One of the most significant and anticipated events in Mobile World Congress 2010 was the debut of the new smartphone HTC Desire, which is similar to the earlier released google phone Nexus One in many ways. As the two devices have the same producer, many users ask a reasonable question: What’s the difference? Let’s find this out.
If you look at the specs of both, the smartphones are alike as two drops of water. Both HTC Desire and Nexus One have a 3.7-inch WVGA AMOLED capacitive displays, a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, etc. HTC Desire functions just like Nexus One, running on Android 2.1. It should be noted that Nexus One is a little thinner than its opponent, especially in its lower part. This part also includes the most noticeable difference between Desire and Nexus One – optical joystick, used by the manufacturer rather than the more usual navigational trackball, which we saw in the google phone.
The main differences are hidden under the covers of the devices. Desire does not have active noise control system and supports tri-band standards HSDPA/ WCDMA, in contrast to the Nexus One being a dual-band 900/2100 MHz device. Naturally, this affects the ability of its work in high-speed networks outside of Europe and Asia. According to the statements of HTC, this kind of decision was dictated by a desire to reduce the cost of the device. But the developers did not save on the amount of memory, and Desire comes with the amount of 576 MB of RAM, while Nexus One has 512 MB. In addition, owners of Desire will receive a 8 GB microSD memory card as a good bonus (Nexus One comes with memory card with the capacity of 4 GB). The smartphone HTC Desire supports Bluetooth Version 2.1 EDR, compared to Nexus One, which works with Bluetooth 2.0 EDR, although ordinary user is unlikely to feel a noticeable difference.
It seems that HTC have worked well over Desire’s power-saving features. For example, with a similar battery with the capacity of 1400 mAh, the stated duration of battery life in standby mode in the 3G networks has increased from 250 up to 360 hours.
Very weighty advantage of Desire is the newest version of Sense corporate UI. It provides an even closer integration with social networks Facebook, Twitter and Flickr, adding the appropriate field in your address book. In addition, all the social bookmarks can be combined into one widget called Friend Stream, located on the desktop. The mini application responsible for the weather has also been updated. A special widget for SMS-client and client for the Twitter network called Peep is added. We should also note the much prettier visual component of HTC Sense, which now boasts the ability to minimize desktop to quickly switch between them.
However, there is no need to despair for the owners of the google phone because the firmware Sense for Nexus One has already been developed.
One of the drawbacks of Nexus One, which is absent in Desire, is the lack of support for Exchange server because of which users were forced to turn to solutions from other vendors.
Thus, we see that HTC continues to actively improve their corporate user interface, constantly expanding the functionality and make more comfortable use of it with the release of each new device.
As for pricing and availability of devices on the market, this issue is by far the most complex. Google does not exercise direct sales of Nexus One in Europe and Asia, and to acquire the google phone online and paying extra for shipping, customs fees, etc. is quite expensive. For example, the average cost of the smartphone Nexus One in Europe amounts to about $634. As for HTC Desire, then its value has not been announced yet, but many online stores have already posted the new device on their sites for $681. Of course, this price is not final and is sure to go down after it is available for sale.
It is also worth noting that the owners of Desire do not have to feel the same discomfort when contacting the technical support. All the problems with the smartphone can be promptly resolved in the service centers of HTC, located almost everywhere all around the world.
In general, both devices combine all the advanced technology, specifications of modern mobile devices, and are unlikely to disappoint their owners.
Anonymous
February 12, 2011
nicely written