Hands-on: HTC Desire HD – The next stage in Android superphones

If you’ve been following Android, you’ll be more than familiar with the HTC Desire HD as the evolution of the big-screen Android superphone. Today, HTC officially unveiled the HTC Desire HD to the world, showing off the phone’s 4.3-inch display, its 8-megapixel camera and the all-aluminum casing. But, there’s so much more to the new DHD. It’s outfitted with HTC’s new Sense UI, which takes all the greatest parts of Android 2.2 Froyo and integrates them into a seamless user experience. There’s also the uprated internals that make the DHD fly – it’s so fast that it almost seems like the phone pulls up menus and registers button presses before you actually tap your finger on the screen. So, of course we had to go hands-on with the Desire HD.

The first thing you’ll notice when you put hands on the HTC Desire HD is the slim, solid feel. The entire phone is crafted from solid pieces of aluminum, similar to the way the HTC Legend is constructed. That makes a big difference when holding the device. Then, once you’ve gotten over your wonderlust for the sheer sexiness of the device, you’ll probably notice that every action responds immediately. This phone is fast, freakin’ fast. The 1Ghz processor works with the increased 768MB of RAM and the speed-optimized Android 2.2 Froyo OS to make the user experience simply sublime. The next-generation Qualcomm Snapdragon 8255 processor sports a larger cache and a second-generation GPU that works together with the speed-optimizations in Froyo to make the DHD noticeably faster than any other Android phone we’ve ever had the pleasure of using.

HTC also blessed the DHD with a new Sense UI that works with HTCSense.com to make it easy to locate your phone when it’s lost, send a text message or phone call to the phone, or simply wipe the data, if it’s lost for good. You can also browse your text messge history through a browser, pull up location info, then push that info to your phone from the desktop. That’s cool. What’s more, you can pre-download map data to use with HTC Locations, the new GPS navigation service that doesn’t need a data connection to pull down map data – since it’s already on the phone.


And, with the new 8-megapixel camera, you don’t just get dual-LED flash, you also get a larger image sensor that allows each pixel to capture more light than before. The camera interface is also revamped, giving you quick access to oft-used features. You’ll also notice a little “magic wand” icon that brings up the photo effects feature of the camera.

The Desire HD is packed with a 1Ghz next-gen Snapdragon processor, 4.3-inch capacitive touchscreen, 8-megapixel camera (larger image sensor and dual-LED flash), 1.5GB onboard storage, 768MB RAM, 3G data, WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, microSD card slot (hot-swappable), all-aluminum unibody construction, and runs Android 2.2 Froyo with the updated Sense UI.

Overall, the Desire HD is one impressive Android phone. With the rock solid in-hand feel, speed optimizations, and the upgraded camera, the DHD (and any subsequent carrier variants) is the Android phone to watch for the rest of 2010. The only thing we can find wrong with the DHD is that it won’t make it stateside in DHD trim (G2 is a different story). We’ll have more coverage soon, stay tuned!

Android leaderboard: The 10 best smartphones

Because there’s a stampede of Android smartphones barreling into the market — including both excellent models and a few duds — many people feel a little overwhelmed when trying to choose one. I get a lot of the “Would you get this one or that one” questions and requests to rank my favorites.

So I’ve decided to do something a little dangerous — create a leaderboard of my top 10 Android picks. It’s dangerous because this is very subjective stuff. The smartphone that is the best fit for you is going to depend heavily on your needs and preferences.

But, since I’ve had my paws on virtually all of the Android devices and I’ve written reviews of the best ones, I’m going to rank them in terms of the overall quality of the devices, with much more emphasis placed on the smartphones themselves than on the wireless carriers that they’re tied to.

I’m also going to keep this leaderboard up to date. So, as I review new Android devices and decide that they deserve a place in the top 10, I will add them to this list and bump other phones down or off the list.

Caveat: This ranking is primarily US-based. In each country/region, the telecom carriers tend to name these devices by different names. In many cases you’ll be able to find a close match between the devices on this list and devices in your area, but not in all cases.


1. HTC EVO 4G

Pound-for-pound and feature-by-feature, there’s still nothing out there in Android land that can hang with the HTC EVO 4G. With its 4.3-inch WVGA screen, 8 megapixel camera, 1 GHz Snapdragon CPU, front-facing VGA camera, Micro HDMI port, 3G Wi-Fi hotspot, and 4G WiMAX capability, the EVO has it all. And, with its large on-screen keyboard and handy kickstand for watching video, it’s a device that’s easy and pleasant to use. When I reviewed it, I called the EVO “The Hummer of smartphones” because it’s so huge and it’s such a power hog, but there’s no denying that it is the elite device of the Android fleet.

