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The HTC Desire set a benchmark after the Taiwanese manufacturer's entry into the heavy-duty smartphone arena. One year later, HTC has launched a vamped-up version of the original with the new Desire Z. Could this be one of the bigger Android contenders in the market?
First impressions
The addition of a pull-out QWERTY keypad does make this phone heavier than its predecessor, but it feels comfortingly solid to hold, with clean lines, a brushed aluminium bezel and pop-open battery cover. The 3.7-inch capacitive SLCD touch screen is a notch below AMOLED, but it's still vibrant enough, with a 480x800 resolution. Along the bottom are the four standard Android buttons, but these are touch sensitive, unlike the physical ones on the Desire. A welcome addition is the optical trackpad centred along the bottom of the fascia, which lets you navigate between home-screens, the call log, menu, etc. It's not as big as the one on most BlackBerry handsets, but it's convenient because you avoid the usual clumsiness that is a part of the experience while scrolling on touch screens.
A power button, 3.5mm headphone jack, volume rocker and camera control are the physical buttons which are dispersed over the edges of the phone. The back panel holds a 5-meg camera with LED flash.
The inside
The phone runs on Android 2.2 (Froyo), though personally we would have preferred Honeycomb to better the user experience. But what helps is the HTC Sense UI, which throws in features like flip to silence, map with compass and drive previews. You can also download widgets, wallpapers, scenes and ringtones from the HTC Hub, which does a good job of giving your phone's Android interface a nice makeover. The capacitive, multi-gesture touch screen was smooth, but we had some problems with the touch buttons at the bottom being at times unresponsive.
The seven home screens are customisable, and pinching the screen shows up thumbnail views of all seven, which you can drag to rearrange. The bottom of the screen has a customised concave HTC panel with three buttons, for Menu, Phone and Personalise. The phone button brings up the call log as well as the list of all your contacts in one handy pane, along with an alphanumeric keypad for punching in a number or quick searching for a contact. The personalise button is a convenient way to choose a skin, wallpaper, ringtone and add items to the home screen.
The notification bar on the top also shows you a list of recently used apps, along with alerts. There's a notification light on top of the screen which notifies you of any missed calls or new messages.
The main feature that differentiates the Desire Z from the Desire is the pull-out QWERTY keypad with a ‘z-hinge'. It flips out easily to reveal a neatly spaced out keyboard with a dedicated Tab and Menu key, and double Function and Caps keys, which make it easy for both the righties and lefties to type.
Media
The phone supports 3gp, mp4 and wmv video playback. We played some videos and were impressed with the good colour reproduction and smooth playback. You can also double tap to zoom in to the video. The music player displayed album art, and you can swipe between albums, or organise by artist or song. Sound quality on the speaker wasn't that great, so we'd advise using headphones. The phone does support Adobe Flash, and we had no problem loading websites with a lot of flash content like Cartier's or streaming YouTube vids.
Apart from your usual Android Facebook and Twitter apps, there are also HTC apps for Facebook, and Peep to log in to Twitter. Friend Stream by HTC shows all your SNS in one place, and you can browse through status updates, check notifications and look through friend lists. Push email allows you to configure any email account and receive instant notifications.
The 5-megger camera was exceptional as far as mobile phone cameras go. It provides a variety of effects like Vignette, Depth of Field and distortion, and you can adjust White Balance, Colour Saturation and Exposure. There aren't any scene modes, which we didn't really miss, but a big downside was the lack of a front facing camera for video chats. The camera can, however, record HD video up to 720p.
Performance
An 800 MHz Scorpion processor, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm MSM 7230 chipset make this smartie pretty nimble, and although some would argue that it's a downgrade from the 1 GHz processor of the Desire, we didn't notice any difference in performance. Connectivity options include HSDPA up to 14.4 Mbps, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and hotspot, Bluetooth 2.1, DLNA and micro USB 2.0 (for charging and data transfer) - which are pretty much all you need in a smartphone today.
The phone gives you about a day of juice on a full charge, with the usual browsing, media usage, SNS and a couple of hours of calls. We had some problems with in-call volume, and even when it was set on maximum we had to press the handset to our ear to hear clearly.
Our Verdict
Though it is lacking a few features, the Desire Z makes a nifty smartphone package. Unlike other manufacturers, HTC has priced the phone just right, which we think will help it remain a cut above the competition.
Rs 25,590
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