HTC Desire HD Sim Free Mobile Phone - Mocha

As a tech-freak, researching for my next DESIRED product is the best part of the whole process of owning a new device. I was in search for a phone that had everything ranging from texting and calling to watching films on the go, I found this in the Desire HD. I was reluctant to buy an iPhone because of the amount of people that have one these days (including my father, brother and two of my best friends). I was dodging in and out between the iPhone 4 (because of it's wide range of app's and the glorious screen) and the Desire HD, having chosen the Desire HD I am happy with this decision because of the following features:
1) the screen res is better than the verdict people are giving it, granted it is not as good pixel wise as the iPhone 4, it has some great colour fidelity and the screen size is pure badass.
2) the aluminium uni body is fantastic, it gives the phone a weighty and luxurious feel which other phones lack.
3) the sound quality via standard 3.5mm headphones is amazing, the Dolby Digital mobile does really give it that extra "umph".
4) this phone is not as big as it sounds, the 4.3inch monster screen takes up 95% of the screens face (unlike the iPhone) leaving it looking magnificent.
5) there is an expansion slot for Micro-SD's which the iPhone lacks. the phone comes with an 8gb micro SD as standard.
6) the 8MP camera is great with some really useful additions that HTC has incorporated, this makes the camera less of a gimmick and more of a necessity, the shutter speed is also great.
7) HTCSense.com. ok, this is still in its early stages but I think HTC are onto something here, it is something that has never been incorporated on phones, something really useful, I have already used this twice, this was when I couldn't find the phone and it had fallen down the side of the sofa (everyone gets this and they start panicking), but panic no more as with HTCSense.com you can ring the phone (even when it is on silent) and the phone will ring as loud as it can! other amazing features are you can upload data/media over the air, track your phone and manage all your contacts. it is also possible to view all your texts and call log.
8) the battery life, people are saying this is the downpoint of the phone, I disaagree, it can last the whole day with moderate activity every hour (checking mails/txts, calling people, listening to music, playing games etc...)
9) Android is growing as we speak, it is the future and will soon be on par or even overtake the App Store because of developers preferring the Android system rather than Apple's proprietary one.
There are many other features such as the super fast internet and the super Snapdragon but I will leave this for you to research as it is the best part of buying a new product (for me and for other techies.)
About the Proximity Sensor problem, I have experienced nothing of the sort, I have researched into this and I can tell you that it is a problem for phones being sold in the Netherlands and if you are a Dutchman no need to worry as the guys over at HTC have released an over the air update that fixes this problem, it is great to hear that HTC are addressing their issues so soon!

I bought an HTC Desire HD having been an iPhone 4 user for the previous ~6 months. I wouldn't describe myself as an iOS or Android fanatic and I therefore feel able to present a detached analysis of how the Desire HD compares to the iPhone 4. I should note that I have been a previous owner of an iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G. I'll not compare the HTC to those other than to say that it is definitely superior. The iPhone 4 presents a more worthy and relevant competitor.

OPERATING SYSTEM:
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The principal benefit of the Apple iOS is that it 'just works'. Very few issues are encountered with regards to application incompatibilities or application developers being forced to cosider and cope with various hardware specifications when writing applications. On the iPhone 4 you can be sure that if you download an app from the app store, it WILL work on your device. In addition, the operating system, menues, folders and general interface are in my opinion definitely more user friendly. However, the level of control you have over the functionality of your device is vastly better under Android than it is under iOS. My opinion is that Android is more suited to technically profficient users. That's not to say that luddites everywhere wouldn't be able to use an Android handset, far from it, but for those who don't know a kilobyte from a megahertz, iOS presents a simpler and more easily navigated user interface. Being a tech head myself, I greatly appreciate the vastly superior level of control I get with the HTC under Android than I had on my iPhone 4 under iOS 4.3.

The number of applications available for the iPhone series of devices is at the time of writing greater than the number of apps on offer in the Android marketplace. However, Android's market share seems to be increasing inexorably and it's probably only a matter of time before the number of apps available for android equals and then surpases the number available for i-devices. There are a number of developers who seem reluctant to develop apps for Android purely because the iPhone is seen as being a more glamorous and fashionable item to own. For example, Stratfor (who provide eo-strategic intelligence reports) and my damned bank both have iPhone apps but no equivalent for Android. Whether this will change in the future remains to be seen, but for those who are desperately fashion conscious (I for one am not) then the iPhone may be the way to go.

SCREEN:
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It has to be said that the Retina Display on the iPhone 4 is glorious. It really does offer an incredible viewing experience with ultra sharp graphics and superb levels of contrast. Coming from the Retina display (3.5" diagonal) to the larger, lower ressolution display on the HTC Desire HD, I was concerned that I would really mis the resolution of the iPhone display and that this would spoil my user experience. It did not. The 4.3" (diagonal) display on the Desire HD is a gloriously large screen on which all sorts of goodness can be displayed. Colours are sharp and vibrant and the screen provides very good levels of brightness and contrast even when viewed in direct sunlight (the Desire HD like the iPhone 4 has an ambient light sensor and dynamically adjusts screen brightness to compensate for ambient illumination). Though the difference in resolution is just about noticable if you look very closely, the screen on the Desire HD is itslef a very high quality display and I very quickly forgot that it isn't quite as high resolution as the retina display on my iphone 4 was. Indeed, I'm loving the sheer size of the screen on the Desire HD.

