The Review
We haven't had a chance to fully test this product yet, but we've assembled this helpful overview of relevant information on it.
The HTC Desire HD promises a big, cinematic display screen with top notch sound quality while also allowing for easily downloaded maps and a feature to look up your missing phone online.
Were told that yesterday’s tiny screens and squeaky sound couldn’t do justice to all the great stuff you can experience on today’s HTC Desire HD. HTC has fit the phone with a huge, cinematic 4.3-inch display, Dolby Mobile and SRS virtual surround sound. Websites, videos, music, games and apps should come to look and sound great on this phone. If you can’t find your phone, no worry, as HTC allows for you to find it by going to HTCSense.com and looking up the signal. Downloading maps is a breeze with this phone.
Features List:
-Touch screen with pinch-to-zoom capability
-Size: 4.3 inches
-Resolution: 480 x 800 WVGA
-1 GHz processing speed
Press Release:
HTC UNVNEILS HTC DESIRE HDTM AND HTC DESIRE ZTM WITH NEW HTC SENSETM AND HTCSENSE.COM
HTC Sense integrates a variety of multimedia and location-based enhancements and introduces HTCSense.com, a series of new connected HTC services
LONDON, UK – September 15, 2010 – HTC Corporation, a global designer of smartphones, today unveiled a new HTC Sense experience with the new HTC Desire HDTM and HTC Desire ZTM Android-based smartphones. The new HTC Sense experience continues HTC’s strong focus on the customer, placing people at the center by simply making its phones work in a more personal and natural way. HTC Sense introduces a number of key innovations including a series of connected services called HTCSense.com that enhance people’s mobile experience on HTC phones.
“We’re excited to be taking the HTC Sense experience beyond the phone to a whole new level with a series of connected HTC services we call HTCSense.com,” said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corporation. “Our customers will value the holistic approach we’re taking to enhance their mobile experience. This customer-first philosophy has resonated with people buying HTC phones and this drives us to continue introducing new innovative smartphones like the HTC Desire HD and HTC Desire Z.”
“As a key Android partner and smartphone brand, HTC continues to bring new innovation to the platform,” said Andy Rubin, VP engineering at Google. “Android is about choice and the new HTC smartphones continue to provide customers with powerful choices and flexibility.”
HTC Sense
The new HTC Sense experience offers a variety of enhancements that improve how people capture, create, share and access multimedia content. With a newly created camera experience, people can record HD videos or capture and edit images with a variety of fun camera effects. With HTC Locations, a new differentiated online mapping experience, people have instant, on-demand mapping without download delays or incurring mobile roaming charges.
HTC Sense also includes a new integrated online e-reading experience utilizing a new e-book store powered by Koboä and a new, mobile-optimized e-reader that includes the ability to highlight, annotate and quickly search for definitions or translate unfamiliar terms.
HTCSense.com
With the new HTCSense.com service, people can simply manage their mobile phone experience from their HTC phone or personal computer. For example, people can easily locate a missing phone by triggering the handset to ring loudly, even if it is set to silent, or to flag its location on a map. If the phone’s been lost or stolen, users can remotely lock the phone, forward calls and texts to another phone, send a message to the phone to arrange its return or even remotely wipe all personal data from it. HTCSense.com makes it easy to setup a new HTC phone or access archived mobile content such as contacts, text messages and call history from a PC browser. People can also customize their phones with exclusive HTC content like wallpapers, HTC scenes, sounds or plug-ins.
HTC Desire HD
HTC Desire HD showcases outstanding multimedia content with its bright 4.3” LCD display and Dolby Mobile and SRS virtual sound and is the first to be powered by the new 1GHz Qualcomm 8255 Snapdragon processor. The HTC Desire HD enables 720p HD video recording and includes an 8-megapixel camera with dual-flash. Building on the unibody heritage of the HTC Legend, the HTC Desire HD is sculpted from a block of solid aluminum and exudes the air of quality and strength that HTC has come to be known for. It also includes the new HTC Fast Boot that enables people to quickly make a call or check emails by shortening the time taken to complete the power-up sequence.
