Guys after a long time sticking out with the fruity team, I finally switched over to the geek squad. 
Suffice to say this is my first review on TE & I will try to keep it informative and honest.
INTRO
After using the apple iphone 3G (bought officially in India thru Airtel) for the past almost 3 years, I was in the market looking for a new premium smartphone. I was considering iOS, WP7 as well as Android devices. I was looking for a smartphone that would be fast, feel great in hand & have a slick UI. Being used to the iphone I was expecting the user experience to be atleast at par if not better. After a lot of researching & taking user opinions I decided to try my luck with Android. The primary reason being, that both iOS & WP7 were too restrictive for my liking. I mean after buying a 30kish phone you still couldnt trully multitask or transfer files through bluetooth!! I mean come on man....you need to jailbreak to enable features which come enabled by default in other phones?
After a lot of brain-wrecking I decide to to go with the Desire HD. It had very good reviews with only its major shortcoming being a so-so battery life. But I was used to a pathetic battery backup wid my iphone so it was not a dealbreaker for me. Moreover I anyway charge my phone in the afternoon so again no issues. So I put an order for the Desire HD on e-bay @ 25,750.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
The first time I took out the phone, I was very impressed. The phone has that perfect chunky, metallic, substantial build quality of a high end phone. Also due to the metal body it was very cool to touch too. The screen is huge and very bright with very good clour reproduction. People tend to prefer the Super saturated screen of the Galaxy S but IMO the desire HD screen is sharper. The screen may not have the great viewing angles of the Iphone 4 but standalone its a superb unit.
[attachment=7339:13387.attach]
[attachment=7343:13391.attach]
One drawback is that the touch sensitive matrix underneath the glass is visible to the naked eye if the angle of incident light is right. It detracts a little bit coz in whitish backgrounds, it tends to give off effect that there are dust particles under the screen. This can be compensated somewhat by increasing the brightness of the screen, but still its a bit of a downer.
USABILITY
I can just say only one thing, The phone is FAST. However hard I tried I cudnt slow it down. The only one occasion that I managed to freeze the phone for a couple of seconds was when I deliberately opened 15 video files at once!!!. Every touch, every gesture is accurately registered. The HTC Sense UI is absolutely sublime. Its fast, slick & adds a lot of niceties to the vanilla Android. The additional features like syncing contacts from social networking sites, great keyboard, system wide search, excellent copy-paste support, extensive customization options, etc are all terrifically done by the HTC Sense UI. HTC has also added a recommended apps in the form of HTC Likes. Moreover HTC Hubs is the place to download all kinds of personalization stuff for your phone. HTCsense.com website is a cloud based service for locating & managing your phone. Its a bit buggy but the idea is great. The solid hardware selection shows in the way the phone operates. Every widget, every app opens without delays. The phone always remains responsive no matter what.
[attachment=7340:13388.attach]
MULTIMEDIA
The Desire HD comes with an 8 megapixel camera with dual LED flash. The camera captures a lot of details & accurate colours but has trouble focussing. When compared with it rivals like N8 & Iphone4 & Galaxy S, the HTC has a better camera than the galaxy S, but cannot come near N8's camera fidelity. Although the HTC beats the iphone4 in most cases but there are some conditions when Iphone 4's photos come out better. The desire HD can record 720p videos and these are fine as long as you dont pan the phone around quickly.
Music is very well handled by the Desire HD with a coverflow type UI. The desire HD has far more audio options like Dolby Mobile & SRS compared to its rivals. Personally I feel the Desire HD's music quality is much more rounded than its nearest rival- the apple iphone. Where the iphone lacks bass desire HD has ample of it. Though the volume cud have been a bit louder overall.
As a a video player the Desire HD excels. With the large screen & audio enhancements the desire HD is the perfect portable movie player. The visuals in the movies come out fine. The desire can play 720p movies with ease although xvid format movies tend to cause it some trouble. However most h.264 & x.264 movies play sublimely.
INTERNET
The desire HD is a dream phone in terms of connectivity & browsing. Every webpage is displayed crisply & properly in the built in webkit browser. The large 4.3" screen helping tremendously is displaying large websites. The added support of flash 10.1 in froyo means all the websites rich in embedded flash content is displayed properly unlike the iphone. Overall the web experience of the desire HD cannot be faulted at.
[attachment=7341:13389.attach]
BATTERY LIFE & CALL QUALITY
Contrary to what is being said, I made my Desire HD last for more than a day with heavy usage which included- 1. all the apps on auto sync, 2. running more than 10 background apps, 3. wifi usage of about a couple of hours, 4. constant gprs usage, 5. a few calls & smss
If a litle bit of care is taken & the display is set to auto brightness, the desire HD will easily last for more than a day.
The voices clarity of the desire HD during calls is good although the voices sound a bit too "android" like and less human. Also due to absence of any noise cancellation audio quality in noisy environments is bit of a letdown. I would say in this respect the iphone is definitely ahead.
RATINGS
Design-----9/10
Build------9.5/10
Aesthetics--8.5/10
UI----------10/10
Performance---10/10
Multimedia-----8.5/10
Camera--------8/10
Connectivity-----9.5/10
Call Quality------7/10
Internet---------10/10
Overall---------9/10
[attachment=7326:13354.attach]
Suffice to say this is my first review on TE & I will try to keep it informative and honest.
