The birth of the HTC Desire has caused some, including me, to seriously evaluate the best smartphones in the industry, and it is likely that this phone more than any other is a genuine contender for the all-conquering iPhone 3GS. First up, let’s have a look at the two side by side and see which is best in each department-
| Feature | iPhone 3GS
|
HTC Desire
|
Winner |
| Screen | Very good in all conditions, but has a low resolution. | Hi-resolution and wonderful indoors, but suffers outside. | Draw |
| Battery | Not good for power users (1 day max) | Not good for power users (1 day max) | Draw |
| PIM | At the moment poor, but OS 4.0 should change that | Quite good and the Google integration helps | HTC Desire |
| Form Factor | Heavy and quite chunky, but well made | Ultra slim and an overall quality construction | HTC Desire |
| Speed | Fast in almost all conditions and can handle complex apps | Super fast, especially when multi-tasking | HTC Desire |
| Apps | Way ahead of the competition | Android is catching up, but still has some way to go | iPhone 3GS |
| Media handling | iTunes, love it or hate it, is a complete solution | Quite manual moving media from desktop to phone | iPhone 3GS |
| Call quality / speaker | Poor | Good next to hear, poor speaker | HTC Desire |
| Price | £440 on PAYG | £387 outside contract | HTC Desire |
| Data Entry | For a touch screen it is good | Better than iPhone in landscape, worse in portrait | Draw |
| Build Quality | Very good | On the whole good, but back is plastic | iPhone 3GS |
| Camera | Surprisingly good for a 3MP model | 5MP, flash and potential 720p video recording | HTC Desire |
| Potential | iPhone OS 4.0 could completely change the way it works | Continual improvements to Android- should be able to handle a few upcoming updates | Draw, but Android is growing very quickly |
| Cool factor | Everyone has one, but still kind of cool | New enough to be ultra cool | HTC Desire |
| Gaming | Rivals the PSP and Nintendo DS | A long way to go | iPhone 3GS |
| Ease of use | As good as it gets | Close to as good as it gets | iPhone 3GS |
| Overall | Will be in the top two for some time to come | If the right strategy is followed, it could dominate | 7-5 to the HTC Desire, but… |
These comparisons are rarely representative of real world usage and although the Desire wins in most technical areas, does it win in the areas that mean more to the average user?
As I said in my review of the Desire, it surprised me a lot and showed me that the iPhone can be battled with on the big stage. It shows that with enough money and time, an alternative platform is capable of providing a user experience which is both practical and fun to use. The problem for Android, and the rest, is that the iPhone user experience is comprised of an interface which is unrivalled in how it feels, iTunes which brings a world of media ‘direct’ to the phone and an ever growing band of users who make the experience more widely understood than many other platforms. The iPhone opens up eBooks, mobile gaming and many other features to normal people and the other platforms struggle to do the same. However, Android is making a better job of doing this than BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, webOS etc. and is getting better with each new revision. The fact that there is such diversity of hardware as well helps keep the platform in the public’s imagination. HTC is capable of delivering high quality equipment to run the platform and arguably is easily as good as Apple in this area.
Ultimately we can consider the iPhone hardware and the high-end Android models to be as good as each other now and so the choice comes down to deciding which platform to back going forward.
Should you go for the huge wealth of apps the iPhone platform offers, but accept that you will have to do everything Apple’s way or should you go the Android route and enjoy the ‘fun’ it offers, but accept that you will have a wait to be able to enjoy the same overall quality of apps?
The fact is that I cannot choose between the two, and this is perhaps the best news of all. Android is catching up quickly and HTC is driving the progress which offers more choice for everyone. No longer is the iPhone a shoe-in for people wanting large screened media players which can work as GPS systems and throw in some serious stuff as well.
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Desire is £360 on PAYG and even cheaper on contract.
Call quality is not just about the speaker on the phone but how well the phone works in poor signal areas and how well other people can hear you and for me the Desire is one of the best in this area.
Screen. The Desire’s AMOLED technology is accepted as better and even Apple will use this in the next generation iPhone. Also I think the screen size of the Desire is better.
