September 1, 2010
Review: HTC Desire
After unleashing the massively impressive HTC Legend, its bigger brother, the HTC Desire, is here – faster, bigger and more powerful and still packing the Android punch.It might be the Nexus One rebadged, but this is a behemoth of a phone in its own right; has HTC tried to do too much?We reviewed a Desire from T-Mobile, which is first in line to offer the phone on UK release, but we also checked out our findings from another Desire review unit straight from HTC, to really find out how it compared to the competition.While the Legend was all about style and functionality in one tidy package – the HTC Desire takes a slightly different approach. Instead of the gorgeous aluminium chassis, we’re given a slightly more low-key brown case and a huge 3.7-inch OLED capacitive touchscreen.Also read: 15 best mobile phones in the world todayBut while the screen certainly is massive, the phone itself doesn’t seem gargantuan. The screen reaches the edge of the chassis nicely, and the four buttons on the front of the HTC Desire are almost flush and set in attractive aluminium.If you’re looking for comparisons between this and the Nexus One, the first is highly obvious: the trackball is gone. HTC has given the phone the Terminator eye once more (head back to the HTC Legend review if you want to know why we’re glad it doesn’t glow red and threaten humanity) which is basically an optical trackpad that registers finger motion over the sensor.The phone is very slim indeed, with dimensions of 119 x 60 x 11.9 mm, and weighs in at just 133g. If you’re counting, that’s 2g heavier than the iPhone 3G and the exact same weight as the iPhone 3GS – and that makes it very pocket friendly indeed.It has a rubberised chassis, which is a little hard to grip at times. We’re not talking so slippy you’ll be dropping it all the time, but it still can be a little difficult to hold in one hand, especially if you have dinky digits.That said it sits very nicely in the hand, with a sumptuous curved chassis feeling very nice and making it easy to press the buttons on the front with the thumb.There’s actually very little button-wise on the HTC Desire, with only six in all. The front four buttons are standard HTC Android fare (Home, Menu, Back and Search) and the Terminator optical trackpad also clicks in as an enter key.The up/down button on the left-hand side of the phone is flush to the chassis, as is the power button on the top – which sits next to the 3.5mm headphone jack atop the HTC Desire. The power button also functions as the lock key, and is very nicely placed to press whenever necessary (and trust us, we’ve seen some horrors; we’re looking at you, Samsung Galaxy).That’s it button-wise, as there’s no camera key (instead the HTC Desire uses the trackpad to take a snap or two) which is a little sad – we still love a dedicated shutter button.The USB slot is hidden at the bottom – no cover to keep the dust out, but on the plus side it’s once again microUSB, banishing the memory of the horrid miniUSB port from HTC designs of old.There’s also a microSD card slot for extra memory – but that’s hidden below the battery, and can’t be taken out without turning off the phone.The screen is simply to die for – we mentioned it was an OLED capacitive effort earlier, but that brings such glorious colour reproduction and 3.7-inch is a great size for media and the internet on a phone. It’s a little tacky under the touch – the iPhone for instance feels a little smoother – but we’re being very, very picky with that, as it registers the slightest touch with ease.The design is sleek, and the Desire certainly looks the business – sleek and compact, while still showing off the power of the OLED screen. Yes, it lacks the style of the HTC Legend, but we think it more than makes up for that in function.In the boxHTC is excellent at keeping packaging minimal, and the Desire once again comes in a coffin-like box with the standard kit inside. This means a microUSB cable, which plugs into an adaptor to make a wall charger, and the standard headphones which double as a hands-free kit.HTC hasn’t seen fit to update these, but they’re functional and work well to use for calls and media, providing you don’t have the same odd-shaped ears as us. There’s not a lot more, but with the minimal space in packaging you can see why HTC has kept the components down. We would like to see some PC software on a CD or memory card, but it can be downloaded from the site with ease.The HTC Desire is rocking the latest Sense UI on top of Android 2.1, and if you’re looking for the best reason why this phone is, in our opinion, far and away better than its Google Nexus One clone, this is it.It simply works, and HTC has cooked in a few extra surprises as well (providing you haven’t played with the HTC Legend as well).The premise is simple – seven home screens (three each side of the default option) which can be customised with widgets, icons and apps as you see fit, to create a totally unique experience for each user.It’s the same principle Android 2.1 is built on, but HTC has added in a number of its own widgets and options to make things that little bit more special.The large-display clock is included as a default, and below that is the weather in your location (drawn from cellular triangulation data rather than the GPS chip). The weather will also flick across the screen too, which is also cool – if it’s sunny the screen will shine, rainy and a windscreen wiper clears the water drops, foggy and the screen goes cloudy. If you’re showing the phone to someone that’s never really seen a smartphone before, they’ll think they’ve seen a phone from Narnia when you whip this feature out. Android is a cool OS, because of the level of customisation on offer. If you want to add a widget, simply long-press the screen and a list of programs, widgets and folders will be presented to you.HTC’s widgets include Favourite friends (updated contact profiles from the phonebook and Facebook if enabled) and the Friendstream app, which draws in info from Twitter, Flickr and Facebook.These, like so many others, are offered in small, medium and full screen options, enabling you to keep space on your precious home screen allocation to a minimum.If you want to get rid of anything, then you simply long-press on the icon and the rubbish bin comes up, enabling you to drop it in there and get rid of it – we wish it was this easy on Nokia’s Symbian phones, like the Nokia X6.This method also allows you to re-arrange the icons in the places you want or shift them around too.Another desperately cool-but-pointless feature in Android 2.1 is the addition of Live Wallpapers. These are backgrounds to the home screen that react to a number of stimuli – be it your finger, music or simply the time of day.Our favourite is (humorously) called Nexus: basically, it’s a set of coloured lights running across a grid – tap the screen and dozens more explode out under your finger.Utterly, utterly pointless and probably a tiny bit battery-draining… but we still cleared a home screen of widgets just so we could play with it.Search throughout the phone be it music tracks, text messages from a friend, or any file type is available simply by hitting the search key twice to call up ‘Quick Search’.It’s very similar to the iPhone’s Spotlight option, but in our opinion it works faster and more comprehensively.And the final cool thing offered by the new Sense UI from HTC on the Desire – Leap View. Basically, pinch the screen in using multi-touch (yep, that’s supported too) and you’ll be able to see all seven screens at once. Very handy if you’re over on the far right screen and you want to check the weather on the far left – pinch and prod and you’re there.Leap View actually highlights the power of the HTC Desire really well – the processor chugging away under the hood.From the simple swipe to web page panning, the Desire will react to any touch you throw at it no matter how hard you push the OS. Heck, even the weather widget spins through the different cities on offer with speed – we’ve never seen that before from HTC.It’s not that different from other HTC phones, as the Taiwanese company is adept at making its processors work well – but it means there’s never a hint of slowdown.Basically, the interface on the HTC Desire is great because it just does what you want it to do. Combining the cool elements of Android (like being able to drag down from the top of the screen to see notifications) with widgets and changeable Scenes (the icons rearrange depending on what time of day or week it is so you can set Work or Home or whichever mode you want) the HTC Desire’s interface is simply tops.Often when we review a phone and we move to the calling section, it’s a very easy task to explain. You press a button, select a name and call. Hang up after, if you want. But the HTC Desire just blows that concept out the water. You get such a plethora of options for the contact information, and the call quality and reception is great.ContactsThe main thing to know about the phonebook on the HTC Desire is the sheer volume of information you can throw in there. You can link a name with their Google account, Facebook, Flickr, Exchange… oh and the phone number too.Basically, when you turn the Desire on for the first time, you’re asked to log into Google, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr (and T-Mobile’s email service on our test device).Not only does this give you access to your Gmail and populate Peep (the Desire’s inbuilt Twitter application) it adds all the names from Facebook and Google contacts into the address book.Now, here comes the science – you can then link the information all together. The phone will search for common phone numbers and email addresses, and link these profiles automatically – which is cool enough.But then you’re left with around 300 names that should go together, but aren’t – a very time consuming task ahead.Well, HTC has thought of this and while the problem isn’t completely solved, there’s help at hand.Basically, the Desire will search through names and addresses and look for common themes and offer them as suggested links in the top right-hand corner of the screen – making linking a very swift process 99% of the time.Yes, it takes around 30 minutes to set it up when you get the phone, but trust us – it’s worth it.From the linked profile, you get to see call history, Facebook updates, Flickr and Facebook photos, email conversations you’ve shared – simply by sliding your finger across the bottom of the screen along a different selection of icons.Again, we’re talking slick here – the HTC Desire never gives in and won’t judder at all during this process, even when it’s updating and populating.However, there are a couple of issues – when you’ve linked up all your contacts, for some reason they split into two alphabetised groups in the phonebook list – we have no idea why.And we’d like to be able to fire off a Facebook message directly from the profile – we can do it on the Motorola Dext and the INQ Chat 3G, why can’t we do it here?CallingThe HTC Desire was a little temperamental the first time we tried calling – it basically just hung there and then disconnected the call, which worried us a little bit.But after that, it was plain sailing – quick connections and easy dialling. The ‘Phone’ tab is prominent on all the home screens, and pulls up the most recently called contacts as well as the number pad.You can also use the dialler as a T9 dictionary to tap in a contact’s name and it will be pushed to the top of the list – a feature nabbed from HTC’s Windows Mobile days.Connection as we said was pretty flawless, although we did have trouble shaking the HTC Desire off roaming networks at times.Basically, it will sniff out an alternative network for data and voice at times – which is great for maintaining signal for calls.But if you want high speed 3G data, that’s not going to happen when roaming; but even when we knew we’d moved into a high 3G signal area, it struggled to jump back.Not a major problem, but slightly irritating nonetheless.The more important flipside of that is the HTC Desire is great when you suddenly pop back into signal – ie when you emerge from a tube. Within seconds you’re up and running again with a good few bars – we know that’s important to a number of users.Like calling, messaging can be a boring experience on some phones. But the HTC Desire offers a number of ways to stay in contact with your buddies, no matter which way you want to chat.First of all, let’s talk keyboards – the HTC touchscreen option is without par in our opinion (the same for the both the Legend and the Desire).It’s frighteningly intuitive, and it learns as it goes along – if you use a word often it will remember it and default to it when the relevant keystrokes come along.And if you’re taking your first worrying steps into button-less keyboards, we couldn’t recommend this option more highly. You can deviate miles from the intended buttons, and nine times out of 10 the Desire will work out the word you wanted by default.And thanks to a large and expansive screen, the Desire is even easier to type on than the Legend.Messaging is handled in a number of intuitive ways – from threaded conversations for SMS text messages to high end Exchange support.Your inbox is divided into conversations with contacts, and you can simply tap in to see what’s been said. If you want to convert a text into an MMS, you simply add in elements like pictures, sound or a contact card – light years ahead of having to remember a number and tap it into a text.Twitter is also well-used through the Peep application – one of the issues with the HTC Legend was the @replies took a long time to update and wouldn’t appear, even if you’re notified there is one.Thankfully the latter has been fixed with the HTC Desire, although it can take a while to find out someone has tried to Tweet at you.Google Talk is also included as standard, allowing you to chat to your buddies online. Sadly there’s no integration for Windows Messenger or similar out the box, and we’re sure we’re not alone in never having many of our friends on Google Talk at any one time.As we mentioned email is a big part of this phone too – be it Gmail, POP3/IMAP webmail accounts or Exchange.All three are easy to set up, with a few details all that’s necessary for the HTC Desire to sniff out the relevant settings.Exchange email is set up in the traditional inbox format, but sliding the finger along the icons at the bottom takes you to files with attachment and conversations, making it easy again to see what’s been said in the chat so far.Email addresses are highlighted within the mail itself so you can tap and use them – you can do the same with phone numbers, but these aren’t highlighted.Well, we say you can do the same, as it works for strings of numbers, but if there are spaces present the HTC Desire can’t work out the full number to use.You can choose the speed at which mail is pushed to the device from all these accounts, from Push email to timed downloading to only updating when manually forced to do so.There’s no lag at all with push email – and it just works well. We know we keep saying that, but it’s a constant theme with the HTC Desire.A couple of very minor issues with the Desire’s messaging system – you can’t save SMS messages to the microSD card (though you can to the SIM card) and you have to delete POP3 messages separately; you can’t do it all at once to clear an inbox.HTC has been working long and hard on its Android internet browser, and has continued to update it to keep it in line with the top level on offer with today’s smartphones.The LG Arena managed to have a full HTML browser with pinch and zoom navigation, but it was slow and clunky, so it’s not a given that chucking in multi-touch will sort everything out.But the HTC Desire’s browser is tip top – pinching and zooming takes you in and out at superb speeds, and the text reflow software on the Desire is brilliant, like its HTC brothers.Basically you can keep moving in further and further on the words, and the phone will keep reformatting the columns to fit the screen – it makes reading the longer articles very easy indeed.The WVGA, 3.7-inch screen also look immense – zoomed out, you can see a huge amount of the web page, and in high detail as well.The web browser also has copy and paste as standard too – simply long press on any bit of text and two little draggable pins will appear to select the text you want (with a little magnifying pane to help things out).Like we’ve said before – this is a little bit iPhone-like, and we wouldn’t be surprised if Apple included it in its current lawsuit against the Taiwanese firm.Flash video is also present and very much correct on the HTC Desire. We navigated to a number of different websites with embedded video, and the HTC Desire showed the content within the browser or via a dedicated Flash browser.We did encounter a slight issue – Flash video didn’t want to work properly on the higher end sites and content. It wouldn’t support iPlayer for example, and video on the BBC website was juddery.Channel 4 On Demand on YouTube wouldn’t work either – but other videos on the Google-owned video site functioned fine.Either way this will likely be fixed in the next couple of months – Flash 10.1 is on its way for Android and should make all Flash video fine to use.Bookmarking on the HTC Desire is also pretty darn cool – the visual thumbnails, based on the latest website content from your last visit, are a nice way of navigating through your favourites.And if you forget to tag a favourite site, slide your finger along the bottom to find your most visited sites and history – making it easy to find oft-visited sites.Other little titbits from the HTC Desire browser include easy downloading of images by simply long-pressing the image and selecting save.You can also share text you’ve copy and pasted to the likes of SMS and Facebook – or the whole web address of the page you’re looking at instead.This is also really helpful for the integrated Peep Twitter app – if you see something you want to tell your buddies about and you’re only three taps away from doing so.The HTC Desire shows another progression for Taiwanese company the camera is now streets ahead of previous models.Be it the poor efforts of the HTC Magic and G1, or the odd halo effect on the Hero, HTC has never been one for camera power.But the 5MP snapper on the HTC Desire will turn even the most mundane mo-pho (mobile photographer, of course) into a click-happy junkie.We’re not saying that the HTC Desire is the equal of anything like the Sony Ericsson Satio or the LG Viewty Smart, but the 5MP effort is easily as good as you’ll need on a mobile camera.The camera interface has been overhauled for the new version of Sense as well, with a number of options to tweak to improve your photos.Options for brightness, contrast, saturation and sharpness are all altered by spinning dials on the screen (brought out by a simple touch on the menu tab).You can also mess about with the ISO settings, geo-tagging, face detection and more as well as sepia, negative and posterise effects among others.And the thing is all these elements make a difference photos can genuinely be enhanced by playing with these settings.LIGHT AND BRIGHT: The HTC Desire performs well in sunshine, with lots of detail and minimal washing outForeground focus:Background focus:ALTERED VIEW: Simply pressing on separate sections of the screen to take a snap makes a big difference to the brightness of a photoWASHED OUT: Detail in brighter light can sometimes be a little washed out on the HTC DesireWIDELY ACCEPTED: The Desire does well at picking out the full gamut of detail in panorama viewsAUTO-MACRO: The Desire has no macro mode, but the auto focus more than makes up for it, with impressive clarityFLASH, AAAAAH: Even in near total darkness, the flash is brilliant on the HTC Desire, focusing and lighting evenlyWith high saturation:With low saturation:With high contrast:With low contrast:With high sharpness:With low sharpness:OBVIOUS EFFECTS: Messing around with the saturation, sharpness and contrast of the camera on the HTC Desire shows real differences in the snaps – these options aren’t just gimmicksWhile we’re still lamenting the loss of the dedicated shutter button, the optical trackball is a good secondary option for taking snaps.The camera automatically keeps refocusing on the scene in front of it, which negates the need for a half-press on the shutter key to bring the picture into sharpness.You can either take a snap by pressing the optical trackpad, or long pressing on the screen – focusing and adjusting the white balance depending on your chosen area.The latter option has been tweaked somewhat over recent versions, and a longer press is better as it means you don’t accidentally set the camera off when trying to point to a section for the camera to focus on.The video recorder comes in a variety of formats both resolution and recording codec.You can take video in QVGA (320 x 240), CIF (352 x 288), VGA (DVD quality, 640 x 480) or WVGA (800 x 480), and all four can be recorded to MP4 or H.263 formats, with the resulting file appearing as 3GP. We’re told that the HTC Desire records at 30fps, but as you’ll see from the test video that seems a little far reaching. It’s actually clocked at 15fps, but that’s dynamic – the phone will increase the rate to over 20fps in other lighting conditions.HTC is also only allowing audio recording to AMR, rather than the superior-quality AAC (which is supported by the Snapdragon processor). We’re thinking this is something that may be tweaked in future updates, but isn’t going to matter to most users in day to day action.Some people we’ve spoken to have lamented the fact the HTC Desire doesn’t have HD video recording as on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz we don’t think it’s necessary on a mobile phone, especially when you have to wedge it into a chassis the width of a pencil.It might improve resolution somewhat, but it’s not that noticeable on the phone screen or when ported out to a larger display, so we don’t think the Desire should be marked down for leaving it out.The HTC Desire is an upgrade in the media department over the HTC Legend for a number of reasons – the first being the fact it has an upgraded audio performance in the shape of Dolby Mobile enhancement.This isn’t mentioned in the settings or anything, which makes us wonder if it’s a big part of the audio experience – but in comparative tests, it seems to offer a richer bass sound and a nice mid range too.The music player is the same decent effort as seen on other HTC phones – it features large, easy-to-hit buttons on the main player and cover art that you can swipe through in both portrait and landscape modes.Navigating through tracks is segmented into Artists, Albums, Tracks, Genres and more, with the option to look at your purchased tracks as well – although we’re yet to find out which store you’re meant to purchase them from.You can select the different methods of track navigation by simply sliding your finger along the bottom of the screen, as is common throughout the Sense UI.The HTC Desire packs a 3.5mm headphone port as you might expect, but this is curved and not flush to the chassis – which leaves a section of the headphone jack uncovered. It doesn’t affect the performance of the phone, but it does leave your headphones exposed to possible damage.The main music player is easy to use and works quickly on the HTC Desire – the 1GHz processor powering things along nicely under the hood meant there was very little track stutter or skipping when trying to browse through the phone’s library.The video player is, once again, hidden in the photos section. We don’t know why, and HTC haven’t been able to furnish us with a decent reason either – but at least the icon hints at it with a little video picture.The photo and video gallery is easy enough to navigate too – you can see your files as images, camera shots and downloaded pictures, and the video is divided up into recorded movies and those you’ve slung onto the memory card.Swishing through your photos is a really pleasant experience too thanks to the processor – it renders the images snappily and without a hint of slowdown, so you’re not looking at a pixellated version of your mug for too long.VideoThe video is predictably sublime on the HTC Desire – you can imagine if you add widescreen VGA resolution to a 3.7-inch OLED display with a 1GHz processor the movies will look sumptuous.There’s sadly no dedicated GPU on board as far as we can tell, but that doesn’t seem to matter too much when it comes to watching videos.UPDATE: Apparently the HTC Desire does have a GPU, although we’re still trying to pin down which is is as HTC hasn’t released the full specs. But it does explain the great video and Google Earth performance (which we urge you to download).The screen is a perfect size for watching video, and if you add in a Bluetooth headset, it’s a great experience to wirelessly skim through some videos. Talking of which, you can slide your finger through the movie by simply dragging it along the bottom bar and it will jump instantly to the right point in the movie – just as you’d expect.However, there is a problem with the Bluetooth side of things, which worries us slightly. When using the new Jabra Clipper Bluetooth device (which allows you to use your own headphones wirelessly) the sound stuttered when using the music application. It wasn’t apparent when watching video, and it was a lot better than on the Legend, but it still niggled somewhat that we couldn’t have flawless Bluetooth performance.YouTube is also included in the Google stable of applications with the HTC Desire, and it works just fine, especially over Wi-Fi.Using this connection it automatically seeks out the highest quality video, and that looked great on the WVGA screen.It didn’t like connecting as well over 3G at times, despite having a couple of bars of signal – although this was a rare occurrence.The FM radio included was of average quality – it scanned and found all the major radio stations when first turned on, but sometimes struggled for clear signal. It also took an age to turn on, and there’s no RDS, meaning you have to name all the stations yourself, which is slightly irritating.We’d have also liked to see the option to record radio as well, as is present on the Samsung range (such as seen on the Samsung Jet).Overall though this is a powerful media device, and with an 8GB memory card in the box (expandable up to 32GB) it’s a phone that has a load of media potential.The battery in the HTC Desire was ‘only’ a 1400mAh effort – we’d have like to see a 1500mAh option there, as is the case with so many other smartphones at the moment.We’re also a little concerned about the battery life – it dropped rather quickly, and although you’ll get a day’s worth of use out of it under normal use (ie web browsing, calling etc) it can drop a little alarmingly fast at times.We had a little look at what was munching on the power so much (thanks to the Android battery meter) and it seems to be the widgets (in particular FriendStream) and synchronising that’s taking a lot of the power, along with the constant flicking to roaming networks and back to 3G.We found a big increase in battery life if we stopped updating Peep, Friendstream and emails all day long, and when set to ’2G networks only’ the battery life also improved to three days’ use without problem.We’d also advise you download Advanced Task Killer from the App Market – it’s a great way of shutting down running programs and thus saving you a lot of battery life.We’re used to having to charge a smartphone every day, so we don’t see this as much of a problem, and it’s good there are options to extend the battery life if you want it to last longer.Google Maps, as you can imagine, is included as standard – we urge you to upgrade to GMaps 4.1 as soon as possible.Basically, this has overhauled the UI so you can swipe through categories when clicking on an address – you can see information and reviews much more easily than before.The GPS signal also locked on very fast with the HTC Desire, making finding yourself on a map very easy.The UK still isn’t deemed worthy enough to have the Google Navigation feature as yet, and we’re starting to doubt if we’ll ever have it, especially if it’s a legal issue for Google.It’s a shame, as this could be a great Sat Nav with the bright and clear screen to play with – and the Nexus One is clearly set up to be just that in the US.There’s one last cool surprise with Google Maps 4.1: a new live wallpaper.You set it up, and suddenly the background shifts to where you are, highlighted by a little dot.And if you’re friends are nearby and logged into Latitude, you can see that as well – creepy but handy if you don’t want to have keep logging into maps to see what’s going on in your area.The HTC Desire packs the usual range of Android connectivity – Wi-Fi b/g, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP, aGPS, 7.2Mbps HSDPA – the works.The Wi-Fi is as good to set up as ever, and whenever you walk into range of a remembered network the HTC Desire will automatically connect.It’s better at maintaining signal than the HTC Legend, which as we mentioned before had a few issues connecting to Wi-Fi on the odd occasion.Bluetooth is similarly good, with both methods of connection offering the same easy to use UI – basically turn it on and a list of connections pops up.Simply tapping on these will link you in – no faffing about with separate screens for passwords or codes, it’s all done on the same screen and once connected, Bluetooth will also auto-connect with devices in range.GPS as we mentioned before is solid, allowing you to not only flick around Google Maps with ease but also geo-tag your photos in you’re into that kind of thing.The PC software was once again not present – downloading HTC Sync found the phone and registered it under the Desire name, but failed to synchronise or connect to actually back up the data.At least you can perform this function on the phone by backing up data to the memory card – that way if the phone crashes and loses all its data (or you delete something important in a drunken fug) you can back it up.AppsThere are a variety of applications offered on the phone from the start, such as Facebook, a desk clock, PDF and QuickOffice as well as a motion-sensitive game in Teeter (which is a lot like labyrinth).But the Application Store is becoming a real force in the mobile applications space – it may only have 25% of the applications that are present on the Apple App Store at the moment, but Google has promised that it will have 130,000 apps on its books by the end of 2010.This means it will have more than enough apps to keep you occupied – and means that most of the big brands will probably have brought an application to the Android as well.Considering that most will have this phone for two years, the fact the application Market might not be as well populated as the App Store isn’t as big a deal – there are a lot of applications missing at the moment, but that will likely change in the next few months.One of the problems is still not being able save applications to memory card – this means developers have to make games small, and therefore low function.This should change in a near-future update to Android, thus opening up the application Market to a wider range of developers, and making applications a lot more interesting.The HTC Desire is a feature-rammed phone with the hardware to support it. It’s got a huge screen with the 1GHz processor underneath, and the Sense UI is a system that keeps getting better with every iteration.Coming just after the HTC Legend, it improves on all the issues we saw with that (battery life, Peep and Friendstream slow to update etc) and adds in some decent extra hardware as well.We likedWe liked nearly every single thing on the HTC Desire – it just works as you want it to as a phone and an internet tablet at the same time.The Sense UI, Leap View and social network integration is all seamless and useful, the Live Wallpapers are super cool and the internet browser with pinch to zoom is fantastic.Music and video playback was rich and simple, the camera is probably the best we’ve seen from HTC, the overall experience was fast and intuitive – in short it’s easier to find things we didn’t like.We dislikedWe’ll level with you – there’s not a lot wrong with this phone. The Bluetooth music playback is a little patchy and the battery will drop a little easily if you leave everything updating in the background.Although the latter is a little annoying out the box (HTC wants you to use lots of updating widgets from the start) once you take some things down (or set them to manually update) the battery use is a lot better.VerdictIn short, this is a phenomenal phone – one of the best we’ve ever had on TechRadar. Usually when we like a phone on the first use, we end up horribly disappointed after a little time with it, but the HTC Desire kept on performing and achieving when we thought it wouldn’t.The screen is lovely, the design is slick and processor makes everything happen in a flash – all you’d want from a smartphone.Sure, some people will want slightly nicer design (we’d advise you check out the Legend) or a simpler home screen and richer app store at the moment (look at the iPhone 3GS) but as a piece of hardware it’s without par in the mobile world.A stunning phone, and one that will show the world that Android isn’t just for the hackers and phone geeks any more.Related LinksTechRadar’s Reviews GuaranteeMore mobile phone reviewsRelated StoriesReview: LG Chocolate BL20Review: Acer Liquid S100Review: Nokia E72Review: HTC HD MiniReview: Nokia 5230
Review: Sony Ericsson Vivaz
The Sony Ericsson Vivaz is the HD-video-shooting successor to the Swedish-Japanese firm’s flagship Satio model. With an 8.1MP camera that can also record 720p HD video, it is designed to thrill YouTube-rs with its easy video upload features as well as the bundled 8GB memory card for ample storage. The touchscreen phone has been ergonomically designed to fit the contours of the hand and with social networking and multi-media features galore, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is set to give the likes of the Nokia X6 and the LG InTouch Max GW620 a run for their money.The handset itself has been ergonomically designed and does feel really nice to hold. Also read: 15 best mobile phones in the world todayThe curve of the back fits nicely into the palm and although it’s a light handset, the Sony Ericsson Vivaz doesn’t feel insubstantial. It has an abundance of very smooth surfaces, so we did find we dropped it quite a few times. Aside from the LCD display, the handset is very plastic-heavy and does leave something to be desired in the design department.Available in four different colour combinations, we tested the Sony Ericsson Vivaz Moon Silver with silver back panel with dark blue sides. The touchscreen is resistive, unfortunately, but it’s probably one of the best we’ve seen and gives the LG InTouch Max GW620 a run for its money. Although it’s not as smooth or accommodating as the capacitive screens found on handsets like the iPhone and HTC Legend, it is still quite responsive and swiping through menus doesn’t require much pressure on the screen. There is a sensible number of buttons on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz. The call, end and menu buttons are on the front of the handset, with volume/zoom and two camera buttons on the right side panel, and power/lock on the top. However, the latter can be a little fiddly to hit when holding the Vivaz in one hand, with some juggling needed – this means you run the risk of dropping it.We’re glad to see a 3.5mm headphone jack and microUSB port, given Sony Ericsson’s previous love for its proprietary Fast Port connector instead of a basic headphone socket.In the boxThe Sony Ericsson Vivaz comes with the basics a plug, separate USB to microUSB cable to connect to the plug or to your PC, a pair of Sony Ericsson headphones and a standalone stylus. The headphones don’t come with sponge ear buds, nor in-ear fittings to accommodate different sized ears, but do double as a handsfree kit thanks to the built-in microphone. Given the HD recording function of the handset, Sony Ericsson has also seen fit to include an 8GB microSD card – we would have preferred some inbuilt storage too, but at least this is a generous addition.The Symbian S60/S^1 operating system is traditionally associated with Nokia handsets, found on devices like the Nokia 5800, N97 and X6. Despite this, the look and feel of the Vivaz interface is still very ‘Sony Ericsson.’ The menus are well laid out and easy to navigate, but because the Vivaz is limited to just one menu screen, some sub-menus are packed with options.You can avoid venturing into the menus too often if you invest some time customising the home screen. The default set up offers a row of five widget tabs across the top of the screen. These can be assigned different functions depending on your preferences. For example, we had tabs housing our favourite contacts, social networking apps, menu shortcuts and a favourite image acting as wallpaper. Scrolling between the tabs is easy and satisfying, but is slightly less elegant than the traditional Android home screen set up. The tabulated layout of the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is much tidier than the more crowded approach taken by the X6 and N97 Mini, although there is less information available at a glance. For those craving a simpler life, fewer home screen options can be set using the Standby Themes in the settings menu. There’s a nice level of customisation on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz, but it’s more constrained than some of its contemporaries, particularly the Android-toting HTC Tattoo and LG InTouch Max GW620, where a plethora of widgets are on offer.Making and taking calls is very straightforward thanks to the dedicated call and end buttons, but we wish we could say the same for locking and unlocking the screen and keys. Locking the keys should be a one-button affair, but not so with the Sony Ericsson Vivaz. After hitting the power/lock button you have to either select the lock option on the screen, or hit the power/lock button again. This might not sound like a chore, but the power/lock button is not particularly easy to press as it’s almost flush with the panel it sits in. When you’re not sure if your press has been registered, it’s all too easy to press the power button too hard and switch the handset off. What makes that even more annoying is that the Sony Ericsson Vivaz takes its time closing down, and starting up again isn’t exactly lightning fast. The other danger was forgetting to choose any option from the menu and leaving the keys and screen active in your pocket or bag, from which anything can be tapped and accessed thanks to a resistive screen.Even after several days of use, this was still grating on us.Speed of use is an area where the Vivaz also lets itself down. Aside from being slow to start up, the temperamental auto-rotate takes a second or two too long to kick in. We also had issues with the handset’s multi-tasking although we definitely welcome it as a feature and had no problem switching between applications, it’s a little too tricky to close things down entirely. Simply using the menu or end buttons keeps them open in the background, so you end up with several unnecessary things running, slowing the handset right down and taking away all the advantages of the Vivaz’s fast processor. It is possible to download new apps for the home screen via the PlayNow app store. This provides music, game and wallpaper downloads as well as apps, but they’re generally not cheap and there are very few free options, unlike the wildly successful Apple App Store and Android Market.Searching through the store is a bit of a chore as it isn’t hugely intuitive, but downloading is fairly straightforward direct to the handset – perhaps we’re just spoilt by the plethora of much better portals on offer.One of the things we really like about the Vivaz is the quick and easy access to the dial pad something that is often hidden away on touchscreen phones. On the Sony Ericsson Vivaz it sits at the front of the home screen as a grid – you won’t know what it is the first time you take the phone out the box, but it’s handily placed.There are also various simple ways to access the contacts book – through the menu, dial pad or by hitting the call button. Sound quality when making and taking calls with the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is fair, we didn’t experience any major issues. Both the caller and the recipient’s voices were clear and comfortable to hear, although there was some occasional buzzing on the Vivaz’s end. The contacts book is pretty basic, just an alphabetical list of names, but there is the option to segment them into groups. The individual contact entries are a bit more exciting, with room for multiple numbers and email addresses as well as company information, job title and photo to help you remember who’s who. Favourite contacts can be saved to one of the five home screen tabs for quick and easy access. But unlike the INQ Chat 3G and other phones of this calibre, there is no option to synchronise your phone book with your social networking profiles.The messaging menu features a dazzling array of options, from regular SMS, to an email inbox, an SMS conversations view (which shows your messages in threaded conversation format) and a range of granular message settings. It may seem like a bit much at first, but once you are used to the layout, it’s really convenient to have all that messaging paraphernalia in one obvious place. We can’t fathom why the standard SMS inbox does not just use the conversations layout, though – instead it makes you look at the ‘normal’ inbox and then scroll through the menus to view the conversation in the threaded view.Setting up email on the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is basically painless. We set up a Gmail account and, after inputting the account name and password, the handset did most of the hard work for us, with the email list presented simply.Setting up Exchange email was relatively easy too and didn’t take long to sync with the server, but does require you to input the settings manually. Push email isn’t configured by default (although you can schedule the phone to update at specified times) so the inbox only refreshes when it is physically opened not ideal if you expect instant real-time email.Typing isn’t too heinous a task, despite the resistive touchscreen which we’ve struggled with on handsets like the Sony Ericsson Satio. The screen is quite slim, so it’s easier to opt for the landscape QWERTY layout – although the number pad layout coupled with predictive text does a passable job too. There is no autocorrect function, which is a real annoyance for minor mistakes. Of course, you can opt to use the stylus – but sorry, we’re not in 1995 any more and this isn’t a PDA.If you MUST use the stylus, there is a mini-QWERTY option which squeezes the whole keyboard into the width of the vertical screen position really too small to use unless you’re blessed with 20:20 vision or a really good magnifying glass (and third hand).As with all stylus-bearing phones, we find it a fiddle to rummage around for another piece of equipment when all we want to do is send a quick message – we’re not sure why Sony Ericsson is persisting down this route on a high end phone.As the Sony Ericsson Vivaz isn’t a smartphone to rival the likes of the iPhone 3GS or HTC Hero, it is fairly conscientious about its internet use and only connects when you open an application requiring the internet. Great if you’re on a budget or don’t have an unlimited data plan, but quite annoying if you do. The Vivaz asked what connection we wanted to use every single time we accessed any internet application, despite the fact that we had set post-pay internet as the default connection. This got very frustrating very quickly, and the three dialogue boxes to go through made even a quick glance at Twitter a chore.The plus side is that switching between 3G and Wi-Fi is really very easy. Browsing web pages over the SIM card data connection was changeable at times it was very speedy to load image-intensive web pages, but at other times it took up to a minute to download all the images with seemingly the same levels of reception. Wi-Fi, though a little slower, was much more constant. To avoid using the stylus while browsing the internet, the zoom function (denoted by two magnifying glasses) is great. It allows you to zoom right in on web pages, but not onto specific bits so you have to scroll around to get to the part you want to see. Another helpful addition is the ‘find’ function so you can locate the relevant bit of the web page once you have zoomed in.The Sony Ericsson Vivaz isn’t Flash compatible, so Flash-based sites will just render as plain text. We were really impressed with the mobile version of YouTube, however as a widget option in the Vivaz’s video player, clicking through to YouTube was quick and the videos loaded without much delay. We also applaud the in-menu BBC iPlayer web shortcut, although this requires a Wi-Fi connection to let you download content to your mobile.Social networking apps generally work without a hitch, although having set Twitter as a tab on the home screen we were disappointed to have to repeatedly enter log in information – in fact, it was a terrible way to work with a phone that offers ‘native Twitter’.It also lacks access to DMs, @replies or anything else other than the last 20 or so updates in your timeline, so you tend to be better off using the mobile site. The camera is where Sony Ericsson intends the Vivaz to shine, with 8.1-megapixels to play with on still shots and the ability to shoot 720p HD video. There are separate buttons to launch the video and still-shot camera functions, as well as the on-screen option to swap between the two. Despite the one-button process, the camera is a little slow to get up to speed.Using the camera functions was a breeze, with on-screen icons showing the current setup at a glance and housing menus for swapping between different features. There is a whole range of shooting options available on the Vivaz, on a par with a number of mid-range compact digital cameras. Although there’s no manual focus you can choose between full autofocus, or specialist options for specific types of shots; macro for close-ups, infinite mode for landscape shots and portrait mode. TEST SHOT: Infinite focus for landscape shots the colours here have come out slightly washed outTEST SHOT: The panorama function is really nice to use, with instructive on-screen motion detection helping you get a seamless shot TEST SHOT: The camera didn’t fare so well on moving objects, even in sports mode, with images coming out fuzzy and, in some cases, pixelated TEST SHOT: Direct light was not handled brilliantly, with the whole image coming out much darker than it should have TEST SHOT: Macro focus is useful for close-up shots, although we found on other shots that it tended to focus on the wrong things like objects further from the lensTEST SHOT: Using the camera’s light in low light was very effective, although the ‘low-light’ mode came out slightly grainyThe Sony Ericsson Vivaz 8.1MP camera also has built-in effects. These are the solarise and sepia effects – although the latter is not as rusty as we’d like it to be. The camera also handled colours well, even in incandescent light.Sony Ericsson Vivaz HD Video Click here to see the full resolution videoSony Ericsson Vivaz SD Video The sound quality is better in the HD recording here, as is the image which is much crisper and doesn’t suffer from the visual noise in the SD clip (QVGA 320 x 240). While the SD clip looks like it was taken with a camera phone, the HD clip does not. Click here to see the full resolution video This was shot indoors in low light using the camera light which washes the van out a little as it’s close to the lamp. You can also see the camera trying to auto-focus throughout; this is a nice touch in the right circumstances, but can get a little annoying.On a number of separate occasions, recording would begin but get stuck on a single frame sound would continue to record but the images wouldn’t. This was frustrating when filming one-off occurrences like a couple of randy squirrels frolicking through the park, and happened more than three times rendering it really quite unreliable. On other occasions however, the video function would work without a hitch.Comparison to Samsung i8910HDIt’s hard to work out which of these phones is better – on the one hand, the price of the Sony Ericsson Vivaz is around 70 cheaper than the older Samsung i8910HD – but the latter offers a lot of extra features.On the media front, both can capture 720p video, and both can do so at 24fps. We’re tempted to say that the Vivaz looks slightly better on the PC screen, but once you run them both through a TV there’s very little to choose from.Add in the fact that the 8MP camera on the i8190HD is, we think, a touch better than the Vivaz’s, and the fact it has a massive OLED screen to watch media on, and we still believe Samsung’s media behemoth is the better option.With a heritage in music-playback devices like the Walkman, we always expect Sony-branded products to have an advantage over other handset manufacturers on the media side of things. Usually we’re a little disappointed, with previous Sony Ericsson handsets using the proprietary Fast Port headphone connector, last seen on the Sony Ericsson Satio. We’re glad to say that Sony Ericsson has done away with the Fast Port connection on the Vivaz, which houses a 3.5mm headphone connector flush to the left-hand side of the handset, bringing the brand squarely into 2010.The music player interface on the Vivaz is also much more user friendly than older Sony Ericsson offerings like the clunky W205. With a slick interface complete with animated background, the monochrome player plays host to all the traditional options artists, albums, playlists, audiobooks and podcasts, as well as your own voice recording files. Artists are arranged alphabetically, and while it’s a shame that artwork doesn’t appear in this list to give it a bit more colour, the artwork is available in the album list view and during playback. Creating playlists on the fly is also very simple if you fancy a compilation approach. We did find the music a little bass-heavy at times sadly there is no equaliser function to try and remedy this. A handy widget on the home screen keeps you up to date with track names and offers easy access to skipping tracks when you have music playing in the background. The media player makes switching to video playback or the photo library very easy as it’s all part of the same application. Going to a video simply pauses the music playback, so you can return to the same place later. Sound quality when playing music through the handset itself is less tinny than we’ve come to expect from phones at this level, although it is still a little crackly and no substitute for headphones. Using a pair of Sennheiser in-ear headphones gave audio playback more depth and less audible noise. The Sony Ericsson Vivaz also has an FM radio player located in the Apps folder. You can set this to play either through the headphones or the phone’s loudspeaker but you have to have headphones plugged in throughout as they act as the antenna. It’s not the most intuitive radio player we’ve used, with radios on even very basic handsets like the LG Brio proving easier to use. You can leave the radio playing in the background while using other functions on the Vivaz, but it’s not possible to record the sound, as is offered on the Samsung Jet.The onboard memory is around 75MB, but that won’t store much alongside an HD video file, so the Vivaz can support up to a 16GB microSD card and comes with an 8GB card in the box. Sony Ericsson states that the Vivaz can delivery up to 5 hours 20 minutes of 3G talktime, 2hours 30 minutes video call time and up to 430 hours of standby life. We reckon that talktime estimation is probably a little optimistic but not way out. After an intensive day of use, including watching and filming HD videos, the Vivaz was about ready to give up the ghost.But we also managed to get a good two to three days of more casual everyday use out of it before it needed recharging. OrganiserThe Sony Ericsson Vivaz has a whole folder dedicated to organisational apps and functions, but don’t look for the calendar here that has its own menu option. It’s nothing to write home about, but allows you to set reminders and tasks with alerts and deadlines as you’d expect. In the organiser folder you’ll find the clock and alarms function where you can set recurring alarms, like a weekday alarm that doesn’t go off at weekends. There’s also a fairly standard note-writing app, calculator, file manager and document readers although the document readers require licences and therefore payment. Other handy features to keep you ticking over are the converter app which can tell you plenty about how many kilocalories are in a kilojoule, but only has ‘Home’ and ‘Foreign’ options when it comes to currency.This means you have to set your own rates we’d have liked this to sync with current conversion rates online, but you can’t have everything.You can, of course, download more apps from the PlayNow store, offering apps from web-publishing through to weather forecasting, although as we said earlier there’s not a huge amount of choice there.Location-based services include Google Maps and GPS positioning. Symbian-based Google Maps is pretty good (although not up to the speed and feature-base of the Android range) and the GPS found us fairly quickly.Directionally it wasn’t too bad either – we navigated between tube stops in the outer reaches of London without getting lost, which is something that still happens far too often due to our rather addled brains.Media-wise there is an onboard music identification programme called TrackID which works in a similar way to Shazam, as well as a sound recording app for vocal notes-to-self or for recording interviews and so on. Finally, for the DIY enthusiast, there is an onboard spirit level – good luck getting an accurate reading using either edge of the phone though, there are too many protruding buttons on each.The Sony Ericsson Vivaz connects to a computer via USB cable. Installing drivers onto a PC is very easy as the necessary software is stored on the handset. This means no messing about with CDs or going to websites to download executable files. The PC companion suite lets you move files quickly and easily between your phone and computer, but it’s not essential. The software doesn’t work on Mac computers, but transferring files between the phone and computer is still possible using the handset as a mass storage device and if you know your way around a computer file then you shouldn’t find it too taxing.Setting up the Wi-Fi connection was easy enough, but assigning a default connection proved difficult. In the end we were forced to select a connection option manually each time we connected. We also had trouble maintaining a data connection while out and about, even around central London. We often had to just abandon attempts and seek out Wi-Fi. The phone’s GPS fared a little better on-the-go, with the onboard compass proving handy when our feeble sense of direction let us down. ComparisonLike the Sony Ericsson Satio, this phone puts all its eggs in the camera basket; but the Vivaz manages to keep its other functions up to scratch somewhat better than the Satio, thanks in part to its faster processor. We were sorely disappointed that the Satio didn’t have a 3.5mm headphone socket, so it’s a very welcome addition on the Vivaz, and the touchscreen has certainly improved. It’s a shame Sony Ericsson didn’t opt for a capacitive screen, but it does keep the costs down. The ergonomic design of the Vivaz also puts it ahead of the Satio and will feature on all of Sony Ericsson’s upcoming handsets.Given the Vivaz’s superior camera, sleek design, ergonomic build and user-friendly music player, it wipes the floor with Nokia’s X6, despite the X6′s capacitive screen. The resistive screens of the HTC Tattoo and LG InTouch Max GW620 don’t quite measure up to the Vivaz’s screen which is surprisingly responsive. Despite this we’d have welcomed a physical QWERTY keyboard in the style of the GW620, although we can cope without. It’s the range and quality of apps we miss most though, with the Tattoo and GW620 both privy to Android’s superior marketplace. This is Sony Ericsson’s second effort at a touchscreen phone after the disappointment of the Sony Ericsson Satio, so there’s a lot of pressure riding on it. HD video recording is the headline grabber, but the rest of the phone needs to impress as well in this smartphone-heavy age.We liked: The Sony Ericsson Vivaz is lovely to hold that ergonomic design really does pay off and the near-HD screen also plays a part in making it look and feel like a quality phone. The touchscreen does a great job considering it is resistive, and the camera quality is high not solely for recording HD video; still shots using the 8.1-megapixel camera come out very nicely too. The clean and tidy home screen pleased us, and the tabbed functions were handy for quick access to our favourite apps and media. We dislikedFor all its nice design and screen, we couldn’t help but feel the chassis was still a bit too plastic, particularly the back panel which gives it a slightly cheap feel. The Sony Ericsson Vivaz also has quite a few little glitches and niggles not least the frustrating screen and key lock mechanism.Also having to constantly reassure the handset that yes, we do want to connect using the default internet connection made our techno-hackles rise. The Android-esque interface lends itself to apps, so we’d have liked to have seen more good quality, low-cost apps in the PlayNow app store, but these may come with time. And, although it may have been one of the best resistive touchscreens we’ve seen, it’s still not a patch on a capacitive screen. Verdict:For a mid-to-high range feature phone, we were pleasantly surprised by how much we liked the Sony Ericsson Vivaz. As a phone it performed well and we were impressed with the music player and camera functions the main features of the phone. Such a shame, then, that little things let it down; we were constantly annoyed by the key lock function, the temperamental auto-rotate and the schizophrenic internet settings. Related LinksTechRadar’s Reviews GuaranteeBest mobile phones: our guideMore mobile phone reviewsRelated StoriesReview: LG Chocolate BL20Review: Acer Liquid S100Review: Nokia E72Review: HTC HD MiniReview: Nokia 5230
Review: Nokia X3
The Nokia X3 is a slim, budget offering from the Finns. With no touchscreen and modest memory, it still has pretensions of being an attractive music device with a low cost to boot.While the recent Nokia X6 touchscreen topped the rebranded X-series music phone bill with smartphone functionality and a heavyweight 32GB of onboard memory, the Nokia X3 is a much more modest affair.It works the signature Nokia XpressMusic design look again, sporting bright red or blue music player controls down the side of the display, and comes with a 2GB MicroSD memory card in-box, a standard 3.5mm headphone socket, in-ear earphones and an FM radio. However, there’s no high-speed 3G connectivity, let alone Wi-Fi or GPS functionality, and its onboard camera is an average 3.2MP shooter.Initially available for around 90 with various pay as you go deals (or 129 SIM-free), the Nokia X3 is clearly aiming for the cash-conscious music phone buyer after a smart-looking device, pitching it squarely against the likes of the Sony Ericsson W395.Design and handlingThe Nokia X3′s bodywork is tidily proportioned, measuring 96(h) x 49.3(w) x 14.1(d) mm closed and weighing 103g. It has an average-sized 2.2-inch 262K-colour QVGA display dominating the front that’s reasonable for this sort of handset. There are no touchscreen controls under the display is a regular navigation D-pad flanked by a standard issue quartet of soft key and call end buttons on a flat glossy black front control panel. These buttons are adequately spaced for hassle- and error-free navigation, although the glossy front is a touch plasticky.But the metallic red or blue music controls and trim bordering the display and the matt black bodywork used around the rest of the phone add a sharp look to the design not HTC Legend levels of design, but not bad for 90 of your English pounds.These three thin music control buttons (forward, rewind, play/pause) enable users to operate the music player when it’s playing in the background, although they’re aren’t essential for controlling the phone – the navigation D-pad can take care of that too. The slide-out keyboard is a bit of a throwback to Motorola RAZR styling, with a flat brushed metal pad separated by illuminated ridges. It’s sufficient for texting at decent speeds, though it doesn’t have the super-light touch of the best texting phones, and larger-fingered users should be wary of straying thumbs.Around the sides are routine camera key and volume buttons plus a MicroSD card slot, covered by a fairly tight plastic bung. The standard 3.5mm headphone socket sits correctly on top of the phone, next to a microUSB data connector and thin-pin charger socket. All-in-all, it feels slim in the hand and pocket, and is comfortable to handle what more do you really expect from a 90 handset? LG is doing the same thing with the LG Pop so we’re glad to see Nokia is playing in the right area as well.The Nokia X3 user interface is Nokia Series 40 rather than the S60 smartphone platform, so is standard issue, uncomplicated and straightforward to operate. It’s based around the usual type of grid main menu, which drills down into basic sub-menu option lists all of which should be very familiar to anyone who’s packed a Nokia mobile before.The home screen setup is standard stuff too; in fact, there are two home screen set up options you can choose between. The out-of-the-box default home screen has a row of five scrollable icon shortcuts towards the top of the display and additional lines on the screen for media player and radio status and info, calendar and message updates plus other information.These home screen shortcuts and info/content options can be user-defined as can further D-pad shortcuts with dozens available to select as shortcuts including functions, applications and even any bookmarked web pages intuitive for a cheaper handset like this.Alternatively, you can de-clutter the home screen by switching that mode off in the settings menu and sticking with a simpler setup that utilises the D-pad and softkeys only for shortcuts. It’s up to you, although the default home screen does provide more immediate information.Within the menus, the Nokia Series 40 6th Edition user interface is easy to navigate and operate. The functionality isn’t such that the menus are overloaded with confusingly laid out options, so it should be undemanding for any Nokia newcomers too.We found call quality on the Nokia X3 not quite up to the usual high standards we expect from Nokia handsets. Outgoing calls were often muffled and audio sometimes ropey even in areas where signal strength was good. It was surprising on our review sample, as we usually have no problems with Nokia’s high standard calling performance. For instance, the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic is not that much more expensive, but has a much higher level of call quality.We tried the phone in a number of places with varying signal levels, and its performance was average at best.Volume level was good enough, however it can be cranked up enough to cope with noisy urban conditions.The keyboard is perfectly manageable for tapping out numbers, and the typical Nokia Series 40 phonebook allows for numerous bits of contact information to be stored for each entry. The Nokia X3 puts in a decent messaging performance, supporting the usual text and multimedia messaging plus email and instant messaging. The flush, one-piece keyboard provides a reasonably responsive way of tapping in texts with some proficiency. Texts can easily be upgraded to MMS messages, with a toolbar of icons ranged along the bottom of the screen for adding photos, sound clips, video clips, and so on. It’s easy to operate and intuitive to use.Messages are presented in ‘conversations’, with a threaded string of incoming and outgoing messages for each contact you’ve recently been in touch with.The X3 uses the Nokia Messaging Mail email client, which enables you to set up email for a new Ovi Mail account or set up details from an existing POP3/IMAP4 email account. Settings are pre-loaded for several services, including Windows Live Hotmail, Google Mail and Yahoo! Mail you just need to tap in your email address and password – and you’re away. Other email provider accounts can be set up quickly and easily in a similar way settings details are taken care of automatically.The email user interface is reasonably attractive for a budget handset, and emails are sensibly ordered and headers viewable in lists on the screen. Some attachments, including JPG images, can be viewed, but not all file types are supported (we couldn’t view PDFs, Excel and Word documents, for instance). You can send documents from the phone though. With no 3G, large attachment files can take some time downloading or uploading, but then again that’s not really what the Nokia X3 is designed to do.The email client has a fair selection of options to manage accounts, including the facility to send instant messages directly from your email account, and you can use the number pad keys as shortcuts for certain options. You can also send quick replies to emails, with 9 preset messages available that can be selected and sent in a couple of key presses useful for fast acknowledgements of incoming mail. Multiple email accounts can be stored and accessed in the Nokia Messaging Mail application, and you can set the phone to regularly check email accounts automatically for new messages.Instant messaging is supported on the Nokia X3, with Nokia’s own IM application enabling you to use Ovi IM, and support for Windows Live Messenger in a separate IM app in the messaging folder. You can send and receive short messages to other IM users online easily and speedily, and leave it running in the background.Nokia once again doubles up on the browser front in the Nokia X3, including Opera Mini software as well as Nokia’s own-brand browser.Lacking 3G or Wi-Fi to fire up online speeds, the X3 relies on 2.5G EDGE/GPRS data connectivity.On mobile-optimised sites the onboard Nokia browser goes along at an acceptable pace, rendering sites efficiently enough, with a useful progress bar running along the bottom of the screen.As with other Series 40 phones, the Nokia browser operation is based on selecting from menu options rather than an on-screen toolbar or shortcuts, so it’s not the slickest browser around compared with some of the budget touchscreen phone browsers now in play. There’s only one windows and no tabs. It does support Flash Lite though, and can render pages reasonably well, if a little languidly.The Nokia X3 has pre-loaded bookmarks for a selection of online services, including Facebook, MySpace and YouTube, which take users to mobile-optimised versions of these sites. However, streaming video clips from YouTube is hit and miss and if you’re out of EDGE coverage, forget it. Opera Mini provides a more fluid and slicker non-touch browser experience that has a more desktop-style appeal. It includes address and search bars and history on the home screen, plus a full web page overview when you land on a site and controls for zooming as a softkey option. It’s a more intuitive and quicker browsing experience, and pages render very well on the Opera app.Other online applications on the Nokia X3 include Nokia’s Ovi Store application download shop (the first Series 40 phone to support it), and a Web Search function that enables you to tap in and search via Google or Microsoft’s Bing search engine.A Flickr application is also included, which takes you to the Flickr mobile site, allowing users to view, upload and manage Flickr image accounts online although this is woefully slow over EDGE connection.You can upload images directly to Flickr accounts once you’ve taken shots too, or alternatively to Nokia’s Share on Ovi service; settings for both services come pre-loaded. The camera used on the Nokia X3 is a run-of-the-mill 3.2MP snapper, lacking a flash and autofocus system. It has the typical sort of functionality you’d expect from a mid-to-lower end Nokia Series 40 handset, with nothing remarkable about the fixtures and fittings – or performance.Pressing the side camera button, the screen flips sideways into viewfinder mode within a couple of seconds. Nokia has set it up so that a long press of the camera key takes you straight into video mode, while a short press fires up the camera – a neat touch we’re surprised more manufacturers haven’t cottoned onto.However, this does mean you have to be aware of how long you’re tapping the button something that’s tricky with its almost flush position on the side or you can find yourself starting to video record when you meant to snap a picture.Although this can initially