INTRO
After using the apple iphone 3G (bought officially in India thru Airtel) for the past almost 3 years, I was in the market looking for a new premium smartphone. I was considering iOS, WP7 as well as Android devices. I was looking for a smartphone that would be fast, feel great in hand & have a slick UI. Being used to the iphone I was expecting the user experience to be atleast at par if not better. After a lot of researching & taking user opinions I decided to try my luck with Android. The primary reason being, that both iOS & WP7 were too restrictive for my liking. I mean after buying a 30kish phone you still couldnt trully multitask or transfer files through bluetooth!! I mean come on man....you need to jailbreak to enable features which come enabled by default in other phones?
After a lot of brain-wrecking I decide to to go with the Desire HD. It had very good reviews with only its major shortcoming being a so-so battery life. But I was used to a pathetic battery backup wid my iphone so it was not a dealbreaker for me. Moreover I anyway charge my phone in the afternoon so again no issues. So I put an order for the Desire HD on e-bay @ 25,750.
FIRST IMPRESSIONS
The first time I took out the phone, I was very impressed. The phone has that perfect chunky, metallic, substantial build quality of a high end phone. Also due to the metal body it was very cool to touch too. The screen is huge and very bright with very good clour reproduction. People tend to prefer the Super saturated screen of the Galaxy S but IMO the desire HD screen is sharper. The screen may not have the great viewing angles of the Iphone 4 but standalone its a superb unit.
[attachment=7339:13387.attach]
[attachment=7343:13391.attach]
One drawback is that the touch sensitive matrix underneath the glass is visible to the naked eye if the angle of incident light is right. It detracts a little bit coz in whitish backgrounds, it tends to give off effect that there are dust particles under the screen. This can be compensated somewhat by increasing the brightness of the screen, but still its a bit of a downer.
USABILITY
I can just say only one thing, The phone is FAST. However hard I tried I cudnt slow it down. The only one occasion that I managed to freeze the phone for a couple of seconds was when I deliberately opened 15 video files at once!!!. Every touch, every gesture is accurately registered. The HTC Sense UI is absolutely sublime. Its fast, slick & adds a lot of niceties to the vanilla Android. The additional features like syncing contacts from social networking sites, great keyboard, system wide search, excellent copy-paste support, extensive customization options, etc are all terrifically done by the HTC Sense UI. HTC has also added a recommended apps in the form of HTC Likes. Moreover HTC Hubs is the place to download all kinds of personalization stuff for your phone. HTCsense.com website is a cloud based service for locating & managing your phone. Its a bit buggy but the idea is great. The solid hardware selection shows in the way the phone operates. Every widget, every app opens without delays. The phone always remains responsive no matter what.
[attachment=7340:13388.attach]
MULTIMEDIA
The Desire HD comes with an 8 megapixel camera with dual LED flash. The camera captures a lot of details & accurate colours but has trouble focussing. When compared with it rivals like N8 & Iphone4 & Galaxy S, the HTC has a better camera than the galaxy S, but cannot come near N8's camera fidelity. Although the HTC beats the iphone4 in most cases but there are some conditions when Iphone 4's photos come out better. The desire HD can record 720p videos and these are fine as long as you dont pan the phone around quickly.
Music is very well handled by the Desire HD with a coverflow type UI. The desire HD has far more audio options like Dolby Mobile & SRS compared to its rivals. Personally I feel the Desire HD's music quality is much more rounded than its nearest rival- the apple iphone. Where the iphone lacks bass desire HD has ample of it. Though the volume cud have been a bit louder overall.
As a a video player the Desire HD excels. With the large screen & audio enhancements the desire HD is the perfect portable movie player. The visuals in the movies come out fine. The desire can play 720p movies with ease although xvid format movies tend to cause it some trouble. However most h.264 & x.264 movies play sublimely.
INTERNET
The desire HD is a dream phone in terms of connectivity & browsing. Every webpage is displayed crisply & properly in the built in webkit browser. The large 4.3" screen helping tremendously is displaying large websites. The added support of flash 10.1 in froyo means all the websites rich in embedded flash content is displayed properly unlike the iphone. Overall the web experience of the desire HD cannot be faulted at.
[attachment=7341:13389.attach]
BATTERY LIFE & CALL QUALITY
Contrary to what is being said, I made my Desire HD last for more than a day with heavy usage which included- 1. all the apps on auto sync, 2. running more than 10 background apps, 3. wifi usage of about a couple of hours, 4. constant gprs usage, 5. a few calls & smss
If a litle bit of care is taken & the display is set to auto brightness, the desire HD will easily last for more than a day.
The voices clarity of the desire HD during calls is good although the voices sound a bit too "android" like and less human. Also due to absence of any noise cancellation audio quality in noisy environments is bit of a letdown. I would say in this respect the iphone is definitely ahead.
RATINGS
Design-----9/10
Build------9.5/10
Aesthetics--8.5/10
UI----------10/10
Performance---10/10
Multimedia-----8.5/10
Camera--------8/10
Connectivity-----9.5/10
Call Quality------7/10
Internet---------10/10
Overall---------9/10
[attachment=7326:13354.attach]
