HTC Desire Z Review - read honest HTC Desire Z reviews

 

The HTC Desire released in early 2010 was a phenomenal success for HTC. It was inevitable then that the Chinese manufacturer would seek to extend this further with some follow on devices. The Desire Z and Desire HD both adopt the name and design inspiration of the original Desire, but take them in different directions. While the Desire HD has expanded the screen and thrown in all sorts of high quality video entertainment the Desire Z has instead opted to cater for the more professionally minded phone user with its sliding QWERTY keyboard.

 

The screen on the Desire Z is the same 3.7" as the original and HTC has managed to retain the same thickness for the phone despite the additional keyboard. Such keyboards usually add extra bulk and weight to phones but HTC has managed to implement this feature while keeping the Desire Z slim and pocketable. The screen comes with WVGA graphics and capacitive touchscreen technology which allows for multitouch features such as pinch-zoom. While multitouch may not seem like a big deal to some people it does make touchscreens far easier to use and more intuitive.

 

While the operating system has been pushed up a notch to Android 2.2 Froyo, the underlying processor power has been downgraded from the Desire´s 1GHz to a slightly less zippy 800MHz. This does not produce a dramatic difference in app and interface speed and for the inclusion of the QWERTY keyboard a compromise had to be made somewhere.

 

Like the Desire the Desire Z comes with a 5 megapixel but this time with the added benefit of full HD video recording. There are still the same great additional features found on the original camera such as face detection and geo-tagging. Videos you have captured on the Desire Z can be transferred to your home computer via USB or just watched directly through your TV via DLNA. The media player supports a good range of video and music formats and over 32GB of storage space is available through microSD.

 

Although the Desire Z is more professionally minded than its siblings, with its QWERTY keyboard and with a unified email inbox for various email accounts, there is still the same great range of additional messaging features. With SMS threaded viewing supported the Desire Z also comes with HTC´s Friend Stream which will pool information from social networks like Facebook and Twitter and integrate it with the contact information on the phone. This provides a much easier way to stay up to date with friends without needing to log in through the web browser.

The web browser itself is ideal for surfing the internet, with 3G and Wi-Fi both supported. The web browser displays real web pages and comes with Adobe Flash support, opening up much more of the internet than is available on Apple phones.

 

While the Desire HD packs a more powerful punch when it comes to video entertainment the Desire Z stays truer to the original Desire. With a more recent version of Android and a number of improvements here and there, the Desire Z offers more flexibility for people who had been looking into getting a Desire, and the decision between the two essentially just boils down to your preference regarding QWERTY keyboards.