HTC Desire S review

HTC has announced a slew of smartphone devices, including the Desire series, in the Indian market in last couple of months. The HTC Desire was one of the most successful device launched last year by the company. Now HTC is extending its Desire portfolio with a range of new smartphone devices launch in this market.

We now have HTC Desire HD, HTC Desire Z, HTC Incredible S and the most recent HTC Desire S available in India. However, no previous 'Desire' series devices lived up to the reputation – i.e. reliability, usability and battery life – of the original HTC Desire. We review the Android-powered HTC Desire S to see how it fares against the original HTC Desire and its other siblings.

Now it’s the turn of the HTC Desire S, complete with Android 2.3 and a new unibody chassis. It looks a lot more like the original HTC Desire than the Desire HD and Desire Z, but does it match its performance? We find out.

Although being quite similar in form to the original Desire, the Desire S is in actual fact quite a bit smaller measuring in at 115x59.8x11.63mm vs 119x60x11.9mm. It’s also 5g lighter at 130g in weight as well.

So, in this respect the ‘S’ could stand for svelte, slimmed down or smaller. Either one would fit the bill to be honest, the device is smaller, more compact and will suit users that find larger 4-inch display-toting devices a bit too much.

Having said that, we can’t help but feel a little let down by the handset itself. Don’t get us wrong, it’s a decent smartphone – it just kind of reminds us of, well, the HTC Wildfire.

Now, we’re not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, but the HTC Wildfire is not a premium handset – it’s a budget smartphone. But the mid-range similarities don’t stop here.

The specs on the HTC Desire S is also pretty standard fare as well by 2011’s current standards – there’s no dual core processor for instance. It’s not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s not exactly much of a progression forwards from HTC’s 2010 offerings.

HTC has upped the processing power slightly though with the inclusion of a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 and an improved Adreno 205 graphics processor, which ensures super slick animations and gameplay.

There’s also 1GB of internal storage with the option to expand up to 32GB via the device’s microSD slot. The camera on the Desire S, unfortunately, remains the same as the original at 5-megapixels and you can shoot video in 720p quality at 25fps – again, not bad but really nothing to write home about.

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