Next Review Motorla Atrix and Asus Eee Pad Tablet.
January 2012HTC Desire HD
The HTC DEsire HD is HTC's follow up to the original Desire Smartphone which was a huge sucess. Though the phone has a single core CPU it is still very fast, the display while not as bright as the Galaxy S II, it still very clear. The phone runs Android 2.3 and has HTC Sense 3.5.
The dimensions of the phone are designed to minimise the trade-off of having a massive screen, but it only partly works.
the thin frame makes it nice to hold in the hand, but in the normal
portrait mode it's still nigh on impossible to reach the top of the
screen without jiggling the phone around in your hand.
Unusually the battery cover is on the side and there is a seperate cover at the bottom of the phone for removing th SIM card and MicroSD. This bottom cover is not that well designed and after a few times removing it appears to become lose and creaks at little.
As with HTC Sense on other devices the experiance is super-slick. There are various customizable options and you can add Facebook, Twitter etc with no trouble have them updating and there is no slow down to Sense. Samsung have a lot to lern from HTC on how to implement something like this.
The Desire HD has a 8MP Camera. This however is not upto the standard of the Samsung Galaxy SII though. The Desire HD as a Dual-LED flash which can also be used as a Torch. However the Camera experance compared to other Smarthphones was poor. This is one area that HTC need to improve on.
Two areas that we have concern though are the Battery and Mobile Signal. Regarding the battery 1230mAh in a phone like this is poor to say the least. We were luck to get a day out of light usage, however with heavy usage the charge drops like a stone and if you dont charge up at some point in the day you will have flat phone by the end of the say. Evern with a higher capacity battery that we tried the phone only just managed to last a day with heavy usage. On the subject of the Mobile Signal, we found that the phone all to easly lost its conection in locations where phone on other networks did not have a problem. This could be a general thing with the Desire HD or it could just be our handset.
Verdit.
The HTC Desire HD is a great handset, the HTC Sense interface is slick and a leason to other phone manufactures. The phone certanly has a wow factor. However the issues with the Battery and Phone Signal pull our ratting down a bit. If you are looking to upgrade your HTC Desire then this is a handset to consider, however there are phone with battery battery life and phone signal in the HTC range which are just as good or better.
November 2011
Samsung Galaxy S2 Smartphone.
The Samsung Galaxy S2 has to be one of the best Android Smartphone's on the market. It is astonishingly fast, with a gorgeous
display,
a good camera and runs on Android 2.3 (Samsung have recently announced that it will be upgradable to Android 4.0 at some point in the new year).
The case is slim and light, though I would say that the battery door cover could be made of a better quality plastic. Speaking of the battery I upgrade with a month to a large more powerfull Samsung Original battery for the Galaxy S2 as the standard one was strugling to last a day. The new battery comes with its own battery cover and does add a little extra weight and size to the phone but not a huge ammount and reasly it should have this battery as standard.
The internal memory comes in a choice of 16GB or 32GB capacities and
there’s a faster dual-core 1.2GHz ARM Cortex A9 processor. The Camera is 8MP with a single LED flash and can record 720p and 1080p HD video. Pictures take with the Camera are excellent and are some of the best on a Camera on a phone (the Nokia N8 is may be slightly better but the Symbian OS is poor compared to Android). You could easly do away with a dedicated camera and just use the Galaxy S2.
The Galaxy S II uses the usual TouchWiz 4.0 interface. Though not as polished as HTC's Sense it does more than hold its own. As the phone is dual-core there is now slow down at all when completing any tasks.
The screen is rather large at 4.3" and could damage easly if it is dropped, though the glass is Gorilla Glass (this can still brake) In fact I have dropped mine once and while it didnot damage the screen I have since brougth a rubber case to give the phone a bit more protection. The 4.3" screen makes using Google Maps brilliant. You can purchase an official Samsung Car mount which works great with the S2. I was a little concerened that the phone would not fit in with the new battery installed but it did no problem. I should also point out that the screen is Super AMOLED plus and is rather bright.
Verdit.This is a truly excellent Smartphone which I would say is the best Android phone on the market and dare I say even better than the Apple iPhone 4 or 4s. The Kies PC software needs improving but other than that this is one Great Device. Role on the Samsung Galaxy S3.