I think the Desire is not that good at video playback, a software issue not a hardware limittaions.
I can’t belive the battery of the iPhone and Desire are similar. Not my experience when I compare how often I charge my Desire and how often my colleagues charge their iPhones.
“Call quality is not just about the speaker on the phone but how well the phone works in poor signal areas and how well other people can hear you and for me the Desire is one of the best in this area.”
To be fair it isn’t- it is still way behind Nokia and BlackBerry, but I agree that it is one of the better high-end smartphones.
“Screen. The Desire’s AMOLED technology is accepted as better and even Apple will use this in the next generation iPhone.”
The fact that an iPhone can be used in all weather conditions makes it a more ‘practical’ choice in my view. It will be a shame if Apple lose that with a similar AMOLED screen in the future.
“I can’t belive the battery of the iPhone and Desire are similar.”
Almost identical in my tests.
The AMOLed screen on my Legend is wonderful indoors but almost unuseable outdoors in sunlight. I never had a problem with the screen on the iPhone outdoors…makes me wonder if AMOLed is actually worth it……
Jah, how can you comment on iPhone battery life when all you are doing is basing your opinion on what others are doing!! No offence but Shaun has both devices and therefore his opinion/verdict should be of far greater relevance. I would expect the Desire to be a better phone as it is a year younger and much more cutting edge but there is no doubt that Apple needs to raise the stakes to keep competing with HTC.
@Murrayalex, unless Shaun has charged / discharged his Desire battery 3 times it will not be performing to its optimum. My comment is that my colleagues seems obsessed about keeping their iPhones charged while I can wait until the end of the day as I know my Desire battery will continue to work. Also, I have the option to replace my Desire battery with a better capacity battery. My Desire is the best in sunlight for touch screen devicces that I have owned, I accept that the iPhone is better in this area. Indoors, the colours and screen quality of the Desire is much better than the iPhone – again my comparison when comparing colleagues iPhone.
@Shaun, the only point I disagree on is call quality against SE & Nokia. I use Nokia & SE phones alongside my Desire and the Desire is better. But I accept that there are many variables in relation to call/signal qulaity.
@All, please have a look at http://www.amazon.co.uk for the user reviews of the Desire. Some of the reviewers have owned iPhones in the past. Some useful and interesting observations, especially about the ‘openess’ of Android.
“I use Nokia & SE phones alongside my Desire and the Desire is better.”
It so isn’t in my experience, but I guess we will have to disagree on this one:)
“unless Shaun has charged / discharged his Desire battery 3 times it will not be performing to its optimum.”
I have and I do suspect that it is better than the iPhone, but continued use does mean I have to charge before the end of the day. The ability to swap batteries is a big advantage though and yes, the Desire should have won in this area.
“My Desire is the best in sunlight for touch screen devicces that I have owned, I accept that the iPhone is better in this area. Indoors, the colours and screen quality of the Desire is much better than the iPhone – again my comparison when comparing colleagues iPhone.”
Give me a phone which works in all conditions any day, and one which produces a good quality. Do I need better quality colours and more pixels if I can’t see them outdoors?
How bad is the Desire in sunlight? It it unusable?
“My comment is that my colleagues seems obsessed about keeping their iPhones charged while I can wait until the end of the day as I know my Desire battery will continue to work.”
Maybe your colleagues have been using and want to use their iPhones more; you know, playing with some of those wonderful games and apps that aren’t available on the Android platform.
@lazyboy, the poor battery performance of the iPhones used by my colleagues is more to do with the poor coverage and constant switching between GSM/Edge & 3G as far as I can ascertain. My colleagues, like me, seem too boring to know about games. On the apps side, I agree the iPhone developers seem to be more imaginative. For me the biggest drain on the Desire’s battery is from web browsing as the web browser is so good and fast that I spend a lot of time usinng it.
“…as far as I can ascertain”
as Murray said, how on earth can you possibly judge a phone’s performance when you have never even owned or used one for any significant length of time.
