If you haven’t noticed, I have actually done a big review of HTC Desire (Android 2.1 OS). So that lead me to understand some Android applications as well. One of the benefit of having HTC Desire is, there are some preloaded Android apps so that you don’t have to download them separately. So I’m going to introduce you with some smart and efficient applications which will boost the productivity of your new Android Phone. Having said that, all of the applications I’m going to mention are tested on Android 2.1 OS. Almost all of these applications are free unless stated otherwise.

How to download these applications? Just find the “Market” icon on your phone and search for the application name. Now to make the most convenient way of installing these applications you should install “Barcode Scanner (open this link from your phone browser)” from the Android “Market” first (See below).

There are 2 ways to install the applications from this page.

1. Follow the link under each product using your Android Phone browser (Data charges may apply)
2. Scan the QrCode from your laptop or desktop screen using “Barcode Scanner“

Not got a laptop or desktop? Visit Broadband Genie for Laptop Deals

Let’s get down to the list shall we..

Barcode Scanner

My Rating ★★★★¾ 

Install using Android Market link (only browse with your Android phone)

QrCode: (Scan this from your laptop and desktop screen using phone’s Barcode Scanner application)

Scan barcodes on CDs, books, and other products, then look up prices and reviews, or search for a word in a book and find where it occurs. You can also scan QR Codes containing URLs, contact info, calendar events, etc. A must have for any Android user.

PicSay Photo Editor (Free)

My Rating ★★★★☆ 

Install using Android Market link (only browse with your Android phone)

QrCode: (Scan this from your laptop and desktop screen using phone’s Barcode Scanner application)

Powerful and award winning photo editor. Color-correct your pictures and add word balloons, titles, graphics, and effects like distortion. All in a fun, intuitive, and easy-to-use interface.. A must have for any Android user.

ActionComplete

My Rating ★★★¾☆ 

Install using Android Market link (only browse with your Android phone)

QrCode: (Scan this from your laptop and desktop screen using phone’s Barcode Scanner application)

ActionComplete is a high-tech to-do list for your Droid phone. It makes it easy to organize your tasks and appointments. You can even set reminders that will pop up based on where you are, allowing you to remind yourself of certain tasks at the office, others at the home, and so on. A nice productivity application for any Android user.

Ringdroid

My Rating ★★★★☆ 

Install using Android Market link (only browse with your Android phone)

QrCode: (Scan this from your laptop and desktop screen using phone’s Barcode Scanner application)

This application is actually really cool. It lets you manipulate song tracks, so that you can use songs from your music library as ring-tones. What’s great about that? Well say you want the ring-tone to start 1min 30secs into the song, and last for 20 seconds (chorus maybe?), this application makes life easy for you.

• Supports MP3, WAV, AAC, MP4, 3GPP and AMR files.
• Song editing
• Create ring-tones from edited song

A nice ringtone editing application for any Android user.

Uninstaller

My Rating ★★★★½ 

Install using Android Market link (only browse with your Android phone)

QrCode: (Scan this from your laptop and desktop screen using phone’s Barcode Scanner application)

Fastest and simplest uninstall tool on android!
Features:

• Remove user application easily by single click!
• Display application name,version,install time and size
• Search application by name
• Various sort mode
• Ignore system applications that can not be uninstalled

A very useful application when you’ve too many applications to uninstall.

Astro File Manager

My Rating ★★★★¼ 

Install using Android Market link (only browse with your Android phone)

QrCode: (Scan this from your laptop and desktop screen using phone’s Barcode Scanner application)

ASTRO File Manager is a very powerful file manager for Android. It really is a must on your Android device when it comes to managing files on your microSD card. It’s packed with features, and here’s some of them:

• Download any file with browser
• Browse / create / extract zip files
• Back up and restore public applications to the SD card
• Create shortcuts
• Send files as attachments
• Thumbnails
• Multiselect
• Search
• Image, Text, HTML Viewers

A very fast file manager, a must have for Android devices.

Twicca Beta

My Rating ★★★★½ 

Install using Android Market link (only browse with your Android phone)

QrCode: (Scan this from your laptop and desktop screen using phone’s Barcode Scanner application)

twicca is twitter Client for Android that you won’t be able to stop using.
Includes:

• Notification
• Auto pager
• Search
• Post with photo/video upload
• Geotag
• Saved search
• Recent hash tags
• View Conversation
• Lists
• Retweet
• Trends
• Color label
• Excellent Widgets

I’ve tested all the twitter applications for Android but this is my favorite and once you start using this one there is no going back to any other.

aCar (Productivity)

My Rating ★★★★¼ 

Install using Android Market link (only browse with your Android phone)

QrCode: (Scan this from your laptop and desktop screen using phone’s Barcode Scanner application)

Track the maintenance, fill up, fuel mileage & expenses of your car. Service reminders (e.g. Engine Oil) & useful statistics, charts & reports; plus backup/restore & export/import to/from various sources.

A productive application to maintain your car history using your Android phone.

FxCamera

My Rating ★★★★¾ 

Install using Android Market link (only browse with your Android phone)

QrCode: (Scan this from your laptop and desktop screen using phone’s Barcode Scanner application)

FxCamera enables you to take a picture with various effects.
- ToyCam
- Polandroid
- Fisheye
- SymmetriCam
- Warhol
- Normal

A very nice add-on  for your phone camera with additional effects.

Tip Calculator

My Rating ★★★★¼ 

Install using Android Market link (only browse with your Android phone)

QrCode: (Scan this from your laptop and desktop screen using phone’s Barcode Scanner application)

Simple tip calculator which allows you to split your bill. Switch between basic and advanced views with the tab.

Simple yet effective tool while hanging out with a group of friends.

Bonus Apps:

Gowalla

My Rating ★★★★☆ 

Install using Android Market link (only browse with your Android phone)

QrCode: (Scan this from your laptop and desktop screen using phone’s Barcode Scanner application)

Gowalla is the easiest way to share places you go with friends. Download the app to discover eateries, coffeehouses, hotspots, hangouts, shops, landmarks, parks, museums and more.
Share your experiences through Gowalla with friends on Facebook and Twitter, then stamp your passport to earn rewards at the places you visit.

Official application from Gowalla.com.

Foursquare

My Rating ★★★★☆ 

Install using Android Market link (only browse with your Android phone)

QrCode: (Scan this from your laptop and desktop screen using phone’s Barcode Scanner application)

Foursquare helps you find new ways to explore your city. See where your friends are, learn about the places they frequent and unlock rewards as you travel.
See foursquare.com for more info.
Latest Release: Check Preferences -> Changelog for details!

Official application from Foursquare.

There you have the 10+ Applications you need to get started with your brand new Andriod phone. Do you have a suggestion of a nice and useful app? Feel free to suggest.

Advanced Task Killer application is not good to use with Android OS. Found out why?

