I am aware that the HTC Desire has been out for quite a while now, however it is my personal phone and I thought I might as well give a review of it (I am definitely not going to be biased because it’s mine, there are some flaws).

Firstly, the design. It is similar to that of the Nexus One, however they have tweaked it a little and there are a few more buttons which are useful for functions you do not wish to use the touchscreen for. It has a brilliant 3.7 inch AMOLED display. But can this be the king of Android phones?

The Desire has a super quick 1GHz Snapdragon processor which means you can quickly navigate through the pages of Android 2.2 (Froyo) or 2.1 if you do not yet have it. Unfortunately it doesn’t look like we’re going to get 2.3 (Gingerbread) on the Desire any time soon. Also, the latest edition of HTC’s “Sense” means it is a great experience navigating around the phone’s OS and it is as snazzy as always. You don’t have to spend hours going around the Android Market if you want some simple applications too, the widgets included on the device can simply be dragged and dropped onto the “desired” homescreen and it’s ready to go. Of course, they’re not the best of apps but there are some good ones such as the social networking collaboration, the different clocks, weather, calendar, notes and many others.

Also, the really responsive touchpad which looks like the trackball is a really easy way to scroll through webpages or the homescreen, and as it doesn’t have as many moving parts, the chances are it’ll last longer as well.

The touchscreen’s great as well, as good as the iPhone really. Pinch zoom for rich web pages. You’ve got all you need.

However, one of the downsides, which is common with quite a few Android handsets, is the camera. It’s actually one of the best, compared to other Android phones, however it can’t compete with the best camera phones on the market. With Android 2.2, you do get 720p video recording though, which is amazing considering it’s only a 5MP camera on a phone – some SLRs only just have 720p!

Another annoying feature is the location of the MicroSD. You have to remove the battery to access the SD card slot, which can be extremely irritating when you are in a rush as it means you have to turn the phone off (or else it’ll do it itself) and it does take quite a while to turn back on. The most annoying feature for me is the fact the On/Off button is the same button as the Lock/Unlock button. Therefore, if you want to check whether the phone is turned on or not, which you can ONLY do by pressing the lock button, there is a problem. If the phone is already off (but you need to check) and you press the Lock/Unlock button to check, the phone turns back on!! So irritating!!!

The HTC Desire isn’t a revolution in smart-phones, but it has a good UI, OS and the features are quite impressive. Therefore, the score will be quite high as the faults are only small niggles instead of major problems which would annoy you like hell!!

Score: 9/10