@lazyboy, because from using other 3G/HSDPA phones I know that the main drain on the battery can be the 3G aspects (this is why 2.5G phones have great battery life). I have seen it myself on my other smartphones (e.g. the Pre). As I said “as far as I can”, that is, this is my best guess as my colleagues never seem to have good O2 coverage. I see no other reason why the iPhone battery suffers so much as I know my colleagues well (i.e. I know what they do with their iPhones) and we have all used various used Smartphones since 2004.
I have no quibble with most of those – but not the gaming. Until the iPhone has dedicated gaming buttons and much better battery life it will never match the DS or PSP for me. I think some of the depth of gameplay on a few titles is getting close and the iPad will be a lot better as there’s enough screen to implement decent sized touch controls. But it’s not got the range and quality of things like New Super Mario Bros, Pokemon, Resistance Retribution or God of War in a phone yet. Some games it does very very well, but they are definitely more the arcadey lightweight kind. Ports of things like Resident Evil 4 are not so hot (cramped, imprecise touch controls).
Maybe it’s just that I’m not willing to compromise on certain issues. If I think I’m likely to play on the move then I’ll always take my PSP or DS with me. Same goes for a camera, if I’m likely to take some snaps then I’ll still always throw my point and click digital ixus in my bag as it will still be superior to a camera phone. I think I’m rambling off the point a bit here but devices are trying so hard to do everything that often they are jacks of all trades and masters of none. Making calls and data management are still the primary focus for me.
if i was going to buy an Android phone i would get the new htc incredible as it has an 8mp camera and 8gb memory for storing all the apps and games.
@ jah where is it on payg at that price and contract for less?
@Gavin
- I think the HTC Incredible is an Evdo device, perhaps there will be GSM version
- PAYG for £350 for Desire here (select PAYG on T-mobile not Vodafone): http://www.mobilephonesdirect.co.uk/Brands/HTC/b509/n447/p31043.aspx#tabsAnchor
For the contract option, I meant the Desire is cheaper on contract than the iPhone. On T-mobile, from the T-mobile site, the all-in price for a 24 contract with unlimited web is £404.
@Lazyboy “Maybe your colleagues have been using and want to use their iPhones more; you know, playing with some of those wonderful games and apps that aren’t available on the Android platform”
I agree for games the choice on the iPhone is extremely good. For apps there are points to both sides. iPhone is older so has more but Android is growing insanely fast at the moment and still has a number of apps that are better or simply not available or possible in the Apple ecosystem.
I also agree with Philippa apart from a few essentials which both have in abundance anyway (poker, solitaire and some bejeweled type games) dedicated consoles with hard buttons just work better.
As for cameras, I have a Pentax K7 and a decent collection of Voigtlander & Pentax primes, a phone will never be an alternative for me. As long as it captures some silly moment to show people (quality doesn’t matter that much) I couldn’t care less on that front. YMMV of course..
No shiny new Desire for me after all – the waiting list is massive so got my monthly bill reduced instead. If I can pick up an unlocked phone later on it’ll work out cheaper in the long run.
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I was thinking of getting an Iphone 3GS when my contract runs out in July,but now i feel swayed towards the new HTC DESIRE. i have to pay £149.00 extra for the iphone3GS on a £35.oo a month contract with Vodafone uk,but if i get a HTC DESIRE on a £35.00 CONTRACT with Vodafone then the DESIRE is FREE!!!
@Lazyboy.battery life depends from the type of usage. I have the 3gs iam using tones of app.I have to admit it , I was an apple hatred but after bad experience with windows mobile(SE x1) and HTC G1 I switched to iphone. Now I just love using my phone and I can tell u for sure I do much more browsing using my phone than my pc. Iphone battery is similar to HTC desire. My best friend bought from a trip to the UK the new HTC desire last week. He told me that the battery last for almost two days. After a comparison (half hour browsing on wifi , 10-15m messenger etc and 1 hour video/music playing my iphone was slightly behind HTC as far battery life.But u should consider that my iphone has an old battery with more than 300 fully charges compared to the new battery of HTC. My point is that iphone users intend to use their phones more especially for data downloading.
( http://communities-dominate.blogs.com/brands/2009/06/40-of-iphone-users-access-web-more-from-phone-than-pc.html)