As you have noticed I haven’t added some applications like official Facebook, official Twitter application, QuickOffice, PDF Viewer which are already included with my HTC Desire.

You’ve seen it all and experienced the HTC Desire from my point of view. This is the final chapter of this review. This part of the topic consists of mainly the reasons of getting Desire, verdict, rating of the elements, pros and some cons. This should eventually give you a clear picture of the product and distinguish itself as one of the best Smartphone available around at this time.

Personal Rating

Here I’ve rated the specific parts of the phone and features from my personal experience, the links are the re-cap of this phone topics.

1. Pricing ★★★★☆  (medium range price)
2. Boxed contents ★★★¾☆ 
   { Learn more about boxed contents }
3. Interface ★★★★☆ 
   { Learn more about interface }
4. Hardware and Performance ★★★★½ 
   { Learn more about hardware }
5. Telephony feature ★★★★¼ 
   { Learn more about telephony features }
6. Multimedia features ★★★¾☆ 
   { Learn more about multimedia features }
7. Camera and Camcorder ★★★¾☆ 
   { Learn more about camera and camcorder features }
8. Connectivity and Applications ★★★★¼ 
   { Learn more about connectivity and applications }
9. Battery Life ★★★¾☆ 
   { Learn more about battery life }
10. Value for Money ★★★★½ 

10 Reasons Why You Should Get HTC Desire

1. OLED screen : The OLED serves up vivid colors, helps make the Desire a little slimmer and may save battery.
2. Processor : The 1GHz Snapdragon processor lives up to its potential, making every action fast and judder-free; every transition smooth.
3. Sense UI : The HTC Sense user interface adds extra gloss to Android, with more home screens, widgets and simplified navigation.
4. Flash support : The HTC Desire is capable of playing Flash games, It might not perfect but at least they have it.
5. Web wonder : Browsing the web is speedy and the mix of Flash and 3.7-inch screen means websites render well.
6. Camera : The five-megapixel camera is the best yet from HTC, capturing reasonably sharp images. It throws in a decent LED flash too.
7. Video : The Desire features excellent video capture at 800×480 pixels and a superb screen to view it on. Supports up to 32GB microSD for adequate storage.
8. Social networking : Facebook, Google and Twitter are integrated with HTC Sense, meaning you can sync your Facebook, Twitter, Google Contact/buddies with their phone book entries, giving a very easy way to check their status updates.
9. Messaging : Push email over Exchange as well as Gmail and other webmail accounts is supported. You’ll never be out of touch again.
10. Value For Money (VFM) : The Desire is better equipped and cheaper than the iPhone 3GS or Nexus One, whether bought SIM-free or on a contract.

HTC Desire Pros (Things I Liked)

The HTC Desire is a feature-rammed phone with the hardware to support it. It’s got a huge screen with the 1GHz processor underneath, and the Sense UI is a system that keeps getting better with every iteration. HTC Desire – it just works as you want it to as a phone and an internet tablet pc at the same time.

The Sense UI, Leap View and social network integration is all seamless and useful and the internet browser with pinch to zoom is simply fabulous. Awesome customization options on the home screen makes it even more personal.

The camera is probably the best I’ve seen from HTC series of phones. Overall experience was fast and intuitive.

• Smooth edges mean comfortable for long phone calls
• Rubberized edges give the phone more grip
• Inclusion of Leap View which gives you top down view of home pages
• HTC Sense customization options and widgets
• HTC Sense rich contact integration
• 3.7 inch AMOLED screen is bright and vivid
• Internet Browsing is most satisfying than on any other phone
• Flash videos supported (partially)
• Speed and power which launches applications in a jiffy
• HTC keyboard is fast and accurate and has adaptive learning capability
• Photos from the 5 megapixel camera
• Photo editing options on the HTC Desire like “Solarised”
• Media player is decent
• Huge collection of Free applications at Android Marketplace

HTC Desire Cons

Let me be honest – there’s not a lot wrong with this phone. Just found out that the Bluetooth music playback is a little patchy and the battery will drop a little easily if you leave everything updating in the background.

• Limited application storage (if you are application junkie)
• The screen is fingerprint magnet (but a proper screen protector can solve this issue)
• The screen is less visible under the direct sunlight
• HTC Sense widget auto-refresh time can drain battery
• No HD video recording (not really a big deal)
• Video playback could be better
• Battery only lasts for a day with active use
• Video frame rate (fps) could be better
• No DIVX decoder, HTC Should upgrade this as soon as possible because Samsung Galaxy S I9000 already comes with DIVX Decoder.
• Usability for camera could be better in UI and Image Stabilization is not present, you really need a steady hand

Verdict

This is a phenomenal device – one of the best you can get your hands dirty on. Usually when I like a phone on the first use, I get disappointed after a little time with it, but the HTC Desire kept on performing and achieving when I thought it would not be able to.

The screen is lovely, the design is slick and processor makes everything happen in a flash – all you’d want from a Smartphone.

A stunning phone, and one that will show the world that Android isn’t just for the hackers and phone geeks any more. It’s for YOU!

Sure, some people will want slightly nicer design a simpler home screen and richer app store  (iPhone 3GS) but as a piece of hardware HTC Desire without par in the mobile world.

The Desire is confidently taking charge of the HTC Android lineup (right beside the Incredible) and I have no reason to be disappointed. This is one of the most impressive among the droid fleets these days.

Acknowledgement

Thanks to Maxis Telecom for providing such wonderful opportunity for me to do this extensive review about this phone. If they didn’t provide the device I won’t be able to test it out in this much detail. This topic is a part of Maxis 10 Reviewers Programme.

This phone is available in Malaysia from Maxis Telecom and priced at RM2199 as retail price. Even more interesting is that you can get this phone for RM1499 if you subscribe to any of the Maxis voice and data plan. Now that is what I called affordable.

We’ve already seen the powerful telephony, multimedia and camera features of HTC Desire. Now lets have a look at the connectivity features and some of the applications comes with HTC Desire. Part of this article also contains numerous performance and battery tips to make your HTC Desire more useful and snappy.

Lets see what makes HTC Desire a useful device for your everyday needs.

Connectivity

• Desire offers USB v2.0 connectivity via a microUSB port, Bluetooth v2.1 (including transfers) with A2DP support and Wi-Fi.
• HTC Desire is equipped with quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE securing worldwide roaming capabilities and dual-band (900/2100 MHz) 3G with HSDPA. The HSDPA is performs at 7.2Mbps and the HSUPA can reach up to 2Mbps.
• Internet tethering is also available via the microUSB port and it’s really easy to activate. Just select tethering when the handset prompts you to select how to connect to your computer and that’s it.
  
• HTC have also kept in mind about the people without a data plan and allow you to explicitly forbid the handset to access the mobile network for data.
• The built-in microSD card slot can also be used as a data transfer tool (like a card-reader) with some pretty impressive speed.