The only strange behaviour I noted with the screen on the Desire HD is that the amount of adjustment that the automatic brightness system makes changed over the first few days that I used it. At first it seemed to be reluctant to make large alterations but now it's happy to change the screen brightness to whatever it needs to be. Perhaps the auto-brightness control has some sort of heuristic learning function.

ERGONOMICS:
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Both the Desire HD and the iPhone 4 are fairly weighty items, however this provides both with a tactile feeling of quality. The machined aluminium unibody contrustion of the Desire HD is probably a bit more robust than the gorilla glass panels on the iPhone 4, but given that both phones are very expensive items I would very much recommend something like the Otterbox Commuter case which offers superb levels of protection while still offering access to all the controls.

One criticism I have of the Desire HD is that the on/off button and rocker volume button have virtually no travel and provide very poor tactile feedback. Additionally the volume rocker button is very long and sits in just the wrong place, making it very easy to annoyingly reduce the volume of a call when picking up the phone. The iPhone 4 by contrast has near perfect controls. This is a small annoyance but for pure functional ergonomics the iPhone 4 is slightly superior. The battery cover on the Desire HD is also a pain to remove. However, having a replacement battery (and removable memory card for that matter) are features that the iPhone 4 just doesn't offer.

PHONE & MUSIC:
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Both the Desire HD and iPhone 4 provide superb sound quality when making voice calls. The iPhone 4's issue with reception is by now very well publicised though putting a case on the iPhone 4 solves this issue. Contacts and call data is handled differently but equally well on both handsets.

For the audiophiles amongst us, the sound quality on the iPhone 4 and the desire HD are both superb and both probably equal. I certainly can't detect and discernable difference. The only advantage that the iPhone 4 has over the Desire HD is that the iPod application that comes with the iPhone is vastly superior to the defauls music player on the Desire HD in terms of ease of use and functionality. However, there are a very large number of alternative music player apps on the Android marketplace so if you don't like a particular app that comes with the phone then it's simple to download a different one. And this is a general strength of Android over the iOS - Android is vastly more configurable and customisable than iOS.

CAMERA:
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For those who love taking heaps of photos or lengthy videos, the Desie HD and the iPhone 4 offer 8MP and 5MP camera sensors respectively. Both offer the ability to record 720p HD video at 30 FPS. As others have commented, the quality of the photographs produced by the iPhone camera is probably slightly higher than the camera on the Desire HD, but the latter offers many many more options for video and still photography. Both the Apple App Store and the Android Market offer many, many photo editing applications.

CONCLUSIONS:
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To be sure the HTC Desire HD and the iPhone 4 are both superb phones. For the non-tech-savvy user the iPhone probably offers a more simplistic and streamlined user interface. For the more tech-savvy user the Android operating system offers vastly greater control and customisation of your handset. The actual hardware inside the iPhone 4 and the Desire HD is almost identical, though the CPU of the iPhone runs slightly slower which offers slightly lower performance and longer battery life.

You may be wondering why I moved from the iPhone 4 to the Desire HD. I was thoroughy fed up with the heavily curated, dictated iOS environment. I want to be able to have a user-controlled experience on a top-quality phone and for me the Desire HD fulfils that very nicely. I'd never suggest the Desire HD as a realistic prospect for my 70 year old mother to use, but personally I love the freedom that it offers.It's also a superb phone on it's own merrits.

Ive had a lot of phones over the years but i must say i have never been so impressed with a handset untill i got this... Having previously owned an iphone 3g i thought about getting an iphone 4, but when i saw the video reviews on this phone.. i had to get it and for once its lived up to exactly what was advertised!!

although the phone is large and may not be to peoples taste once they see how easy it is to browse full web pages with embeded FLASH, and how great gallerys look on it it may change their mind. im not going to give a long lengthly review but will just highlight the bits that have wowed me.....all in all im glad i made the switch to android!! hope mores to come

pros:

1. Music quality..... teamed up with a decent set of headphones and the music on this will blow you away!!!

2. speed....... comming from a jail broken iphone 3g this is heaven but its probably no quicker than iphone 4 in honesty, but quick as you like!

3. Touch....... very very acurate and smoooth...no freezes love the home pages touch all in all well presented!!

4. flexability.... comming from an iphone where i had to jail break it and download tons of apps to get it the way i wanted.. this seems to do pretty much everything right out of the box. i love the fact that no stupid synching with stupid itunes is required and you can organise items just the way you like. on the whole feels as if i have so much more control over the way my handset behaves... and i love it!

5. tethering (using your phone as a 3g dongle) i could not believe how EASY this was to set up.. no jail breaking, no downloading extra app..and best of all.... FREE!!!!! basically if you have no internet available on your pc, you just connect your phone via USB select the tether option which pops up on phone screen and thats it!!! your on the net on your pc......and phone still fully functional!

theres so much more but ill stop here...

now for cons....although minor annoyances

1. Battery will last you a day with general music listening internet calls etc... but overall not an improvement on the crappy iphone one. however the battey is very small and if you are a real real heavy user and it really bothers you, you could always carry a spare... in my opinion its not that bad gets me by.. but then i dont sit watching films and playing games on it all day but if you do the spare is always an option...

2. Only way to wake phone from sleep is using the power button at top, unlike on iphone which you can use home button easier to access but you get used to it after a while...

3. volume and power buttons a bit soft when pushed and doesnt have that reassuring click response when you push them..feel a little mushy although it responds well...you dont get that click accuracy when using mutiple clicks or for example turning volume down and up....

but that aside...still give it 5 stars as its a great phone!!! (and im fussy!!!) hahaha