On to the next one

New kid on the block

After over a year with the Sam­sung i8910, I am mov­ing on. Sam­sung is through mak­ing updates — in fact it’s through doing any­thing Sym­bian for the time being. As far as cus­tom ROMs go, there’s only so much the mod­ders can do. The ROM cook­ing com­mu­nity is not very big and with no fur­ther updates from Sam­sung, we can’t expect any­thing revolutionary.

So, after see­ing this dead­lock, I thought, what’s next? I thought about this for a very long time. Finally I set­tled for the Desire HD.

The Desire HD

Why the Desire HD?

Sev­eral reasons.

1. First off, it’s made by HTC. HTC is known for keep­ing their devices up-to-date. They build great hard­ware and they have an awe­some track record.

2. The Desire HD runs Android (2.2 Froyo out of the box). Android to me feels like what Sym­bian should have been. You can do pretty much every­thing you can do on a Sym­bian phone, that is, send files via blue­tooth, nav­i­gate through the file sys­tem, play mul­ti­ple video/audio for­mats etc. Android works like Sym­bian with the ele­gance of iOS. It’s not quite either of them, but it pos­sesses some of their pos­i­tive attributes.

3. The hack­ing and ROM cook­ing com­mu­nity is quite large and thriv­ing over at xda-developers. Within the first week I’ve already rooted the phone, S-OFF, Radio-OFF and all that, plus I installed a cus­tom updated ROM (Android 2.2.1). There are already ROMs with Android 2.3 (Gin­ger­bread) with the proces­sor over-clocked from an impres­sive 1 GHz to 1.5 GHz. I like tin­ker­ing with devices and the Desire HD is a tinkerer’s dream.

4. HTC Sense UI is fan­tas­tic. Sense feels stream­lined and it’s but­tery smooth, bet­ter than iOS in cus­tomiza­tion options and yet just as smooth.

5. The Android mar­ket report­edly has over 200,000 apps (yes, that’s 200 thou­sand!). What’s bet­ter about it, is that most of these apps are free. Not only that, but these apps can do more than you can do on iOS eg. search through the phone, mon­i­tor and kill apps, access the under­ly­ing Linux ter­mi­nal, emu­la­tors etc.

Desire HD

6. The Desire HD has superb hard­ware. A Qual­comm Snap­dragon QSD8255 (45nm tech­nol­ogy) 1 GHz proces­sor, Adreno 205 GPU and 768MB RAM. It has a measly 1.5 GB inter­nal stor­age, which is enough for a bunch of apps plus a micro SD card slot. It also boasts a 4.3″ Super-LCD which is pretty good in all conditions.

7. The build qual­ity is also top notch, the alu­minium “uni-body” design is very sleek and it feels great in the hand.

8. The cam­era on this thing is fast. The qual­ity isn’t much dif­fer­ent from the Sam­sung i8910 cam­era but the speed is eons away. Pho­tos are taken instantly. The videos are smooth, you can tap-to-focus and activate/deactivate the dual LED as you film! Still on the LED, there is a ded­i­cated torch app which uses it. It even has 3 lev­els of brightness!

What’s not so awesome

Like many other phones the Desire HD isn’t perfect.

1. Bat­tery life is really bad. Maybe not that bad. The prob­lem is, I can’t keep my hands off it. Wi-fi is on most of the time — if not that, the data con­nec­tion is on — if not, I’m play­ing some game. The browser is so good that when ever I’m using the phone I find myself surf­ing the web. It’s like a mini iPad with­out the 10hr bat­tery life and that really sucks.

2. The but­tons are hope­less. The vol­ume rocker and power but­tons are badly designed. I can barely tell whether I’m increas­ing or decreas­ing the volume.

3. I miss the ded­i­cated cam­era but­ton. HTC has a face detec­tion fea­ture that starts a count down and shoots as soon as it detects a face. That sys­tem works flaw­lessly. They also have a timer set­ting which works in the same way. But I just wish there was a ded­i­cated cam­era but­ton. This is my first phone with a cam­era that doesn’t have a ded­i­cated cam­era button.

4. I also miss the front fac­ing cam­era. I used to video call every now and then with the i8910. Gone are the days — it’s voice calls all the way now.

The other redeem­ing thing I like is htcsence.com which has fea­tures to find the phone, ring it, wipe it, lock it or dis­play a mes­sage — all through the website.

Over­all, I am a very happy camper. The phone is solid, but­tery smooth and thor­oughly enter­tain­ing. HTC really took some time out to make their Sense UI…um…make sense. No won­der apps like ADWLauncher are so pop­u­lar on the Android Mar­ket, they are like poor repli­cas of Sense.