Powerful and Effective Web Browser

• The address bar is locked at the top of the page and when you scroll down it hides itself for more screen space. You don’t need to scroll to the top every time you want to insert a new address. Simply press the menu button and the address bar will be there for you.
• Android platform always offers great web browsing skills. Now with 2.1 things are even sweeter with the intuitive user interface even more polished and the functionality reaching new heights.
  
• The user interface is pretty much minimalistic at first sight. With pinch-zooming enabled you don’t even need the zoom buttons which I have seen on most other Android devices.
• HTC Desire browser also comes with double tap zooming and text reflow. Which make it extremely easy to read even longer texts on the phone display.
  
• The minimalist UI is still pretty powerful. Hit the menu key and six keys pops up. You can open a new tab, switch tabs, refresh the page, go forward, open bookmarks and so on. The last button extends even more options (text copying, find on page, etc.).
  
• Even more, HTC Desire has Flash support in its web browser. Its performance is much better than the Legend. Sadly it is not perfect and you can expect it to run simpler flash animations or games only. Metacafe and Vimeo videos are not working in this version of Flash.
• Also remember, Android 2.1 browser supports HTML5 and its video tag.

Productivity Applications

The HTC Desire pre-loaded with the usual set of organizing apps. Such as document viewer (which handles office files just fine) and PDF Viewer.

• The Quickoffice app which supports viewing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, including the Office 2007 versions. If you need to edit documents then you need to get a paid application though.
  
  
• The Document viewer is integrated with you email application which makes it very useful when you want to view an attachment.
• The calendar has four different types of view – daily, weekly, monthly and agenda. Adding a new event is quick and easy, and you can also set an alarm to act as a reminder. The calendar can integrate itself to your Google Calendar.
  
• There is also a nice touch optimized calculator included. It has nice and easy to hit buttons.
  
• The HTC Desire comes with an alarm clock application. This application allows you to set a lot of alarms, each with its own start time and repeat algorithm.
• The Desk clock app turns your Desire into a Desktop clock. It displays the current time and date and allows you to switch off the display backlighting to save battery power.
  
• The World clock app allows you to quickly check the time in different time zones. In addition to that the stopwatch and timer apps might come in handy when doing sports.
• The Stocks application grabs the quotes from Yahoo finance.
  

Social Media Applications

• Facebook and Twitter fans will appreciate the preinstalled Facebook and Peep apps. These allows you to update your profile on the social networks in a snap. Yes I know you could’ve downloaded it by  yourselves but it’s nice that HTC saved you the time and effort.
  
• HTC Desire is also empowered with an independent YouTube application which performs very well even on a 3G connection. One click upload video is integrated too.
  
• There are tons of Social Media/Network applications available at the Android Marketplace too.

GPS Navigation

• The HTC Desire comes with a built-in GPS receiver. It can lock itself to the satellite in just under two minutes without the A-GPS on. Well, that isn’t bad at all.
• Google Maps is a standard part of the Android package so it does make an appearance on the Desire. Its voice-guided navigation version is not available to the rest of the world (Only in US).
• Pinch-zooming works like a charm in Google Maps, but you also have the on-screen controls and double-tap zooming.
• You can plan a route and track your current location.
• HTC Desire does support the Street View mode in Google Maps but most of the Asian countries won’t be able to make use of it.
• There are many other navigation applications in Android Marketplace.

Gaming

HTC Desire hardware is well equipped for performance gaming experience. With enough RAM, GPU and 1Ghz processor; gaming in HTC Desire is simply a pleasure. Here is a video with complete 3D gaming experience (Found it at YouTube). Having said that, due to limited user application space you might not be able to install many games at once.

The game “Raging Thunder” make use of all the 3D hardware features, RAM and processor power. As you can see it runs seamlessly with accelerated experience.

Android Market

• HTC Desire runs Android 2.1 and the Android Market has quite a lot to offer. With the number of applications growing by the hour, the choice of apps is quite impressive.
• The Applications and Games sections are divided into multiple categories (e.g. Communication, Entertainment etc.) so you can filter the apps that are relevant to you.
• Searching is very easy – simply tap the search button, type what you’re looking for. From then on, it’s pretty easy to choose. Each of the app has a rating, a short description by the author, user comments and screenshots.
• Android market is the one with the largest percentage of free apps across all platforms and thousands apps are waiting approval right now.

Application Storage

Usually Android apps on the Market are generally small (0.5 – 2 MB), not to mention the games are bigger than the usual apps. It’s a bit disappointing that a high-end device like the Desire to have limited internal storage. The Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 comes with 1GB, almost half of it is available to user. HTC could have done somewhat better for the Desire.

The HTC Desire has 512MB ROM. Almost 80% of it is used or reserved for the Android OS. This leaves you with 120MB free space for all your apps and games. The Android OS still doesn’t support installation on memory cards or even extended inbuilt storage (such as the 8/16 GB of the Samsung I9000 Galaxy S, which are listed as internal drive). So you have only 120MB to install what you need.

There is only one workaround for getting apps to install on your memory card and it starts with rooting (hacking) your device. However success is not guaranteed and that could void the warranty of your device too.

When it comes to hacking your Smartphone, don’t do it unless you know what you’re doing and that you have a backup plan.

Optimization Tips (including battery life improvement)

• Disable sync your contacts with Facebook, Twitter and Google contacts. You might save a lot of space by doing so. If you have a lot of contacts in these social networks, syncing them with your address book will make your phonebook too bulky. (You can find these options under “Settings > Accounts & Sync”
• Calibrate the G-Sensor when your phone started for the first time. Access the options “Settings > Sounds and Display > Scroll down to the very bottom”
• Turn off your GPS whenever you are not using the GPS feature. This improves the battery life (use the HTC Power Control Widget).
• Press and hold the menu button for a task switcher screen (such as Alt+tab in windows)
• Disable animated wallpaper (at the home screen click menu and use a static wallpaper, the options are at “Settings > Personalize” )
• Check for all your third party application settings to confirm whether they are starting up when the phone is booting. If so, uncheck the option to load that application at system startup.
• Disable window animations (inside “Settings > Sounds & Display”)
• Turn Vibrate Notification off: Settings > Sound & display > Un-check Phone Vibrate (inside “Settings > Sounds & Display”).
• Turn Off Haptic feedback: Settings > Sound & display > Un-check Haptic feedback : Vibrate when pressing soft keys and on certain UI interactions (inside “Settings > Sounds & Display”).
• Add the “Power Control” widget to your screen. This widget allows you to quickly switch on and off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, Auto Refresh and Screen brightness.
  