HTC Desire Z
For people constantly on the go, HTC Desire Z makes it quick and easy to stay connected with friends on Facebook and Twitter or with colleagues and customers at work. HTC Desire Z features a unique ‘pop hinge’ that opens to reveal a QWERTY keyboard for fast, convenient typing. HTC Desire Z’s keyboard also includes a variety of keyboard shortcuts and two customizable keys for providing instant access to common functions without the need to open menus. HTC Desire Z also includes 720p HD video recording and a 5-megapixel camera with automatic flash. It is the first phone to utilize the new 800MHz Qualcomm 7230 processor for improved performance and battery life and also includes HTC Fast Boot.
Availability
The new HTC Desire HD and HTC Desire Z will be broadly available through mobile operators and retailers across major European and Asian markets from October 2010 with the HTC Desire Z shipping in North America later this year.
About HTC
HTC Corporation (HTC) is one of the fastest growing companies in the mobile phone industry. By putting people at the center of everything it does, HTC creates innovative smartphones that better serve the lives and needs of individuals. The company is listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange under ticker 2498. For more information about HTC, please visit www.htc.com .
Digital Trends’ Cell Phone Buying Tips:
Apps
If a building is only as good as its foundation, then a smartphone is only as good as its app store. Even as manufacturers continue to stack their handsets with YouTube support, instant messaging, and other essentials right out of the box, the features just don’t add up to the amount of capability a phone can take on in the hands of the right developers: You name it, a good smartphone can do it.
The app store you buy into will have a longstanding effect on the way you use your phone – perhaps more than any other feature. But it’s tough to get a feel for every smartphone app store when you don’t get to push a cart down the aisles until you have a carrier contract in your filing cabinet and there’s no turning back.
Apple’s App Store has been leading the market in sheer numbers of apps since the original iPhone was release. Android is catching up in total numbers and offers a higher ratio of free apps in the Android Market than Apple does. Nokia’s Ovi Store, RIM’s BlackBerry App World and Microsoft’s Windows Marketplace all offer quality apps but currently lag far behind Apple and Android.
Notable Features
The list of features to look for in a phone could fill an anthology, so we’ll run down some of the most important ones.
Cameras appear on nearly every phone these days. Although a quality camera can be great for quick snapshots, few phone cameras are ready to replace a trusty point-and-shoot. The few with variable focus far outperform fixed-focus cameras, which you’ll find on the majority.
When considering a display, pay attention to size and brightness, which will both come in handy when trying to read it in difficult conditions like outdoors in the sun. LCD displays are still the most common, but OLED displays have been cropping up lately as well. They use slightly less power and produce extremely vibrant color, but suffer from poor outdoor visibility.
Battery life often gets buried at the end of buyers’ wishlists, only to lead to disappointment when they realize they can barely go a whole day without recharging. Be particularly careful with smartphones, which can get particularly thirsty.
If you plan to use your phone for playing music or watching video, be sure to check for internal and external storage. If the phone has a microSD slot you should be able to add up to 32GB of additional storage.
Choosing a carrier
Because most U.S. cell phone carriers heavily subsidize phone purchases in exchange for two-year contracts, and lock the phones to their networks, your choice of cell carrier will have more impact on which type of phone you end up with than any other factor. If you already have carrier and feel satisfied with it, the choice is easy. If not, you’ll need to choose one.
AT&T, T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon dominate the cell phone market in the States. Speaking in very general terms, AT&T has a reputation for having the hottest phones but somewhat flaky service due to its overloaded towers, Verizon has the best reception but expensive rates, T-Mobile and Sprint offer some of the most affordable plans but have more limited phone selection.
Prepaid carriers like Cricket, Tracfone, and MetroPCS often appear to offer excellent deals, but caveats like poor customer service, limited phone selection and inferior coverage have to be taken into account.
Mobile operating systems
If you decide to go for a smartphone, choosing the right operating system can be an important factor. The big ones are Apple’s iOS, RIM’s BlackBerry OS, HP/Palm WebOS, Google Android, and Microsoft Windows Phone (formerly Windows Mobile). Individual preferences reign supreme here, but Apple’s iPhone iOS offers the widest selection of apps and the simplest user interface, RIM’s BlackBerry OS is less intuitive but powerful and reliable, HP/Palm’s WebOS strikes a nice balance between the two, Google Android is among the most flexible, and Microsoft Window Phone 7 offers a refreshing design but it’s still finding its groove.
