HTC Desire S vs HTC Incredible S

HTC has unveiled six new devices at the Mobile World Congress event. Out of these new devices there is one advanced version of HTC's Desire range of devices, the Desire S and another one is the new HTC Incredible S.

The Desire and Incredible brand is synonymous with quality hardware and performance on both side of the Atlantic. But now they’re being reintroduced to the world in the form of the HTC Desire S and the HTC Incredible S, which is the best and, most importantly, which should you be shelling out for?

We find out.

Form
The HTC Desire S picks up where the original HTC Desire left off. It’s a similar looking handset featuring the Desire’s trademark soft tapered corners, accept this time around HTC has implemented virtual keys and packaged the device in a unibody chassis, which does give it more of a premium feel when compared to its predecessor.

The Desire S’s exact measurements are 115mm x 59.8mm x 11.63mm and it weighs in at 130g – 5g lighter than the original Desire.

The HTC Incredible S, on the other hand, is a completely different monster and more inline with the look of the HTC Desire HD. It’s significantly bigger than the Desire S at 120mm x 64mm x 11.7mm and weights quite a bit more too as well (135.5g to be precise).

The Incredible S features what HTC terms an “inside out” design, in that the device seems to have some kind of exoskeleton – or bumps, if you will. Obviously, this may not be to everyone’s tastes. Some will want to use the phone in a professional environment and find this styling a bit much.

That said, beauty does indeed lie in the eye of the beholder – so it’s really up to you which one you prefer. Nevertheless, we prefer the look, feel and size of the HTC Incredible S – for us, it’s the perfect size for email, video and browsing.

Verdict – Incredible S

Display
The Desire S, as we said, is the smaller of the two devices in question and features a 3.7-inch touch screen with 480 x 800 resolution, which is perfectly adequate by today’s standards – although it’s not going to beat either the Motorola Atrix or the Samsung Galaxy S II in this department.

The Incredible S has exactly the same resolution display as the Desire S (480 x 800 resolution). The only difference is that the Incredible S features a 4-inch display, giving you an additional 0.5-inches of screen real estate to play with.

Again, this one is largely dependent on your personal preference for screen sizes, as both devices are equal in terms of the quality of their displays.

If we were choosing though, we’d go with the Incredible S – but that’s largely down to the fact that we prefer a slightly larger screen than 3.5-inches.

Verdict – Draw

Operating System
Both the devices in question are Android-powered. We went to a briefing last week and got a chance to play with the Desire S and Incredible S, as well as the other new HTC devices ahead of their announcement at MWC2011.

During this briefing all the devices were loaded with Android 2.2 (Froyo) – including the Desire S and the Incredible S.

HTC, however, has now confirmed that both the Incredible S and the Desire S will receive the update to Android Gingerbread as soon as they’re released in the UK markets.

In this instance then, there really is no contention. Both device’s use the same operating system and will get the update to Android 2.3. The only difference between the two device’s, in this context, is that the Incredible S will be landing first, so will, technically speaking, get the upgrade first.

Verdict – Draw

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