• Reduce Screen Timeout Interval: Settings > Sound & display > Screen timeout (default 1 min) > Reduce to less than 1 min (e.g. 30 seconds) can be found under inside “Settings > Sounds & Display”
• Disable Unnecessary Running services: Settings > Applications > Running Services > Select and Stop any apps that you are not using
• Customize Data Options of Individual Apps : normally in Setting options of each app. Change intervals / frequency of data pulls or disable background syncing altogether. Specially keep your eyes on Twitter clients, RSS apps and mail.
• Disable Auto-sync : Settings > Accounts & sync > Un-check Auto-sync
• Disable Background Data syncing : Settings > Accounts & sync > Un-check Background data. (note: this will improve your battery life a lot but this is also required to be ON when you want to use Android Marketplace)
  
• The HTC Desire battery life increased over time, at the beginning when you get the phone you might need to charge it more often.
• You can check your battery level on your HTC Desire. Go to – Settings > About Phone > Battery. That gives you Battery Status, Battery Use, Battery Level, Up time and Awake time. It breaks down battery usage nicely too.
  

Well, this is pretty long enough already. Now it is the time for the final verdict with some pros and cons about HTC Desire. Yes, that is the final chapter of this long review. So don’t go anywhere.

HTC Desire exceeds the camera power from it’s previous models. A 5MP snapper on HTC Desire turns any mobile photographer into a pinch happy snappy person in no time. Having said that, you should not expect the camera to compete with models like Sony Xperia X10, Sony Satio or LG Viewty Smart. But the 5MP is definitely a good choice when you need a mobile camera. With the advantage of Android 2.1, HTC Desire brings a camera interface that is quite competitive outside the Google OS world.

There are a number of customizable settings available such as ISO speed, aspect ratio, auto focus, face detection, geo-tagging, flicker adjustment, white balance and metering mode. Smile detection like Sony Xperia X10 is not yet there but surely the gap is getting closer. A secondary camera is definitely one of the most wanted missing feature for this line of Smartphones.

Let me show you some of the features of the camera and some critics in this article.

Camera Interface

Camera Features

• 5 megapixel sensor for a maximum image resolution of 2592 x 1936 pixels, and a LED flash.
• Touch focus gives you a flexibility. You can tap any part of the screen and the auto focus will focus in that area. A long-press will auto focus in the designated area and when you lift your finger, it will take the shot.
• The optical trackball acts also as a shutter key. One click on the trackball, the camera will do the focus and take the snap.
• Generally, image quality of the HTC Desire camera is nice and definitely better than the Legend but not yet at the par with Sony Xperia series phones. There is a decent amount of resolved detail and the contrast is now much better.
• There are three main operational shortcut on the camera screen. One setting the flash, another for exposure compensation right in the viewfinder and third one is the shortcut to photo albums.
• Face detection works pretty well with a decent amount of light. Example below (notice the small green square at Starbucks emblem).
  
• ISO settings can be switched to manual and configurable between ISO 100, 200, 400 and 800.
• Geo-tagging can be enabled and disabled from the settings. This geo-tagging data can be used by Flickr, Picasa and similar web applications.
• 3 types of metering mode available at the settings – Partial, Spot and Average metering. Which are pretty helpful in many conditions.
• Widescreen shooting at 5MP is definitely a nice feature for shooting wide landscape.
• The HTC Desire camcorder comes with a plenty of options too. You can take video in QVGA (320 x 240), CIF (352 x 288), VGA (DVD quality, 640 x 480) or WVGA (800 x 480), and all four can be recorded to MP4 or H.263 formats, with the file container as .3GP.
• HTC Desire shoots WVGA (800 x 480) videos in 15fps. But sometimes it will dynamically increase the frame rate to 20fps if enough light available.
• Both Camera and Camcorder has both automatic and manual flicker adjustment options. Which helps you to take photo in a condition like a computer screen and fluorescent lights without having a flicker. Manual flicker rates are 50hz and 60hz.
• The camera also comes with a preset of effects such as black and white and sepia photos.
• You can tweak and adjust brightness, contrast, saturation and sharpness of the photo or video before snapping it.
• Even though HTC Desire doesn’t have a macro mode, it can still focus on a close object (as close as 10cm) and the results are pretty impressive. (See the sample photos below)
• The LED flash helps the camera to focus in total dark and the light is distributed pretty much evenly.
• The camera automatically keeps refocusing on the scene in front of it, which removes the need for a half-press on the shutter key to bring the picture into sharpness.
• Simply pressing on separate sections of the screen to take a snap makes a big difference to the brightness of a photo.
• The options saturation, sharpness and contrast of the camera aren’t just gimmicks. They make real differences in the snaps.
• Auto focus is also there for the camcorder too. But the Desire only focuses before the recording starts and acts as a fixed focus camera after that.
• Camcorder have the similar options as the still camera and addition to all that it also allows you to setup some options like video resolution, encoding type and recording limit.

Camera critics

• Unfortunately, the usability is still pretty bad with most of the options sitting on a retractable tray at the left side of the viewfinder which can either be dragged out by a finger sweep or by pressing the menu key
• Detail in brighter light can sometimes be a little washed out on the HTC Desire. See example below.
  
• A dual camera definitely can bring this device to the next level.
• Many people said that HTC Desire doesn’t have a HD recording option like Sony Ericsson Vivaz. In my honest opinion that HD feature isn’t entirely necessary.
• Video quality is below average at the optimum settings. The amount of resolved detail is not enough, the colors are a bit washed-out, the there are some low contrast issues visible too. But in my opinion these can be ignored and hardly noticeable.
• One of the critical thing that is missing from this device is a dedicated shutter key at the right side. Using the whole touchscreen to capture isn’t the most comfortable thing. Personally I think it’s really helpful in many diverse situations. Not to mention that it also helps taking self portraits.
• In light colored objects with a detail, HTC Desire produces a soft pinkish spot at the centre of the frame.
• Noise levels of high ISO mode remained relatively high (somewhat tolerable though).
• Scene modes like digital cameras in HTC Desire would be great but not essential.

Camera Samples

Here are some sample photos for you to understand the camera quality by yourself. The photos below are un-edited but converted to smaller size so the JPEG compression may change the experience.

Sample Sky shot in Auto mode (16:9 wide)

A sample Landscape in Auto mode (16:9 wide)

Sample Macro shot 1 in Auto mode (16:9 wide)

Sample Macro shot 2 in Auto mode (16:9 wide)

Sample Macro shot at ISO 800 Auto mode (16:9 wide, notice the grainy image)

Note: More sample photos will be added soon. So check back often.

Camcorder Video Sample

Here is a video taken by HTC Desire (uploaded straight from the phone to YouTube, quality may differ)

This is a sample video taken on bright light WVGA (800×480) Dynamic 25fps (Desire adjusted the fps to 25) [Direct Link to YouTube – You can select and watch in 480p option]

This is another sample video taken in Low-Light condition WVGA (800×480) Dynamic 12fps (Desire adjusted the fps to 12) [Direct Link to YouTube – You can select and watch in 480p option]

HTC Desire may not be the supplement of your point and shoot digital camera but It is definitely a great mobile photography and camcorder device.

In my thoughts, there are some parts of HTC Desire camera should be improved to compete the other Smartphones in the same range.

