Can HTC’s follow-up to their hugely successful Desire handset live up to its irresistible predecessor?
By Rob Gleeson
Have HTC produced another object of ‘Desire’ or is it a remake of its predecessor? The HTC Desire S isn’t designed to be the flagship smart phone that the original Desire was, so it seems as though there’s no reason to fix something that isn’t broke, right?
The HTC Desire really was a new and innovate smart phone that exceeded all expectations when it was released and while the Desire S hasn’t really changed that much, it is still is a tremendous smart phone.
Some people prefer to have a monster screen with a camera on par with any digital camera and a nice shiny body yet there are those out there who like a smart phone that instead quietly goes about its business – something that the Desire S manages exceptionally well.
Firstly, the Desire S weighs in at a mere 130g and boasts a nice 3.7-inch S-LCD capacitive touch screen. The screen is a little on the small side but this doesn’t take away from the phone in any way. Like all HTC phones, pinch to zoom compensates for the small screen as it makes navigating from home-screen to home-screen a doddle.
Original HTC Desire lovers will, however, notice the omission of the optical track pad and the inclusion of capacitive keys to replace the hardware buttons at the bottom of the screen. There is still no sign of an actual dedicated camera button, which is a little disappointing, but it doesn’t really bother us that much.
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There is, however, a front-facing camera, which can come in handy for video calls, though anyone ever use video calls anyway? The left of the phone contains a long, shiny volume rocker along with the micro USB connection and to the right, nothing!
The handset comes with a 5 mega-pixel camera with a small LED flash, so don’t expect quality pictures in bad light, though it does hold its own in normal conditions. There are a lot of people looking for a quality camera on smart phones and it seems to me that HTC have missed out on an opportunity to house an 8 mega-pixel camera – which would be a big improvement on the original Desire.
BATTERY: A standard Li-Ion 1450 mAh battery that offers up to 430 hours on standby and up to 10 hours talk time is decent and is a slight improvement on the original.
CONNECTIVITY: Bluetooth, USB connectivity, WiFi and the option to turn the phone into a wireless hot spot. This does come in handy if you’re a commuter and want to use your laptop to access the Internet – just make sure you have data on your account, for both bill and pre pay customers!
MEDIA: A 5 mega-pixel camera does take nice pictures but the flash doesn’t improve the quality. HD recording is pretty good on the Desire S and should compensate for the exclusion of an 8 mega-pixel camera.
STORAGE: 1.1 GB ROM and 768 mb RAM, with the option of increasing the external memory up to 32mb with a micro SD card.
PROCESSOR: A 1 GHz Scorpion processor is pretty standard for most smart phones these days so there’s nothing here that will blow you away but it does perform exceptionally well.
OPERATING SYSTEM: The Desire S has the latest version of Android (Gingerbread 2.3) and as always, HTC and Android come hand in hand. With HTC’s user interference HTC Sense, it seems to me that HTC are the only manufacturer out there that uses Android’s full potential.
Like I said at the start, the Desire S isn’t designed to be the flagship smart phone the original Desire was but I feel that HTC have taken one step too many back in time. Other than the physical appearance of the phone and a bit more RAM, it’s pretty much the same phone.
I feel HTC could have improved on what was a smashing handset, as it was the perfect opportunity to get yet another top notch smart phone onto the market.
That being said, there’s nothing wrong with the Desire S. It’s still an extremely impressive smart phone. It looks good, it feels good, and it performs exceptionally well – I just get a feeling of déjà vu.
Rob Gleeson is co-founder of Smartphone Republic
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