set call and message forwarding, if you have forgotten the phone at home, or check on missed calls. It also allows you to set a PIN and lock the phone remotely, or erase the phone and storage card completely from the website. HTC has conceived the cloud service as a social undertaking, and even shows you if there are other registered users around, the places and app recommendations they’ve shared, and so on. For now it looks a bit like a work in progress, but all the basic functionalities we just listed are there to use at your discretion.


The last, but not least major addition to HTC Sense for us is the Locations app – HTC has teamed up with TomTom and Route 66 to offer the closest thing to free worldwide offline navigation so far on an Android handset. Google Maps has a lot of countries covered, but needs data connection to download the maps. Google Maps Navigation is an excellent free service as well, but its turn-by-turn guidance doesn’t work anywhere but the US and Western Europe, and also needs Internet connection.

The HTC Desire Z comes preloaded with maps of the region it is sold in, and others can be downloaded from the app itself. There is quite the list of countries present - we counted about 90, which makes it on par with the coverage of Nokia’s free Ovi Maps. Even without voice guided navigation, you can follow your route fed just via satellites, with no need for data charges. A very useful addition is the digital compass, which shows exactly the direction you are heading to, making it very useful to know which direction to take before taking off. This is especially useful in pedestrian mode – we have often walked a  few blocks already, before the GPS software recalculates that we are heading in the wrong direction and turns us around. Of course, if you are driving by yourself in a totally unknown city, you will need voice directions. Upon first license sync, you will be granted a 30-day trial to test the software, and we have to admit it is very good – route recalculations are zippy, there is an abundance of categorized POI and detailed maps with multitouch support, in the language of the country you are in, as well as a car mode with huge icons to tap.


After the trial period, the prices are also quite bearable – after Google and Nokia introduced free navigation, the GPS software prices plummeted. A lifetime pass for offline navigation in the United States on the HTC Desire Z costs EUR 24 ($33), Western Europe costs EUR 40 ($56), and there are 30-day passes for $5-$10, depending on the region you’ll be traveling to. We are sure even these prices will go down with the proliferation of HTC handsets with the new Sense UI. Thus we are thankful to HTC for addressing one of the major reasons hindering Android’s adoption rate outside of the US – Nokia is the only manufacturer so far offering free lifetime navigation on its devices in most of the world. Locations also integrates Google Navigation, and you can pick which one to use, so the two navigational programs complement each other nicely.


To recap our excellent experience with the new HTC Sense, we have to note that the name of the game here is personalization. The abilities to customize the interface are mind-boggling. The profiles are called scenes, the handset comes with a few of them like Work, Play, Social, etc., and more can be downloaded off the new HTC Hub.


Each profile comes with its own set of widgets and functionalities, then there are different skins within the profiles, and different wallpapers and sound sets. More of each can be found in HTC Hub, and the possibilities to mix and match them can be used in a math class to explain the combination theory.

We truly felt like a kid in a candy store with the new HTC Sense. Throughout the review we ploughed through a smorgasbord of rich graphics, tastefully chosen color combinations, and animated transitions, but we never even once experienced lag or choppiness. The new generation Snapdragon chipset, produced with the 45nm process, really shines here – our HTC Desire Z scored above 1500 on the Quadrant synthetic benchmark test several times, which makes phones with this chipset the fastest on the market, at least until the Samsung Galaxy S receives its official Froyo upgrade. The same chipset on the T-Mobile G2 has become a playground for overclockers recently, and we’ve seen it pumped up to over 1.3GHz, and scoring 2200+, just to prove a point.

Messaging, Browser and Connectivity:

A unified inbox is not a novel feature, but with introducing it in the new HTC Sense the company has added some additional niceties. Chief among those is the ability to mark your important contacts, and have mail from them visualized with priority. The email client can download all your message history, up to a size limit, from popular accounts or Exchange. They can be then viewed offline, complete with attachments, which are stored on the supplied 8GB memory card.


In the Messages app, except the usual multimedia, you can attach to your text message an app recommendation, location, or even a slideshow. The virtual keyboard for typing those messages hasn’t changed from the previous iteration of Sense UI, and it didn’t need to – it’s excellent and simple to use, yet powerful with the easy access to numerous language layouts and characters, including Chinese.


The stock Froyo browser has been customized by HTC with its own minimalistic interface, and numerous features discretely tucked one level deep in the menu. We like how text selection is executed, with waypoints you can drag in each direction, and also the fact that you can quickly share the current page via multiple channels – Facebook, email, Twitter, etc. The zippy chipset, and excellent screen, make for an incredibly smooth browsing experience, with all modern amenities, such as multitouch, text reflow, and so on. Unlike its Android 2.1 predecessor, the browser in Froyo runs embedded Flash videos other than those in YouTube, but for a few Flash-based sites, such as HBO.com, you will have to download Skyfire, which imitates a desktop browser to lull the websites into displaying their non-mobile versions.