So what is next? Yes, it’s about HTC Desire connectivity and applications. That would be the last topic before the the final verdict about this phone. So just hang on there for just a little bit.

We’ve taken a look at the “Telephony” features on my last topic and I am moving here on to the Multimedia Experience of HTC Desire. HTC’s Multimedia Experience is getting better but not just there yet. It is definitely a great upgrade from HTC Legend though. Sound quality has been improved with Dolby for mobile devices. I’ve tested it with Sennheiser CX200 series headphones and the sound quality is above average with a good response on Rich Bass and Mid Range. I’ve divided this part into photos, audio, video and other categories. Now lets get down to it. There is also a Youtube video at the end of this post.

Photo Browser and Viewer

• The gallery has the usual main menu list-with-thumbnail structure.
  
• The Albums app automatically locates images and videos, no matter where they are stored quite effectively. Images and videos stored in different folders appear in different sub-galleries that automatically get the name of the folder.
• The gallery undertakes re-indexing of the content each time. Unfortunately this can make the photo browsing slower is the cards are full of content.
• Each sub-album has a thumbnail of the latest image. The contextual menu of the main Album view has only one shortcut to the settings menu. There is also a camera shortcut which is only available once you start browsing any of the sub-folders.
• There are three virtual buttons – First one for the actual folder list, second one for Facebook and finally third one for Flickr. The Facebook and Flickr Tab display images from either account or those posted by your friends.
• You can launch the camera or camcorder to capture new images, share them on Facebook, Flickr, Gmail, HTC Mail, Messages, Peep and Picasa, and delete the current image. This feature only can be used inside a sub folder.
• HTC Desire image folders you can choose between grid and filmstrip view. You are also able to mass delete images, but unfortunately there is no mass copy and paste options.
  
• HTC Desire supports multi-touch and you can take the advantage of this while browsing your images. Zooming in and out is done in the same as on the Apple iPhone. You can zoom to 100% with simple double tap on the screen.
  
• You can share multiple images from your albums on Facebook, Flickr, Gmail, HTC Mail, Messages, Peep and Picasa.
  

Video Browser and Player

As I’ve mentioned previously, photos and videos has been combined into the photo browser. Apparently I couldn’t find a good explanation on this. Video files can be accessed only from the Albums’ subfolder as there is no separate icon for the video player in the main menu. The video files can also be viewed as a grid or filmstrip, and can be shared via Gmail, HTC mail, Messages or YouTube. There is a lot of place to do improvement in HTC Video application.

• The video player on the HTC Desire has seen some minor visual upgrades compared to the HTC Legend, but is still quite basic. You may switch between full screen mode, where the original clip is stretched / cropped to fit the screen.
  
• Video playing has a smooth experience in HTC Desire. Beside that the player is capable of only playing 3GP and MP4 videos, which means that you will have to convert most your videos for watching on the go HTC Desire. In my personal opinion DivX decoder should be there since Samsung already comes preloaded with it. You can get a DivX player at the Android Marketplace but that Application is not free.
• I’ve heard that HTC is preparing for a firmware update which would support DivX with 720p smooth playback. I’m still looking forward to this update.
• HTC Desire does have a GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) inside the shell and you can find some comparison at the “Under the Hood” part of this topic.

Music

The music player is almost as the same as HTC Legend. The sound quality has been improved. I can’t find a sound equalizer though.

• The standard music library view is the Artists section. You can easily switch to one of the other 6 tabs beneath, which are – Albums, All Songs, Playlists, Genres, Composers and Purchased.
  
• The HTC Desire comes with a “Cover Flow” based now playing interface. Which is sleek and easy to use.
  
• I was a bit disappointed to find no contextual search in the music player for songs and related stuff on either Google or YouTube.
• Another weakness for the music player is, there are no equalizer presets or visualization options. I hope HTC will do something about this pretty soon.

FM Radio

The HTC Desire is also comes with an FM radio, which is pretty simple. It automatically scans the area for the available stations. It also allows you to mark some of them as favorite for easier scrolling between them. It also supports RDS and allows playback through the loudspeaker (But headset needed to be connected before start using the radio).

• RDS is supported so you will be able to see the station name
• Allow favorite stations to be marked
  
• I also liked to see the option to record radio as well, as is present on the Samsung series (such as seen on the Samsung Jet).

Voice Recorder

HTC Desire comes with a Voice Recorder too. Allows you to take voice notes in .AMR file format. The interface is similar to the Radio interface. Additionally allows to share the recording via Email and Bluetooth.

Audio Quality

HTC has managed to pump up the volume output. As I mentioned at the beginning of this topic they do have Dolby for mobile devices. At any rate the Desire readings are excellent all over, the HTC handset pulling one of the best all-round performances that I have ever seen. Here is a quick fact sheet on audio comparison.

Overall HTC Desire is a great Multimedia device but there is a lot of room to do improvement on both Audio and Video Player.

Here is a quick Multimedia experience of HTC Desire:

Let’s not make this part too long. I will continue with “Camera and Video Recording” feature details on the next part of this HTC Desire Series. Stay tuned for more interesting stuff coming up. Till then Adios Amigos.

After all the gimmicks of Hardware power, I came on to the HTC Desire Telephony section. Typically Telephony supposed to be simpler such as – Browse contacts, dial, talk and then hang up. But HTC Desire bring it to a whole new level of Telephony combining the power of social networking and information management. I’m trying to keep this post as short as possible. But then we’re going to talk about a bit more of Contacts, Call quality, Messaging and few other components. Lets take a wider look into these.

Contacts / Phonebook

HTC Desire comes with powerful phonebook feature with integrated social networking contacts. HTC Desire resembles the one on the HTC TouchFLO but powerfully extends its functionality. There are five different tabs included beside the basic info tab of a person.

Contact Details:

• First Tab is the basic information of the user
  
• 2nd Tab is the list of messages exchanged between you and the person
• 3rd Tab is the list of emails you have exchanged with the contact person
• 4th Tab pulls the events related to or attached to the contact (Eventually it links Facebook Events for that contact)
• 5th Tab is the albums of the contact (Flickr and Facebook can be connected with the contact for this too)
   
• Last Tab is the tab where all the Call Logs has been recorded between you and your contact

Phonebook (Peoples):

Here is the science coming in. When I first turned on the HTC Desire it asked me for my Google, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr access. Not only does this give you access to your Gmail and populate Peep (Desire’s inbuilt Twitter application) it adds all the names from Facebook and Google contacts into the address book.

• 1st Tab is the list of all your contacts from Google and Facebook together with Phone Contacts
  
• 2nd Tab is the Groups of your Contacts
  
• 3rd Tab is the Directory services including Company Directory, Facebook, Plurk, Twitter, Flickr Lookup
  
• 4th Tab is the Call Log between you and your contacts
• Phonebook also features advanced technologies like “Linking up Contacts“. The phone will search for common phone numbers and email addresses, and link these profiles automatically. How cool is that!

