We recently attended the launch of the HTC Desire S at Icon in Intercon Manila. (Thanks HTC for inviting us!) It was a short and sweet event with all the hype you’ve come to expect from a product launch.

Trippy.

Now, I won’t bore you a rundown of the specs of the HTC Desire S anymore. I’m sure you’ve seen enough of that by now. (Just in case you haven’t seen the specs, click here). Here’s what I thought of the Desire S:

 

First Impressions

Looking at the Desire S, I really couldn’t help but be reminded of the iPhone. The Desire S packs a capacitive touchscreen – no Retina Display or AMOLED screen here but it’s good enough for the everyday user, a 5MP rear camera with LED flash, HD video recording and a front facing camera for selfshots and video calling. Hmmmm… sounds more or less like the iPhone right? I’ve listed a couple of things that set this phone apart after the jump.

Note the crisp LED display

The Look

This phone boasts an aluminum unibody — which means that every HTC Desire S was fashioned from a single block of aluminum, serving as both its casing and its frame. This unibody adds to the phone’s durability and solid, sturdy feel — not to mention lending it a sleek and sexy appearance.

The Feel

As I said the phone feels solid in your hand partly due to the alum unibody and partly because of its dimensions. The phone is wide enough to get a good grip on it. What’s more I didn’t feel like I had to use two hands to make full use of the touchscreen. I could easily navigate through the phone’s touch UI without feeling like I might drop it.

I do have a comment for HTC though. I wish they would have made the UI a bit more responsive. The transitions and gestures I experienced had a couple of seconds of lag time.

Performance

It’s interesting to note that the Desire S’s processors, RAM and graphics, basically a lot of what contributes to the phone’s performance is the same as it’s higher end big brother the Incredible S. The Desire S just isn’t as incredibly high priced. :)

Internet

You get 3G and GPRS internet with the phone…nothing new there. Good news though, the Desire S comes with a tethering function — which allows you to share your phone’s internet connection with your laptop or tablet making it a personal Wi-Fi Hotspot.

Everything Android

For all you droid fans out there, the Desire S runs on Android 2.3, better known as Gingerbread. It’s not the latest version of the Android OS as Google’s released Android 3.0. No worries though HTC has released OS updates in the past for their Android phones which should be the case here for the Desire S.

Oh and if you’re thinking of buying this phone for the Android for the apps, do know that app purchases in the Android market isn’t available in the Philippines yet.

Comes with HTC Sense… what is HTC Sense?

HTC Sense is HTC’s way of making phones more sensitive to the user experience. From the benefits they listed, I think we’ll appreciate the flip to silence function (turning your phone to face down puts it on silent) and the catch all calls function (your phone rings louder in a noisy situation or when it’s in your pocket or bag) You can learn more about it on HTC’s official page: http://www.htc.com/www/htcsense/index.html

Price

So what’s all this going to cost you? HTC’s official price is at P27,000. That’s a good deal, I think, for everything you get from the phone. From what I hear some shops sell it for waaay lower than the SRP — with obvious trade-offs of course.

The Bottomline

The HTC Desire S is a sleek and sexy alternative to the iPhone, setting you apart from the sea of iPhone users out there. While it may not have as much as of the bells and whistles as its Apple counterpart bear in mind that it’s also priced several floors below.

 

Hope this helps! Happy phone hunting guys! :)

Ed: Those who are interested in new technological advances may appreciate information about an online it degree.






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