HTC A8181 Desire Unlocked Quad-Band GSM Phone with Android OS, HTC Sense UI, 5 MP Camera, Wi-Fi and GPS–International Version with Warranty
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- This unlocked cell phone is compatible with GSM carriers like AT&T and T-Mobile. Not all carrier features may be supported.
- Quad-Band Unlocked GSM cell phone compatible with 850/900/1800/1900 GSM and 900/2100 3G frequencies plus GPRS/EDGE capabilities
- Camera: 5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash; Display: 3.7 inches, 480 x 800 pixels; Multi-touch input method
- Platform: Android OS, v2.1 (Eclair); CPU: Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 1 GHz processor; Stereo FM radio with RDS
- Up to 6 hours of talk time, up to 340 hours of standby time.
Product Description
HTC Desire delivers intense brilliance, sharp contrast, and true colors on the expansive 3.7-inch AMOLED display. The 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor makes the phone incredibly responsive as you multitask from app to app without skipping a beat, while the instinctive HTC Sense experience lets you wield the power of the HTC Desire with the greatest of ease. With the HTC Desire, it?s all about your information, your entertainment, your multimedia, your way. A multitude of HTC Sense widgets makes it easy to transform your Home screen with rich content that personalizes your phone experience. If you?re a sports junkie or simply love to keep up to date with the latest news, the HTC Desire keeps you in the know with the News application. News makes it easier than ever to collect all your favorite articles from across the web. Choose from a selection of channels that cover top blogs, news sites or sports pages, or get news updates based on the keywords you select. The HTC Desire excels at helping you stay in touch with the different circles of friends or colleagues in your life. The new People widget lets you bring any group you create on your phone right to the surface for easy access to calling, messaging, emailing or simply checking up on social networking updates. The HTC Desire simplifies the way that you tend to all of your social networks. With Friend Stream, your interaction with friends across multiple social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and Flickr are brought into a single easy to follow stream of updates, photo posts, and shared links. Friend Stream also lets you shout out your thoughts or feelings to all your online friends with a single comment that gets broadcast to both Facebook and Twitter.
I have had my unlocked HTC Desire for a little over two weeks. At first, I was thrilled with it because it has such a nice display and Android 2.1 runs so smoothly. In the last couple of days, though, it has developed an annoying issue and I think all potential buyers should be warned. Occasionally when placing a call, the screen will go blank and there is no way to end the call or get the display back. HTC delivered at least my Desire with this flaw – and there are some hits on Google about this. All you have to do is Google “HTC Desire screen goes blank” to see what I mean. Apparently, the proximity sensor used by HTC does not work correctly all of the time. What it should do is turn off the screen and disable the buttons when you place the phone to your ear. The faulty sensor does not turn the screen back on and enable the buttons when you pull the phone away from your ear. I am hoping the Android 2.2 update will fix this problem, otherwise I am going to return my phone before the 30-day return period expires.
** Edited to add **
Two things have eliminated this problem today – and I do not know which helped the most. First, Android 2.2 was offered on the Desire today and I updated it. Second, one internet post indicated that a clear scratch protector may be causing the problem. I removed the scratch protector from the screen and the problem has gone away. I am not comfortable using it with no scratch protector – but I am much happier with the phone.
Rating: 4 / 5
This is just one of the models that use the Android market and I would have never purchased any phone that used that application market if I knew what I was getting into. I have this phone for 2 weeks now and I am one of the hundreds or thousands of users that couldn’t download a single free application for the phone. “Starting download” is the hated message that is seen forever on the Android market application.
When we pay this sort of price for a damn phone we are not expecting to not even being able to download a simple free app, and if you search online for words such as “htc stuck on starting download” you will see how massive this problem is and for how long this has been around (single february at least) without a solution and with total disregard to the customers. I’m still waiting for the damn conference HTC will make similar to apples phone issue…
P.S. The phone itself is quite good, but when the software works so poorly on something as critical as an application market I can only consider it a bad product.
Rating: 2 / 5