Calling

You can expect crystal clear call clarity from the HTC Desire even though a noise cancellation microphone could make it awesome.

• The ‘Phone’ tab is prominent on all the home screens, and pulls up the most recently called contacts as well as the number pad.
   
  You will find out that you can use the dialer as a T9 dictionary to tap in a contact’s name and it will be pushed to the top of the list – this feature has been there from HTC’s Windows Mobile days.
• Call time Screen gives you access to few other functions like lookup phonebook, access the menu, mute the microphone and control the volume
  
• Remember, If you want high speed 3G data while roaming, that’s not going to happen.
• The built in speaker is pretty loud enough but don’t expect to listen to it in an airport.
• The provided hands-free kit works pretty well but I was having problems keeping it in my ear because it might be a little odd shaped.
• Mobile network resolves quite fast in HTC Desire, so from boot to get the network access is less than 2 seconds. I think it is MAXIS network advantage.

Messaging

Text messaging has a new life in HTC Desire. I used to be a hardcore physical keyboard phone Fan. HTC has proven how much thinking they put inside these touch text typing technologies. In my honest opinion HTC Desire (even Legend) Touch screen typing is simply without a par.

• It’s amazingly intuitive, and it learns as it goes along – if you use a word often it will remember it and default to it when the relevant keystrokes come along.
   
  Those who are worried touch screen keyboards, I would personally recommend them to use this feature. You may tapped on wrong from the intended buttons, and nine times out of 10 the Desire will work out the word you wanted by default.
• The large screen of Desire provides an comfort of speed typing in vertical mode
  
• A long press on editing screen provides handful number of common actions like Select Text, Cut, Copy and few other. Which is really helpful in many many situation.
  

Email & Gmail

Not much changed in the Gmail compared to other Android handsets. There are a few HTC add-ons, but nothing major. The batch operations are onboard – they allow multiple emails to be archived, labeled or deleted.

• The Gmail and Mail apps have been slightly polished interface with several icons in the menus changed. The extended Gmail features include spam report and conversation-style email view mode.
• When replying to an email you can either choose Gmail or the generic mail client, and set one of the two options as default.
• HTC has tweaked their custom HTC Mail app too. The general Inbox displays the last sync time, the sort order, the current email account and of course the actual messages.
• The conversations view tries to mimic the original Gmail client threaded view, which is otherwise missing in the HTC mail inbox. Attachments are not automatically loaded by default.
• At the bottom there are five virtual buttons allows you to change the inbox view to emails with attachments only, unread mail only, display conversations or display the messages from your VIP groups mail.
• Email sorting is possible too (in either ascending or descending order) by date, subject, sender and size.

It’s really hard to find any lack in HTC Mail applications. What you have is a true mimic of your Gmail account bundled with its core functionality plus a Microsoft Exchange compatible alternative client. And besides all that HTC Mail can manage multiple POP and IMAP accounts.

I am really having trouble finding a highly noticeable flaw in HTC Telephony system right now. The thing I can mention is that when sometimes it falls down to EDGE data service, it takes a while to come back to HSDPA service. Well, that can be network coverage issue. A very minor issue with the HTC Desire’s messaging system – you can’t save SMS messages to the microSD card.

Did you encountered any?

I’m still not yet completely finished writing this article.

The next one is “Multimedia Experience“ test results… So just hold on there for a while. See you soon.

You’ve seen the outstanding interface and read about the high performance operations. Now all of theses requires a powerful processor and RAM. Lets see what this baby is packing under the Hood.

Specifications:

Physical Specification

• Weight: 135 grams (4.76 ounces) with battery
• Height: 4.7 inches (119mm)
• Width: 2.36 Inches (60mm)
• Thickness: 0.47 inch (11.9mm)
• Battery type: Rechargeable Lithium-ion battery; Capacity: 1400 mAh

Display

• Type: AMOLED (Active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) capacitive multi touch screen with pinch-to-zoom capability
• Size: 3.7 inches
• Resolution: 480 X 800 WVGA

CPU and Storage

• CPU: 1 GHz Snapdragon Processor
• ROM: 512 MB
• RAM: 576 MB
• Expansion slot: microSD™ memory card (SD 2.0 compatible) supports up to 32 GB (2GB Comes with the Package)

Platform: Android™ 2.1 (Éclair) with HTC Sense™
Network (Asia)

• HSPA/WCDMA: 900/2100 MHz
• GSM: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz

Internet

• 3G (Up to 7.2 Mbps download speed and up to 2 Mbps upload speed)
• GPRS (Up to 114 kbps downloading)
• EDGE (Up to 560 kbps downloading)
• Wi-Fi® (IEEE 802.11 b/g)
• Tethering: YES (Internet sharing through USB)

Camera

• 5MP color camera
• Face Detection capability
• Auto focus (touch focus too)
• LED Flash
• Widescreen (5:3)
• Geotagging
• White balance and ISO control
• 480p @15fps video recording in 3gp format

Sensors

• G-Sensor
• Digital compass
• Proximity sensor
• Ambient light sensor

Social Networking (By default)

• Facebook integration
• Photo sharing on Plurk, Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter
• Video sharing on YouTube
• HTC Peep for twittering

Multimedia

• Photos application for viewing photos and videos
• Music Player
• FM Radio
• Audio supported formats:
  Playback: .aac, .amr, .ogg, .m4a, .mid, .mp3, .wav, .wma
  Recording: .amr
• Video supported formats:
  Playback: .3gp, .3g2, .mp4, .wmv
  Recording: .3gp

Location

• Internal GPS antenna
• Google Maps 4.1
• HTC Footprints

Bluetooth

• Bluetooth® 2.1 with Enhanced Data Rate
• A2DP for wireless stereo headsets
• FTP and OPP (object push) for file transfer
• Other supported profiles: AVRCP, GAP, GOEP, HFP, HSP, PBAP, SPP, Service Discovery Application Profile

Connectors

• 3.5 mm stereo audio jack
• Standard micro-USB (5-pin micro-USB 2.0)

Talk time

• WCDMA: Up to 390 mins
• GSM: Up to 400 mins

Standby time

• WCDMA: Up to 360 hours
• GSM: Up to 340 hours

Battery Life

Battery Life is always an issue for Smartphones and HTC Desire the battery performance is below average. HTC Could have put in a powerful battery when the Device is so much social networking enabled.

• HTC Desire battery life improves over time such you may have experienced in many rechargeable gadget.
• With Social Networking apps (Twitter, Friend Stream, Facebook) on about 12 hours
• Social Networking activities such as frequent Twitter posts, Facebook updates and browsing for hours might drain the battery. With active on all these social apps the battery might last for 7 – 8 hours give or take.
• Battery and performance tips are available on the Part 7 of this series which will allow you to have at least 35% of battery life increase.

