HTC Desire HD

Now I’ve gone from a smartphone to an Android powered HTC Desire HD. Wow. I didn’t realise quite what I was missing out on. Sure the BlackBerry was good, but this is just better. I do miss the qwerty keyboard but this phone was easy to setup, is easy to use and has more features than you can shake a stick at. I had a smartphone before but to be honest it feels like I was living on the dark ages…

The HTC Desire HD is faster, leaner, seeker and more user-friendly. It comes with a wealth of applications pre-installed, but being a massive geek I spent a few hours last night in the Android marketplace downloading more. I now have:

Google Goggles (scan and analyse random items from your world)
Quick Mark QR Reader (instant QR reader)
Angry Birds (a gaming must)
WordPress for Android (perfect for blogging)
TweetDeck For Android (good because it allows user-interface with multiple Twitter accounts)
3G Watch Dog (for keeping track of your data usage)
Invadroid (space invaders)
Google Shopper (scan barcodes and items to find the cheapest)
Foursquare (social networking location based tool)
Ventriloid (VOIP server interface)

There’s plenty of fun to be had. It’s really customisable. You can have about 6 screens of different apps and widgets and personalise it as you like. I’ve never had such a fully-customisable phone. The wi-fi internet is splendid, really fast. The interface is quick and easy to use. There are a few gripes, but only because I’m used to a keyboard, once I get the hang of it, this is going to be a truly awesome phone. The HTC Desire HD spec is truly brilliant, it’s jam packed and full of goodness.

It took a while to get used to a touchscreen again after using a QWERTY keyboard for so long, but it is brilliant once you do. The keyboard is relatively easy to use and to counteract the "fat finger" syndrome that most of us suffer from they have added a nice touch where the phone actually compensates for you hitting the wrong button. It works out where you probably intended to press and decides on the word you are trying to spell, producing a list of possibilities for you to choose from or simply automatically choosing the most likely word.

There are plenty of nice little touches like the "quick message" text message system, where you can add a short line of common text like "where are you" or "I'm busy" or "I'm running late" with a press of a button. You can even add in your own custom messages.

The screen quality is excellent and I copied some videos on to it from my PC to watch on the train. I was thoroughly impressed with both the video and sound quality provided by the high-res screen and Dolby SRS effects. Similarly the 720p video recording capabilities and the 8mp camera make this a fully-functional phone for the geek (or "normal") on the move.

I'm fully glad I ditched my BlackBerry. Android is awesome.

I could go on about it all day long, but to be honest, I'd feel like I was spoiling it for you, it's just that good. If you're thinking about buying one, go for it, you wont regret it.