The HTC Desire Z runs the gamut of connectivity options, including 3G, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, A-GPS, DLNA and FM Radio with RDS. It supports HSDPA downloads at up to 14.4Mbps, and HSUPA uploads at 5.76Mbps. We would like to see connectivity switches in the notification area, such as the ones on Samsung's handsets – here you have to waste screen with additional widgets for that. The notification area, for that matter, contains a list of the last eight applications used, for quick access.

Software :

The colorful main menu is filled to the brim with Google services – the usual suspects like Latitude, Places, Calendar, YouTube, Voice Search, Maps, Gmail, Talk and News and Weather are all here. HTC has added some skinning to the calendar, as usual, making its interface very pure and easy on the eye. When the alarm goes off, it lights up the area around the optical trackpad for some visual stimulation as well. HTC is throwing in QuickOffice for document editing, Facebook and Twitter apps, SoundHound for song recognition, Flashlight for firing up the LED light, Transfer data for painless transition from other phones, Stocks for following Wall Street, and Wi-Fi Hotspot to set your phone as a router, among some others. The new additions are HTC Likes, which shows you prescreened apps from Android Market, and the HTC Hub, which is the Grand Central station for customization downloads, such as scenes, skins, wallpapers, widgets, sound sets and so on. Of note is the lack of a dedicated file browser, but there are many on Android Market, so we can't call it a nuisance.   

Camera and Multimedia:

The interface of the 5MP camera is simple and easy to use. It is touch-friendly, but the icons could be a bit larger. Of note is the sheer number of color effects and image adjustments that can be applied before snapping away. On the other hand, there is a lack of shooting modes, such as macro, or a night mode, which we’ve become used to seeing on higher-end smartphones. Shot-to-shot times are very short, and there is no lag in processing the snap before taking another one.




The 5MP camera captures enough detail, but it is evident that the noise suppresion algorithms are smearing a lot more. The color representation is accurate, but the camera key is rather stiff, and the phone has to be held extremely steady, if you don't want your snaps to appear slightly out of focus. If you take a page out of Apple’s textbook, and bump up the contrast, the pictures come out bright and oversaturated, which is very pleasing for the casual photographer.

The HD videos are shot with 30fps, and capturing is smooth over all, but there is the proverbial dropped frame here and there when panning around. The microphone is quite sensitive, and records voices as well as the surrounding sounds loud and clear. Just make sure your fingers are not holding the phone near it, as that will go into the video too.

HTC Desire Z Sample Video:



The gallery is a grid of thumbnails for the pictures and videos, and offers one-touch sharing. Of note here is the DLNA functionality, which makes streaming to capable devices a snap, as it is integrated within the interface. The service is an option in the gallery, music player and the video player - from every multimedia file there you can tap the “Connected Media” icon, then the HTC Desire Z starts looking for media servers, and hooks your phone up for streaming.


The music player has nice visuals, reminiscent of Cover Flow, and supports track sorting by artists, albums and playlists. There is a direct link to YouTube that displays the videos available there for the currently played song, nice touch. The loudspeaker is of average strength, and lacks a punch in the base octaves. After plugging in the supplied headset, the sound gets much better, of course, but there are no equalizer presets. With the headset in, you can fire up the FM Radio app, which is quite sensitive. It takes a while to start and scan frequencies initially, but afterwards you can save and name your preset stations for quick access.


As far as video playback, the HTC Desire Z runs MPEG-4 and H.264 clips at HD resolution without a hiccup. We'd like to see DivX/Xvid support out of the box, but, alas.

Performance:

The earspeaker is of average strength – we had no trouble hearing people when it was quiet around, but outside it struggles, even on the highest volume. Voice quality was good, though, emphasizing the speaker, not the ambient noise. When we called from the HTC Desire Z, the other party was able to hear us loud and clear.

The standard 1300mAh battery is rated for 6 hours and 40 minutes of talk time with 3G connectivity turned on. During our review usage, the phone barely lasted through the day, especially when we were using the GPS software.

Conclusion:

The HTC Desire Z is one of the only two handsets so far with the new version of Sense UI, and deserved our attention, even just for that. HTC didn't stop here to make it stand out in the Android crowd, however, and added a physical keyboard with clever, if somewhat pointless,  Z-hinge mechanism.

Wrapped around in brushed aluminum, with soft-touch coating where needed, the HTC Desire Z is certainly a looker - a rather heavy one, however. The physical keyboard is not perfect, but it is better than most on this rare breed of Android handsets, which have side-sliding QWERTY keyboards.

The new HTC Sense, though, is the feature that can take your breath away here. It offers a myriad of functionalities and customization options, wrapped up in rich colors, and beautiful animations. The next-gen Snapdragon chipset ensures flawless performance, while the new additions to Sense UI, such as cloud-based services to manage your phone, and the Locations app with its offline navigation capabilities, added to our growing impression that the HTC Desire Z is currently the best Android handset with a physical keyboard outside of the US.

Another high-end alternative with a slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and Froyo, would be the yet unreleased Motorola MILESTONE 2. If you are a Symbian fan, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro has one of the best physical keyboards we've tried on a mobile, and shoots HD video at 30fps as well.

HTC Desire Z Video Review: