An HTC named Desire. OK, two HTCs... The Android phones are tumbling out thick and fast from HTC. The Taiwanese handset powerhouse is launching two phones today, the multimedia-tastic HTC Desire HD and a phone for Suits, the HTC Desire Z. Also it is touting software enhancements, branded under HTC Sense, which will help people monkey around with the pics and vids …
Damn these phones look good - I was set on the Desire HD, but the Z looks sweet too with the proper keyboard.
I've been using the Hero since it was launched and while the keyboard is OK it can be really annoying - probably in part because of the small(ish) screen size.
Roll on October, death the the iPhone.
HTC are Taiwanese, not Chinese. There is a slight difference.
As for the phones. I drew a mock up of what a device with a 4.3" screen would look like in terms of footprint and it was huge.
There's plenty of people who think an iPhone is too big. A HTC Desire HD will be un-pocketable for some,
Also, I feel sorry for all the Desire owners. As is typical for HTC your phone is now obsolete and won't get any big updates.
While you are technically correct in referring to HTC as a Chinese company, they are based in the Republic of China which is nowadays commonly refered to as Taiwan. With all the knockoffs coming from the People's Republic of China (that's the big country to the north west of the Island of Taiwan) I'm sure HTC would want you to make that distinction.
@AC
I can't say this about HTC for sure, as I've not looked at the company or the phones in detail but the fact is, quite a few Taiwanese hi-tech companies have factories on Mainland China.
I know for a fact that my Asuses (Asii?) are ALL made in China. If I were a betting man, I would say fair chance of the same with HTC. Check that out and correct me if I am wrong.
I do believe that though there has not been a formal 'end' to the war, there is very little animosity left really between the 2 countries except perhaps at the level of politicians.
So... what is the real difference then?
A bit of googling suggests that the display will be an AMOLED rather than an LCD, which suggests the PenTile sub-pixel arrangement that I'd rather avoid (as seen on the original Desire). If it *is* an LCD, with a conventional triple-stripe layout, I might be tempted. If anyone has confirmation I'd like to hear it.
The "original HTC Desire" came in two flavours: LCD for Canada and AMOLED for the rest of the world. This was because Canada got them later, and byt hat time Samsung was having trouble producing the screens. The LCD screens SUCK at low-light (flickering) and aren't as bright as the AMOLEDs. On the other hand, the LCDs get better battery life.
Personally, I'm liking my LCD Desire.
The Desire (v1.0 for want of a better word) should still get updates relatively frequently, or at least custom roms should be easy to backport. The reason... the chip architecture hasn't changed much, the reason us Hero users got left behind was because HTC's flagship models moved from ARM6 to ARM7. The Wildfire and Legend still use ARM6 so should keep Hero hopes alive for a while but for the Desire ARM7 should be around for a year or two.
When are HTC going to realize that releasing so, so many handsets in such a short amount of time will be their downfall. How on earth do app developers maintain a standard when their are so many screen resolutions and other hardware performance factors to cater for. Everybody (non-iPhone owners I'd add) complain about being locked into the iPhone walled garden, but you know what? It's a flipping HUGE garden to play in. No I am not being a fan boy, but iPhone are winning the hearts of the application devs because they know they can write code for a particular hardware and it will work, and work beautifully. NOT so with Andriod (I won't even visit MS in this discussion) - because Andriod devs, don;t know what they are writing for from one month to the next. HTC - STOP flooding the market with new models every 3 weeks. Fail in the long run.
Even if HTC were to agree with you and started releasing one phone a year, other manufactures would be releasing Android phones with different specs, so HTC would be losing market share in exchange for nothing.
And developers will cope those problems as long as the money is there, they will complain on online forums about how hard it is, but they will do it.
I'm from the optical telecoms field, so no expert on the specifics here, but surely at some point it does not matter what hardware configuration is present on the target device - as long as some minimum specs are met software should be able to adapt and run. I see why this was a problem with phones in the past, and possibly now, given their moderatecomputing power, but surely phones will eventually go the way PCs went - with millions of possible device configurations all running the same software successfully. And that is what consumers want - few people want to have the same handset 3 years running, or have to wait 18 months to get a newer version from their favourite manufacturer.
I guess my Desire is still as good as it was before I read this, but still .......
If they're releasing a business-focused one I hope they've sorted out the glitches with the built-in mail client. Exchange activesync has always been a bit flaky on the original Desire and although it's easily fixed by installing Touchdown, arguing with the FD about why we're having to spend another $20 per handset to get a stable solution isn't the best start to rolling out new handsets across the organisation.
Got an HTC Magic - touch screen keyboard is great, most of the time, but when you want to write a large email, or text, can't beat proper keys - in fact, most people in the office here have a blackberry and an iPhone because they can't beat using a blackberry for long emails.... will be good to see if the desire takes some of the business usage.
The HD looks a bit too bulky for the pocket though (mind you, so does the samsung galaxy S)
....that the basic Bluetooth stuff, like handsfree profile, phonebook access profile, will actually work properly on these phones? It certainly doesn't on my Hero with Android 2.1, or the missus' Desire on Android 2.2.
Do HTC actually bother to test it with a broad range of other Bluetooth enabled products? It doesn't look like they do to me.
I don't mind all the super dooper new clever stuff, but please make the basic stuff work right!
I knew it. Larger screens, smaller batteries (since they really don't want to make the thing thicker)... That's the kind of "innovation" you just have to expect from those guys.
I'm still waiting for the HTC Giga with an 14" screen, four cameras, three USB ports and a battery life of 2 hours.
Might just be tough enough for my use - looks like the unibody does what it's supposed to do, protect the goodies inside, as opposed to being just a piece of bling which kills the phone when gripped.
The other good thing about HTC is the fact they bring out totally different form factors rather than tweaking the same old tired box as some competitors do.
Been seeing details about this for ages, on different sites, strangely NOT this one, hummm.
Anyway, looks good, its about time HTC bought out another keyboard phone, its been a while since the HTC G1/Dream, what has taken them so long? Anyway I hope 'The Reg' can get their hands on one and give it a good review. I need a phone with a hardware keyboard, and there has been a real lack of these till late, now we are spoilt for choice, the Moto Milestone 2, Nokia E7 and now this, lets find out which is best :)
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