It all makes Sense
The magnified cursor is just one example of the many good additions HTC makes to Android with its Sense skin. Most manufacturers struggle to improve Android, and end up just slapping on a jumble of features that often fail to impress. HTC's efforts are much better thought-out than most.
Sense makes the Desire HD look and feel more polished, and it includes a bunch of widgets that do a good job of displaying live data on the seven home screens. The clock and weather widget is so good looking that the Android Market is full of imitations that can be installed on non-HTC phones. The calendar widget is another favourite -- it does a great job of stylishly displaying upcoming appointments from multiple calendars.
The social-network integration on the Desire HD is excellent. The address book pulls in profile photos and updates from your contact's Facebook and Twitter accounts, and in our tests it linked our mates to their profiles without any problems. If you get a call from someone in your address book, the screen flashes up their photo and their latest status update, too.
The gallery also grabs your photos from Facebook and Flickr, although we wish it worked with Google's photo service, Picasa, too. OurGoogle nexus one, which runs unadulerated Android, has that service built in, so we don't know why it's missing on the Desire HD.
Sense has expanded since we saw it on the Desire, including several themes that wrap the display in simulated wood or other colours. It's also launched a cloud-based service that can track your phone's GPS on a map, make it ring at max volume to find it under the sofa cushions, or wipe it remotely. In our tests, it took a few seconds for the service to find our phone, but everything worked a treat eventually.
It would take all the virtual paper on the Internet to describe all of Android's features, and HTC adds even more. For example, when the phone rings, and you pick it up, the ring quietens a little until you answer it -- handy if you're holding it up to check who's calling but don't want to deafen yourself. If you're in a call and you put the phone face-down on a table, it automatically switches to speaker phone. And most importantly, all these features are easy to set up and turn off, if you don't want them.
The weath of features on the Desire HD could be overwhelming, if you prefer the simple life. After all, it's more straightforward to just turn on speaker phone with a button on the screen when you want it. Although the user interface does a good job of presenting the options in an intuitive way, having so many choices inevitably leads to some long menus. The iPhone, and even the new Windows Phone 7 phone , do a better job at controlling information overload by not throwing in every feature under the sun. But if you like having everything but the kitchen sink at your command, the Desire HD will not disappoint you. It's still much more fun and pleasurable to use than many of its competiors, such as the Nokia N8.
The downside of Sense is that it seems to delay getting Android updates from Google. The Desire HD runs the most recent version at the time of writing, Android 2.2 Froyo, but there are certain to be new versions along soon. Since each update adds features and fixes bugs, it can bePAinfull to wait while HTC polishes it with Sense before rolling it out to phones. If you're on a network contract It takes even longer as the phone company adds its own bits and bobs.
Read more: http://reviews.cnet.co.uk/mobile-phones/htc-desire-hd-review-50000752/#ixzz13qV6r0Ij
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