HTC Desire Review – Part 3 – Under the Hood

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.

• HTC Desire Review – Verdict, Pros and Cons
• HTC Desire Review – Part 1 – Unboxing The Desirable
• HTC Desire Review – Part 7 – Applications
• HTC Desire Review – Part 4 – Telephony
• HTC Desire Review – Part 2 – The Interface
• HTC Desire Review – Part 5 – Multimedia
• HTC Desire Review – Part 6 – Camera
• Best Social Media Enabled Smartphones of 2010

About Ruhani Rabin

Ruhani Rabin is the original owner and author of this blog. He also reviews web 2.0 startups at Tech2all.com. Largely interested in web 2.0 apps & Social Media. Currently the Vice President of MOL Access Portal (MOL is owner of Friendster.com). Also he is Web 2.0 & Social Media Researcher and a Total fun Geek!.. There you have it ;)

Twitter Profile: http://twitter.com/ruhanirabin