It might in fact be fair to say that the Desire HD may be one of the more resilient flagship devices we've handled this year. That's helped by the understated matte styling, which doesn't look like it'll scratch too easily, and the relatively uncomplicated external design. What little deviations there are from simplicity -- such as the three plastic elements breaking up the plain aluminum back -- are made to accommodate functional elements of the phone rather than to spice up your life with unnecessary flamboyancy. Much like the HD7 we reviewed quite recently, the Desire HD also has very good ergonomics, both in the hand and in the pocket, which really makes you question why you'd ever consider a smartphone with a smaller screen; there's almost no negative to moving to the 4.3-inch size in terms of daily portability.
That is not to say that the Desire HD's design is without its flaws, however. While we appreciate having access to the microSD and SIM card slots, we're not such big fans of their shared cover, which is made of a brittle plastic and fails to sit flush with the aluminum back. Similarly worthy of our disapprobation was the side-mounted battery lid, which has better adherence to the overall curvature of the phone, but is pretty much a nightmare to both open and close. Trust us, we've had our trained lab monkeys going over this, it's a massive pain. Oh, and when you do finally manage to pop it open, the battery compartment offers no retention mechanism for the power cell, which just slides out. Right next to the battery slot is the volume button, and we call it a button because, unlike a rocker, it has almost no travel and it's amazingly hard to differentiate whether you're pressing the top, bottom, or the middle of it. We're actually rather befuddled as to how HTC managed to mess up something so basic and routine in a phone as the volume toggle this badly.We were also disheartened by a couple of other issues, which are perhaps even more significant than the foregoing. Firstly, as mentioned above, the aluminum casing fails to perfectly align with all the other external elements of the phone it comes into contact with, which is most unpleasantly apparent at the front, where it frames the display. The trouble is that the aluminum sticks out about a millimeter in front of the screen, generating a ridge that your finger flicks against when performing swipes on the phone. What results both feels and sounds like flicking paper at the end of (almost) every screen-transitioning gesture. The problem is apparent on both sides of the display and it's also something we noted in our 7 Mozart review, so it doesn't seem as though we got a uniquely poor Desire HD unit, it's just a failure on HTC's part, whether at the design or manufacturing stage. The second big problem we have here is with the camera on the back, which sticks out from the rest of the body, but is not protected from bumps or scratches in any meaningful way. When laid on its back, the Desire HD rests directly on the lens itself, which anyone serious about photography would both cringe and curse at.
A prime reason as to why that battery runs down so fast is, of course, the inclusion of a jumbo 4.3-inch screen on the Desire HD. We said this with the HD7 and it bears repeating here: although the Desire HD has the same 800 x 480 screen resolution as the original Desire, the simple act of magnifying that resolution onto a larger display just makes operating the phone easier. Basically, you can fit just as much of Engadget on your Desire HD as on the Desire, but the text will be readable at a more zoomed-out level that on the 3.8-inch predecessor. Opinions will differ on this, naturally, as pixel density enthusiasts will decry being able to (or imagining they're able to) spot the bigger dots, but we'll take improved usability and reading room over mildly (if at all) degraded image quality any day of the week.
That sentiment can't be extended to screen technology, however, where the Desire -- whether in AMOLED or Super LCD form -- easily outdoes its HD counterpart. The Desire HD has a decent, but not altogether impressive LCD panel, which we're almost certain is identical to that found inside the HD7. To tell you the truth, unless you're a perfectionist or a purist when it comes to having the very latest screen tech in your device, you won't find yourself disappointed by this phone's display. It gets the job done for the vast majority of the time, though we might have appreciated it if HTC had put a less glossy coating on it -- you know, for the odd occasion when we step out of our underground lairs and into the sun.
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