HTC Desire Z Review

HTC doesn’t have a huge lineup of Android QWERTY Sliders. In fact, other than the Desire Z, TouchPro II and the leaked HTC PD42100, that’s pretty much it. We’ve managed to get our hands on the Desire Z, the cousin of the T-Mobile G2 in the USA, an Android Slider from HTC as part of the Desire family.

Review: Design, display

I personally like my smartphone’s to look sexy both in my hand and sat on the desk and the HTC Desire Z, in this respect, is certainly not a fail. Sporting a brushed aluminium back and a rather nice industrial design, the HTC Desire Z feels great in the hand and is certainly the sort of smartphone you’ll be happy to whip out in front of your mates.

The HTC Desire Z has a 3.7″ capacitive touch screen Super-LCD display, at a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels, with very vibrant and bright colours, it also sports multi-touch, connected to the phone itself via a ribbon cable beside the two ‘Z’ hinges. The screen itself is of good quality, and when next to your iPhone 4, doesn’t lose out much despite the 4′s stupidly high PPI.

Towards the front of the HTC Desire Z you’ll find 4 default Android buttons, as you’d expect, but it also has an optical button, similar enough to a trackball which helps a lot whilst navigating menu’s with specific accuracy.

Software, apps

The Desire Z runs HTC Sense on top of Android 2.2, which makes for a great experience although you could install stock Gingerbread on it if you wanted. For most consumers, HTC Sense really adds that level of customization to the device people love such as widgets, the skin, the sound sets, and of course, folders. Some of the apps that come pre-installed on the device which you might be interested in are:

-Adobe Reader
-Amazon MP3
-Blocked Callers
-Car Panel (Very nice)
-Flashlight (Uses the built in flash)
-FM Radio
-Friend Stream
-HTC Hub
-HTC Likes
-HTC’s own mail client
-Google Maps
-Android Market
-Google Navigation
-Google News
-Peep
-People
-Places
-Twitter
-Voice Recorder
-Voice Search
-WiFi Hotspot
-Youtube

Usability, speed

The Desire Z runs the latest generation 800MHz Scorpion processor however don’t fret at the ’800MHz’. I ran a quadrant test on the device and it came out top of the list, beating some of the best Android smartphones on the market, such as the Droid X, HTC Evo, Galaxy S, Nexus One and the original HTC Desire. I was very impressed with the result of that test. It also runs an Adreno 205 GPU, which is excellent for 3D games.

The main difference between this and most other smartphones out there is the slide out QWERTY keyboard. But… this isn’t a normal slider, it uses HTC’s own ‘Z’ hinge, hence the name, the Desire Z. The hinges are unfortunately made of plastic – now, for me this is one of the handsets main weaknesses as it feels like it might break sometime soon. It wouldn’t be the best phone to use in an aggressive environment I do have to say, as if dust or grit gets inside your trusty phone it will be a nightmare to clean and might affect the phones hinges over time.

The Desire Z also sports a 5MP camera with autofocus and an LED flash that can capture stills at a resolution of 2592х1944. As for video recording, it can record in 720p HD, with impressive video quality and in tests the camera itself offers good light re-production both indoors and out.

As for battery life, well, it’s not great. You would certainly have to charge this on a daily basis, and it does take quite a while to charge. So, if you’re bringing this out and about, you might want to bring a spare battery with you.

It also has built in GPS – what you’d expect from a superphone like this, it works excellently incorporated within the Google Navigation app, which sports turn-by-turn navigation.

Verdict

If your looking for high-end smart Unlocked Cell Phones with a slideout keyboard in the $500 range, then this certainly is for you. Although, if you don’t need all these fancy features, you can still get the T-Mobile G1/HTC Dream for less than $100. Both devices will play Angry Birds, too.

Rating: (8/10)