Quick Facts

Here are the things you might not know about HTC Desire:

• Automatically lowers the ringer volume as soon as the phone is picked up and also Mutes the ringer when the phone is flipped face down
• Backs up certain data and settings to the microSD card automatically, such as SMS/MMS messages, bookmarks, Wi-Fi passwords, and more
• Weights 5 grams more than Nexus One
• Does not have noise cancelling microphone
• Doesn’t come with the Docking Pin as Nexus One
• HTC Desire ROM can be used in Nexus One
• Desire has 64MB more RAM than Nexus One
• Contains Adobe Flash Lite 10.1
• Allows you to see what actually drains your battery
• Most applications won’t run without a microSD card inserted
• Screen vibration feedback works on the virtual QWERTY keyboard but nowhere else on the home screen

The HTC Desire UI is generally fast and we must give credit for that to the faster CPU and the optimized software. This time around the UI performance is great – even with lots of files on the microSD card.

The only noticeable slowdown is with widgets that need internet connection to refresh content, but that’s completely normal.

Benchmark Test:

Here is  small comparison how the HTC Desire and Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 in terms of performance. Used the free apps from the Android Market for the test and the results are down below here for you to see.

HTC Desire Benchmark results:

Sony Ericsson XPERIA x10 Benchmark results:

Just a reminder that file system results can vary depending on the microSD card speed. Did that help you nerds? I really hope so.

GPU Comparison : Provided by one of my Reader

Update: The GPU comes with the Qualcomm SnapDragon Chip-set.

It’s quite awesome really, here is a GPU comparison for some of the latest smartphones:

HTC Desire: Qualcomm QSD8250 with Snapdragon = 22 million triangles/sec
Nexus One: Qualcomm QSD8×50 with Adreno 200 = 22 million triangles/sec
Motorola Droid: TI OMAP3430 with PowerVR SGX530 = 7 million triangles/sec

iPhone 3G S: 600 MHz Cortex-A8 with PowerVR SGX535 = 28 million triangles/sec
Samsung Galaxy S: S5PC110 with PowerVR SGX540 = 90 million triangles/sec

Nokia N900: 600 MHz Cortex-A8 with PowerVR SGX530 = 14 million triangles/sec

This information is provided by my friend and a great mobile guy "Harindar (Say hi to him at Twitter)".

So what will be next? One word for you, it’s “Telephony” which has covered messaging, contact book, call quality and some other telephone related features.

Stay up and tuned my fellow readers the story not finished yet.

You’ve already been introduced to HTC Desire on the previous topic. Now, I am going to explain a bit more about Interface and UI. HTC Sense is playing together with Android 2.1 OS, giving you outstanding experience and making it way much more interactive than Google Nexus One. The interface always plays a major role in user experience and HTC Desire does that pretty well.

The layout is simple yet fully customizable. It comes with 7 home screen, 3 of them on the left another 3 on the right. You are allowed to customize these screens with widgets, icons and shortcuts. This provides an unique user experience for the user.

You can pinch the home screen using multi-touch will bring you to the leap view. Yes it’s another cool feature to switch between multiple screens. Just pinch and you will be able to see all the seven screens (TIP: Clicking the Home key twice also does the same thing) and switch between them.

HTC Desire has the similar widget concept of Nexus One. What makes the difference are the widgets provided by HTC on top of the Android OS 2.1.

The first widget you notice is the large clock with the weather data inside. The interesting part of this widget is it triangulates your location from cell tower location without actually use the GPS chip (yes that is a battery saver). The weather widget is way much more cool, the phone screen actually acts according to the weather. If it’s rainy the screen will get drops of water effect and a wiper will clear the screen. If its shiny the screen shines as well and when it’s cloudy or foggy the screen will pass over with bunch of clouds.

Here is a quick preview:

Yet another benefit of having an Android system is that the widget management is simple and easy. A simple long-press will present you with the available programs and widgets, on the other hand long-press on a widget or Icon allows you to move them to different screen, location or drop them into the bin (Savvy!)

Some of the useful widgets are:

• Favorite Friends widget: Which updates contact profiles from the phonebook and Facebook if enabled.
• Power Manager Widget: Very useful, quickly turn on and off Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Sounds, Refresh system and Screen Brightness
• Friendstream: Connects your Facebook, twitter, plurk and flickr and aggregates the information. They are categorized too.
• Stock Information: Stock information widget provides up to date stock info data from various sources.
• News: A very handy, useful and customizable RSS reader and News ticker. Easily organize your news sources and feeds.

There is another cool interface addition to the phone is the Live Wallpapers (Actually it’s a part of Android OS 2.1). Even though it is really eye candy feature but I don’t use it personally cause it drains a handful amount of battery.

In iPhone they have an option called “Spotlight” which enables you to search through the phone. The “Quick Search” does the same but more comprehensively and much more faster. It searches your contacts, messages, applications, music and so on. You can bring up “Quick Search” just pressing the search key.

Combining the cool drag and drop elements, notifications screens, widgets and changeable Scenes made the HTC Desire’s interface a simply astonishing experience.

Why is the interface of HTC Desire is just great? Because, it does what you want it to do.

All these interface enhancements requires powerful processing speed and that is what HTC Desire have under the hood.

Coming up next is “What is Under the Hood of HTC Desire?“

HTC tends to make better phones day by day. The Android device HTC Legend which has already made a huge amount of buzz. You might have seen the Nexus One from Google. HTC Desire packs the almost the same hardware as Nexus One has with some added Power Punch.

While HTC Desire is making a wave around the mobile world, I have a privilege to do this review on hand. I’ve been testing a HTC Desire from Maxis (Malaysian Telco); they are the first Telco to bring this phone officially in Malaysia. This topic ought to be arranged into multiple parts so you might want to check back often till I complete it. For this topic I’m adding a hands on video experience of unpacking this amazing device from the box.

Have you taken a look at the Top Social Media Smartphones topic I’ve posted few days back? If not, don’t forget to take a look. HTC Desire is one of the best Social Media enabled Smartphone available today.

HTC Legend is about fitting a numerous number of features into a small package while HTC Desire took a slightly different approach. With a massive 3.7″ AMOLED Touch Screen and a 1GHz Processor speed, it’s simply pleases your expectations. It has a slick, slim and handy grip. It weights exactly as iPhone 3GS so it’s very handy to carry around.

Its body is not made from aluminum like HTC Legend. The only metal part of its body is the metal framing around the screen. The back is entirely plastic. The battery cover is coated with a soft, rubberized material. If you compare it with Nexus One, you will notice that the Trackball is no more there, it has been replaced with a Optical Trackpad which tracks your finger movement. The trackpad is also clicks in as an enter key.

The USB slot is at the bottom – there is no cover for the USB. Thanks to HTC that it is microUSB, so the cable is available almost any computer store.

