Android OS from Google continues its march to popularity over others. This is largely due to the release of high-tech smartphones based on this exact operating system. At present, the flagship in the line of Android-smartphones is Desire from HTC. Sooner or later any successful smartphone is doomed to be compared with most advanced iPhone – in this case the 3GS.
Now we can surely affirm that on the level of sales the new device from HTC will not be “a killer of iPhone”, but in terms of design and functionality Desire is a sufficiently serious competitor to the most technological “Apple” smartphone.
Design
Dimensions of Desire are larger than those of iPhone 3GS, which is due to the presence of a 3.7-inch AMOLED display, while the smartphone from Apple is equipped with a 3.5-inch LCD screen. It is pleasant that the slightly enlarged diagonal of the screen did not affect the thickness of Desire, and you can place the device in your pocket without any problem.
Many people will probably not like the fact that the rear cover of HTC smartphone is made of plastic, although it does not drop out of the general concept of the company and other Android cell phones by T-Mobile would probably cover this issue. For the sake of fairness it is worth noting that iPhone will not please fans of metal elements, as its back cover is made of plastic, too. In general, it is worth noting that recently the design of iPhone smartphones has become a bit predictable: it is still beautiful and stylish, like all the products of Apple, but it definitely does not surprise any more.
Screen
Desire is equipped with a 3.7-inch touch screen with active matrix (AMOLED), which looks more preferably in the background of 3.5 inch LCD screen of iPhone 3GS. The screen of Desire excels the screen of iPhone in size and the quality of the images. Despite this, the image on the screen of Desire in bright sunlight is worse than the same image on iPhone.
Both of the smartphones are equipped with capacitive stencils, not requiring the presence of a stylus and are supporting multi-touch technology. It should be noted that the screen of iPhone 3GS has a special protective cover that makes its cleaning easier and protects from minor scratches.
Operating System
iPhone 3GS runs the operating system of Apple’s own brand. The software platform can boast of the presence of App Store. Its database has more than 150 000 applications designed especially for iPhone. In addition, iPhone OS is known for simplicity of use and stylish design, that a huge number of fans of Apple products appreciate.
Android Market from Google has 30 000 apps up to now, but taking into account the growing number of applications for Android platform, App Store will soon have a worthy competitor. Among the advantages of Android OS are the openness, multi-tasking and wide opportunities for personalization and subtle tuning of the operating system to the needs of a specific user. All we have mentioned above indicate a significant advantage of the operating system from Google over the iPhone OS.
User Interface
iPhone user interface has always distinguished with excellent animation, with smooth transitions between pages and a wonderful response. However, all this seemed perfect until the release of Desire. The new device from HTC is the fastest device at the moment, equipped with high-performance Snapdragon processor with 1 GHz clock frequency. Within a few seconds Desire performs tasks such as launching the camera, video recording, as well as it works easily with the browser in the multi-windows mode, allowing you to view several pages simultaneously. In addition, Desire provides the user with a set of extremely useful and handy mini-applications (widgets), which greatly simplify access to the most demanded features.
One of the main advantages of the Desire interface over iPhone is the the Sense UI . The new smartphone from HTC is supplied with the latest, most advanced version of Sense, which includes a feature of panoramic display of seven active Leap screens, as well as the new HTC Friend Stream widget, which aims to make communication in social networks for mobile users easier and more convenient.
Multimedia
The integration of 3GS capabilities of iPod into the iPhone turned into success. Playing music and video files has become much satisfying, and the support for MMS-messages and videos records ( functions that were not present in the original iPhone) has still more strengthened the position of the new iPhone 3GS.
A significant advantage of Desire over iPhone is perhaps the presence of a 5 MP camera, but as for the opportunities of Android-devices concerning music playing, these qualities are not as good as it could’ve been, and the functionality of media player is substantially limited.
Desire beats its rival with the built-in browser’s capability to play flash-videos.
Connectivity
The specifications of iPhone 3GS and HTC Desire are very similar. Both devices support HSDPA networks with up 7.2 Mbps speed of data transfer, are equipped with a GPS-receiver, Wi-Fi and a standard 3.5-mm headphone and a headset jack.
The internal memory in iPhone may be 16 or 32 GB, and there is no slot for the memory card. As for Desire, the internal memory is 576 MB, and slots for microSDHC memory cards up to 32 GB are provided for its expansion. In addition, Desire is equipped with FM-radio, and iPhone, in its turn, has TV-out.
One of the main features of Sense user interface, which is not present in devices from Apple, is the existence of so-called “scenes”. That is configurations of the desktop. For example, a user can use one configuration to work (at the same time the desktop will show up emails and weather widget), and the other- for home and rest (with quick access to multimedia aps).
In one scene there can be 7 screens, and totally their amount is limited to 20 scenes while in combination. Thus, users of Desire have at their disposal 140 screens, which can be filled with widgets and labels. Apple has provided “only” 159 applications in iPhone 3GS, which can be arranged on 11 screens.