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HTC EVO 4G to Get Android 2.2 Next Week

It’s official: Sprint’s HTC EVO 4G will get Froyo starting next week.

Sprint will begin rolling out the Android 2.2 upgrade to EVO users on Tuesday, August 3, according to an announcement posted on the carrier’s Web site Thursday night. Sprint says the upgrade will be sent out to EVO users in waves. All users should have the software by the middle of the month.

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World heavyweight title fight; Motorola Droid X vs HTC EVO 4G

In just a couple more days we will see the official launch of the Verizon Motorola Droid X, the second 4.3 inch display Google Android device to launch on a US wireless carrier. You can check out several reviews of the Verizon Droid X and Sprint HTC EVO 4G........................

T-Mobile continues HSPA+ expansion, passing up others with fastest active data network

Regular readers know I am a long time T-Mobile customer (something like 9 years) and am extremely satisfied with their network and services. I debated about staying with them a couple years back though as they were the last on the block to get 3G data up and running and I almost lost my patience.....................................

Now Skype Wants to Go Corporate

The chat service is tapping Cisco and ShoreTel to help it sell telecom to big business

Skype, which disrupted the telecommunications industry with free or low-cost calls routed over the Internet, is once again an independent company. EBay (EBAY) bought the Estonian startup in 2005, but, after a strained relationship, sold most of its stake for $2 billion in November. Now the new owners, led by private equity firm Silver Lake, are imposing business rigor on the company and pushing it to grab a piece of the corporate telecommunications market.....................................

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Requiem for a phone: Nexus One done at Google

A little more than six months after Google promised to change the way mobile phones were sold and create the “superphone” category, it has officially stopped selling the Nexus One through its Web site. That’s not because it actually did change the way mobile phones were sold or blow the competition away with a revolutionary design, but because people didn’t buy them and Google stopped ordering new units from HTC.

The Nexus One was born in January amid breathless hype from the tech industry, hailed as the smartphone that might save the world from an Apple-dominated market. It died a quiet death on a gloomy San Francisco summer day, forever a reminder of the limits of Google’s ambition even when it has a good idea.

The Nexus One was, and is, an excellent phone, and few regular people will line up to defend the two-year-locked-contract and exclusive-phone system so beloved by the wireless industry. But it turns out that selling phones in a crowded marketplace is hard, especially when people are used to buying them in stores and you can’t advertise through conventional channels for fear of alienating your other partners.

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HTC provides explanation for 30FPS limitation of the HTC EVO 4G

An HTC represesntative in attendance at the HTC Aria event in Chicago last night, reportedly provided some insight into the 30FPS limitation that has been reported on the HTC EVO 4G. As was suspected, the 30FPS limit is imposed via software, but it is a hardware limitation that lies at the heart of this issue. Though the smartphone is capable of much more than 30FPS — as shown above — the EVO 4G is throttled down to support the 30FPS limitation of the HDMI hardware that is included on the handset. EVO 4G owners will be stuck with 30FPS on all their games until HTC decides to throw in some code to dynamically adjust the FPS based upon the presence or absence of an HDMI cable. Of course, there is always the folks at xda-developers who have already been working on this limitation and most likely have some hackery already on-hand that will give you both 30FPS HDMI out and 60FPS gaming.

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Source : BGR

­HTC STRENGTHENS SOFTWARE CAPABILITIES WITH ACQUISITON OF ABAXIA

HTC Corporation, a global designer of smartphones, today announced it has acquired Paris-based Abaxia, a leader in custom software for mobile operators and handset manufacturers around the world.

“HTC is committed to creating the best possible mobile experience for our customers today, tomorrow and into the future,” said Peter Chou, CEO of HTC Corporation. “The addition of Abaxia deepen and broaden our software development capabilities so that we can innovate at an even faster pace.”
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iPhone 4 Leads the Pack With Stunning Design, Interface

Apple’s fourth-generation iPhone makes its predecessors look like toys. Heck, even the iPad looks sissy now.
It’s an impressive upgrade. The iPhone 4 ditches the curvy plastic case of the older models in favor of a thinner, squared-off glass body laced with a stainless-steel band. It has a higher-resolution display, a brand-new front-facing camera, an improved back camera with flash, double the RAM of the iPhone 3GS, and the same A4 processor that powers the iPad.......Read Full Story.