There are six operations buttons on HTC Desire (they followed the standard practice of HTC Andriod phone styles). Button wise there is no dedicated camera key, the trackpad button works as the camera key itself (A dedicated button would be nice don’t you think). The handy power button at the top sits side by side with the 3.5mm headphone Jack. Power button is also use to quickly lock and unlock the phone.

There is also a microSD card slot for extra memory. The microSD card is beside the SIM card, kind of hidden below the battery. The microSD and SIM card can’t be taken out without turning off the phone. Be a little bit careful when taking out the back flip cover to put in the battery and cards. The battery flip cover is unusually slim.

The screen quality is simply amusing. Large 3.7″ screen gives amazing color effects for Internet experience and multimedia. The touch screen is very neatly placed at the edges of the phone, it is really sensitive to touch. Having said that the slickness of this phone certainly make it a business class device.

What is in the Box?

Here goes my not so famous HTC Desire unboxing video.

HTC is well known to keep their packaging to a minimal. That applies for the HTC Desire packaging too. The Package doesn’t contain a CD for computers but it can be downloaded easily from the HTC Website (I would love to have the CD though). The box contains Quick Start Up Guide, Manual, a microUSB cable, which plugs into an adaptor to make a charger, the standard headphones which acts also a hands-free kit, and a 2GB microSD card.

Now are you wondering what would be in the next parts of this topic? It is about Interface Experience.

Hands on Slideshow from Flickr:

Do you own this phone too? I would love to hear your thoughts and real life experience about this device.

This is a showdown of most powerful social media enabled Smartphones which will dominate the social media scene of 2010-2011. These are the phones which will make you ultimate social media addict. Nope, iPhone is not included in this list, because it already has way too much exposure. Now it is time to give the contenders a chance to show their faces.

The elements that are mostly factor for choosing these phones are

• Processor power range from 600 MHz and above
• Android Platform ( with the exception of Blackberry and Symbian)
• Social media engagement and multi tasking
• Overall performance
• Platform engagement such as twitter, YouTube, Facebook, Friendster, flickr

Now let’s see what we have over here:

HTC Incredible

Key Elements: High Performance 1GHz processor with Android 2.xx Platform, 8GB internal Storage, TV Out, 8MP Camera with HD Capability

Type: Touch Screen 3.7 inch AMOLED

Social Networking Engagement: ★★★★½ 

Price Range: ★★★★¼ 

Usability: ★★★★¼ 

Detailed Specification [ubergizmo.com]

Comments: Droid Incredible is the best Android device that you can purchase in America right now. It’s better than the Droid, even better than the Nexus One, and certainly beats off of any previous generation handsets like the Eris, myTouch, or Cliq. It’s also an excellent Smartphone no matter how you cut it. It comes with HTC Sense UI and Android Market Access. I would love to get my hands on this one.

HTC Desire

Key Elements: High Performance 1GHz processor with Android 2.xx Platform, 5MP Camera with HD Capability

Type: Touch Screen 3.7 inch AMOLED

Social Networking Engagement: ★★★★½ 

Price Range: ★★★½☆ 

Usability: ★★★★¼ 

Detailed Specification

Comments: HTC Desire is the best affordable high performance Android device that you can purchase right now. Almost everything as same as the Nexus One with the addition of HTC Sense. It’s also an excellent Smartphone no matter how you use it. The Social Media Addict’s power phone. I would love to own this one.

Motorola DROID / Milestone

Key Elements: Performance ARM Cortex A8 600 MHz processor with Android 2.xx Platform, 5MP Camera with HD Capability

Type: Touch Screen 3.7 inch AMOLED, Dedicated QWERTY keyboard with 5 way navigation

Social Networking Engagement: ★★★★½ 

Price Range: ★★★½☆ 

Usability: ★★★¼☆ 

Detailed Specification

Comments: Motorola Droid is one of the best Android device that you can get your groove on. The dedicated QWERTY keyboard made it extremely popular among the social networking addicts. It’s not so much better than the Nexus One Or HTC Desire. Yet it beats other Smartphone those are out there. It’s also an excellent Smartphone even it is not loaded with extremely powerful processing speed. I would definitely choose this if only this has a 1GHz processor.

Blackberry Bold II 9700

Key Elements: Performance 624 MHz processor with Blackberry 5.0 OS

Type: Standard Screen 2.44 inch, Dedicated QWERTY keyboard with Touch-sensitive optical trackpad

Social Networking Engagement: ★★★☆☆ 

Price Range: ★★★☆☆ 

Usability: ★★★★☆ 

Detailed Specification

Comments: Blackberry always have their niche features, this is one social media phone that is packed with power and comfort of typing. Very affordable and not to mention Blackberry Internet Services provides seamless corporate needs. This is one heck of a messenger phone, the only phone comes near to this on typing is Motorola Droid. I have one of this.

Nokia N8

Key Elements: High Performance 680 MHz processor with 3D Graphics HW accelerator. Build on Symbian ^3 platform. 12MP Camera, f2.8 lens, ND Filter, Smile Detection with True HD Capability. 16GB internal storage.

Type: Touch Screen 3.5 inch AMOLED

Social Networking Engagement: ★★★★☆ 

Price Range: ★★★½☆ 

Usability: ★★★★☆ 

Detailed Specification

Comments: Finally Nokia comes up with a true Touch Screen social media life enabled phone. Hi end camera features are one of the key element of this phone. Powerful and effective social networking engagement. Coming soon and Exp. release date 2010, 3rd quarter. I’m sure this will be contender to many Smartphone out there. Yes I would like to have it but I am worried that they might not have all the apps Android offers but and Definitely yes if I can test it out first.

Samsung I9000 Galaxy S

Key Elements: High Performance ARM Cortex A8 1GHz processor. Build on Android 2.x platform. Has a flavor of 8/16GB internal storage.

Type: Touch Screen 3.7 inch Super AMOLED

Social Networking Engagement: ★★★★½ 

Price Range: ★★★★¾ 

Usability: ★★★¾☆ 

Detailed Specification

Comments: Yet another Android phone on the loose, exceptionally pricey it seems. Comes with good social networking engagement. This one is expecting to come out 2nd quarter of 2010.

Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10

Key Elements: High Performance Qualcomm QSD8250 Snapdragon 1 GHz processor. Build on Android 1.6 platform. Powerful camera capabilities.

Type: Touch Screen 4.0 inch AMOLED

Social Networking Engagement: ★★★½☆ 

Price Range: ★★★★½ 

Usability: ★★★★☆ 

Detailed Specification

Comments: Pricey but truly eye candy android phone from Sony Ericsson. Comes with good social networking engagement. It’s powerful love to have one of these.

Conclusion

There you have it. Personally I would choose HTC Desire, HTC Incredible, Motorola Droid/Milestone, Blackberry Bold 9700 and Nokia N8. I know many of you might not agree with me about this list. But, you can tell me what is your favorite Smartphone and Why?

Is this post is stating me as a Android Fanboy? Maybe.

I would love to know your opinion. Do talk to me on Twitter or just comment below.