We loved the HTC Desire, oh yes we did. Loved it so much in fact that we hanker for more of it. Which is why we nearly keeled over with happiness today when HTC told us about the HTC Desire HD — a brand-new smart phone that quite literally delivers even more mobile.
The Desire HD should be out in October on contracts around £35 per month. We’ll have a full review and more details nearer the launch.
As saw as we saw the announcement of the HTC Evo roll out in the US, we knew we wanted our big Android handset on this side of the pond. The HTC Desire HD however owes more to the HD2 – the seminal Windows Phone from HTC – both in terms of looks and specification. Fortunately Pocket-lint was at the global launch of the HTC Desire HD in London to bring you first impressions of the new superphone.
You get the same, lush, premium unibody design that came along with the Desire and the Legend, although it isn’t seamless like those models, but this makes it look industrial. The build quality is excellent, as we’ve become accustomed to with HTC.
With a phone this big you’ll want to know the measurements. It sits pretty at 123 x 68 x 11.8mm which, despite the 4.3-inch screen, isn’t all that big, but noticeably wide. It will slip into your pocket fairly easily, but for some it might be a little large. It is larger all over that the Samsung Galaxy S, which we see as a natural rival, and the metal construction adds to a premium feel as well as the weight: the Desire HD weighs 164g, the Galaxy S just 118g, with its plastic body.
With a phone like the Desire HD, it is only fair to start with the display. It might strike some as odd that HTC hasn’t changed the screen resolution on the Desire HD – it is no more HD in that sense than the Desire, the Legend or the Desire Z. It is an 800 x 480 pixel resolution display and whilst it looks good, you know that the iPhone crowd will be waving their high-res devices in your face.
That might not matter in real terms, as the size of the HTC Desire HD makes it a great device for browsing the Internet or watching movies on your travels, but it isn’t as adept at rendering fine text as the iPhone is. We also examined the Desire HD with its Super LCD next to the Samsung Galaxy S and the Super AMOLED display: the Samsung device offers more punch, with deeper blacks and more vibrant colours. But this is just a first impression, and shouldn’t be taken as a final damning judgement – the Desire HD does look fantastic in its own right.
The HTC Desire HD is official, folks, finally bringing a 4.3-inch LCD to European Android fans. The handset is made from a solid block of aluminum and comes packing a 1GHz 8255 Snapdragon processor, 8 megapixel camera with dual-LED flash and 720p video recording, Dolby Mobile, and HSPA+ data with 802.11n WiFi when it lands in Europe and Asia sometime in October. The HTC Desire HD is one of the first HTC devices to feature the enhanced HTC Sense experience with HTCsense.com services.
Well. The HTC Desire HD still isn’t official, but unless we’re imagining things, this looks like it could be it. This image has slipped stealthily onto Amazon for one lucky punter at least, and it looks like the real deal to us.
Our tipster who originally noticed the HTC Desire HD was listed on Amazon.co.uk last month has dropped us this tantalising image: a thumbnail of the HTC Desire HD next to his order in his Amazon account that appeared today (he says he was able to pre-order before the listing was pulled from the public site).
This could of course be a placeholder and subject to change, as could the HTC Desire HD delivery date of 18/19 October. We’re more than inclined to believe it however, as it tallies with previous leaks of the HTC Desire HD, and the grey grille and touch sensitive buttons mean this isn’t a HTC Desire or Evo 4G we’re looking at.
Unfortunately, despite a rummage in the page source, we weren’t able to procure a high resolution image of the HTC Desire HD – however this looks like more evidence that retailers could be gearing up to sell the rumoured 4.3-inch Android super phone in the wake of HTC’s press conference next week.
The HTC Ace will be a new Android 3.0 powered smartphone, running a dual-core snapdragon CPU. It will be a large touchscreen device, 4.3″ AMOLED like the HTC HD2 or EVO but styled more like the HTC Incredible. An 8 megapixel camera with flash. GPS and all the other nice bits that we’ve come to expect from an HTC Handset.
Obviously we’ll try to find out more and will have our ear very close to the ground and we’ll post more as we get it!
For reasons seemingly known only to Peter Chou himself, HTC has mostly steered clear of producing high-quality physical QWERTY devices running Android, despite the fact that there might be no phone manufacturer in the world more skilled at making them (let us remind you of the Touch Pro2, among many others dating back the better part of a decade). Anyhow, we caught wind last month of a possible entry in the form of the so-called “Vision,” but we didn’t have any visuals — just a user agent profile that may or may not amount to anything. Well, that seems to be changing today with a couple blurry shots out of a Croatian site that allegedly shows the goods featuring a 3.7-inch display, a 1GHz processor (Snapdragon, we assume), and Android 2.1 with Sense (the launcher looks like stock Android in this photo, but the status bar is clearly HTC custom). At a glance, it doesn’t seem to be the prettiest thing in the world — but for a form factor traditionally associated with power users and suits, this might be just the ticket.
Details still haven’t been confirmed yet, but word is that the upcoming HTC Vision will sport some pretty juicy specifications. If the rumors are true, it’ll boast a dual-core 800MHz processor, Android 3.0, and a huge 4.3-inch display. There are suggestions that the HTC Vision might be the Project Emerald that is going on at T-Mobile, though of course, there isn’t any way to confirm this just yet. If everything falls into the place, the Vision could be ready for T-Mobile to sell by the holidays, which is encouraging news.
HTC’s rumored Vision may have received more concrete info through a talk with an HTC representative at a Seattle event. The design could be one of HTC’s fastest as it could use a dual-core 800MHz processor. It would run Android 3.0 and have a 4.3-inch screen that would use a new form of screen technology.
Scotty Brown of Android Guys suggests that the Vision might be none other than Project Emerald, T-Mobile’s plan to replace the Sidekick in spirit, though not necessarily in price. If so, the special display may be Samsung’s Super AMOLED. However, the last mention of the phone also referred to a 1GHz single-core processor, suggesting either that specs have changed or that some of the story is inaccurate.
For a company with as rich of a reputation for landscape QWERTY sliders as HTC has, you’d think they’d be tripping over themselves to release a truly high-end Android phone with a keyboard, but not so much — the closest they’ve come so far would be the midrange myTouch 3G Slide, and that puppy ain’t even out yet. We broke the news last night about three seemingly new names for upcoming HTC devices — Vision, LED, and Glacier — and Dutch site Tweakers.net is now reporting on a user agent profile for the Vision that lists the device featuring that mythical holy trinity: WVGA display, QWERTY, and Android. Furthermore, they’ve got the director of HTC Benelux on record saying that they’re planning more Android phones with keyboards — so that’s a Good Thing to hear at a time when huge slates seem to be stealing the show in every segment of the market. With the Nexus One, Desire, Droid Incredible, and EVO 4G all alive and well, we think these guys would be well-served to play with other form factors for a minute or two, yeah?