be disconcerting, if you are in the wrong mode the D-pad can be used to toggle sideways between camera and video recorder functions (an icon in the corner display’s what mode it’s in). The on-screen user interface is somewhat basic, if adequate. Settings and effects can be chosen by opening up the Options menu and toggling through it. You can adjust white balance to cater for lighting environments, add a few colour effects, use a timer and tweak image quality, but it’s quite rudimentary by Nokia’s high cameraphone standards.The fixed focus camera produces reasonable snaps that can be colourful and bright, but they do lack the crisp sharpness you can get from some autofocus cameraphones in the same class. Also, in subdued overcast conditions, the camera can produce murky images with flat tones and so-so colour. Overall, its shooting performance is OK for quick snaps, but modest and limited in detail and quality.Under low light conditions indoors, the auto metering adjustments mean images can be soft, although they’re better if the camera is held steady. Reasonable snapper: The Nokia X3′s 3.2-megapixel camera is an average lower range shooter, offering limited detail and a fixed focus lens. It can take reasonable snaps in good lighting environments, however, although don’t expect stunning clarity when printing out Click and hope: The fixed focus camera means you can’t choose which particular part of the subject you want in focus you just press and see what comes out Brighter is better: The camera performs best in bright lighting conditions, rendering colours in vibrant tones. There is though a lack of subtle detail in the background sky in the way the blue colours and clouds are reproduced Patchy effort: The camera does reasonably well at close-in shots, producing some detail in the foreground, although the blue sky and clouds in the background are patchily renderedSoft and noisy: This shot at dusk is soft and detail is limited with plenty of picture noise apparent Its video recording performance isn’t great. The low-grade camcorder option can record footage at maximum QVGA (320 x 240 pixels) resolution at 8 frames per second, so playback is stilted, or at lower QCIF (176 x 144 pixels) resolution at up to 15 frames per second. That’s a low quality budget effort. Should you wish to, these clips can be uploaded too to online video hubs.Of course, the most upfront feature of the X3 is its music mobile credentials. The music player controls on the outside mark out this territory, while a 2GB memory card supplied with the phone provides a decent amount of in-box storage for a budget music phone.Nokia’s also boxed it with an above-average set of in-ear earphones and it has a standard 3.5mm headphone socket on top for music fans who want to upgrade their ear-ware.The media player software inside, though, is low-key and functional rather than novel. The X3 uses a standard Series 40 media player, so it has a familiar mid-tier phone look and feel: a list of regular media player categories (all songs, playlists, artists, albums, genres and videos) and a player interface that doesn’t break new ground. The D-pad can operate the controls in normal phone fashion, and there’s a draggable elapsed time section to help navigation, plus album cover art (if available).The music player controls on the side of the display aren’t needed unless the music player’s working in the background; if so, they’re handy, but don’t exactly redefine the mobile music experience.Some settings can be tweaked, with equaliser presets you can assign as you’re playing. In addition to shuffle mode and the like, you can also choose to have lighting effects on the D-pad to go with the music – snazzy if you’re putting on a disco for mice.The supplied in-ear earphones put on a fine show. They fit snugly, with extra plastic buds in-box to get a close fit, reducing outside noise interference. They can deliver a surprisingly heavy-duty music performance, with plenty of bass presence coming through loud and clear, and good definition on high and mid frequencies. It’s not subtle, but it’s impressive for a budget music mobile.The media player automatically slots any new tunes loaded up or slipped in via a memory card. MicroSD cards up to 16GB will work in the phone’s side-mounted memory card slot. Tunes can be downloaded over the air, or copied over from a PC using the supplied Nokia Music software and USB data cable. Nokia’s PC Suite’s Music Manager software can also be used to transfer tracks, and the phone can be synchronised with Windows Media Player on a PC. Tracks can also be dragged and dropped in mass storage mode, or sent via Bluetooth to the phone – so to sum up, there’s a variety of ways to bung your favourite tunes on to the Nokia X3.Some mobile network operators will also be offering the Nokia X3 as one of Nokia’s Comes with Music range, which enables unlimited downloads, although UK availability of this service on the X3 is still to be confirmed at the time of writing. In addition to the music player, more free music and entertainment is available via the phone’s FM radio. Unusually for a mobile phone, you don’t need to plug in headphones as an antenna to listen to tracks you can simply switch it on and listen to it through the phone’s loudspeaker. The loudspeaker, which can of course also be used with the music player, is loud and clear and not too tinny. It does lack on the bass front, as usual with mobile speakers, but is better than most with its punchy delivery.The radio interface is a doddle to set up and use, with automatic tuning taking care of station finding, and sound quality is pretty good if you plug in the earphones.With a relatively small 2.2-inch display, the Nokia X3 isn’t set up to be your ideal video-playing device. However, it’s OK to watch clips in full screen mode. The media player supports video playback and streaming in a number of file formats including H.263, H.264, MPEG-4 and WMV9. Without stacks of potentially battery-sapping high-end 3G functionality, we found that the Nokia X3 delivered a handsome battery performance under regular conditions. The X3 arrives with a standard 860mAh Li-ion battery pack that Nokia reckons can deliver (under optimum network conditions) up to 7.5 hours of talktime or up to 380 hours of standby time. We managed to go a steady 3-4 days between charges with normal phone usage, though naturally if we used the music player heavily, this figure dropped accordingly.Of course, the music player functionality is the key selling point of this phone, so users are likely to hit play often; Nokia estimates that using the music player alone (with the phone switched to flight mode), users can get up to 26 hours of music player power which seemed to hold up pretty well in our tests.A routine set of Nokia Series 40 organiser tools and applications are ready for action on the X3. These functional tools, which are standard fare, include alarm clocks, calendar, to-do lists, notes, calculator, stopwatch and timer apps. A couple of convertor apps and a world clock function are also slotted into the phone’s application folder. Nokia X3: ConnectivityThe Nokia X3 is a quad band handset, capable of running on GSM 850/900/1800/1900 networks. Without 3G or Wi-Fi the X3′s data connectivity relies on lower speed EDGE or GPRS, which limits its online prowess.USB 2.0 connectivity is supported, via a microUSB port on top of the phone and a supplied data cable.The X3 has Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity too, with stereo audio profiles (A2DP and AVRCP) enabling streaming to wireless headphones, speakers and other suitably enabled Bluetooth gadgets.Also included in-box is a Nokia Music software CD. This PC software (there’s no Mac support) enables users to manage and synchronise music between the phone PC and other devices. Nokia X3: OtherAlthough the X3 isn’t kitted out with internal GPS gadgetry, Nokia does include its Maps software onboard the phone. It can be used with a separate optional Bluetooth GPS receiver module, although we’d guess anyone that keen for satellite location finding is likely to choose a phone with GPS inside in the first place.Although it doesn’t use GPS or the cellsite-based location approximation system of Google Maps users can do searches for addresses, locations, businesses and services, get routing information and maps over the air.Without GPS, the setup can feel a bit clunky as some menu options aren’t available, as the Nokia X3 firmware appears to have been ported from a more generic version of the OS.Mapping downloads can take a while too if you’re in marginal coverage, and generally in its GPS-less truncated state, and without fast map updates, it’s a far from compelling proposition.Among its other features, the X3 also has support for over the air software updates, with 10 games included too. The Nokia X3 is decently equipped as a budget music mobile without having that ‘must-have’ X-factor. The music player software is standard issue Nokia, so functional rather than flashy, but it puts an impressive audio show for a low-cost phone, with enough in-box to make it an attractive slim-line slider package.Elsewhere, the X3 has a low-key set of features there’s no 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS or smartphone gadgetry, and it has a limited camera but if music is the focus, the X3 does the job fine. The mediocre call performance on our review sample was a concern, however.What we likedThe music player puts in a punchy audio performance, with decent sound quality through the better-than-average in-ear bud earphones supplied. The 3.5mm headphone socket offers easy upgrading too, while the 2GB MicroSD gives decent tune room out of the box at this price. Being able to use the FM radio without having headphones attached is also welcome.The X3′s design is slim and quite attractive, and the Series 40 interface is typically straightforward-to-use Nokia stuff. We liked the additional Opera browser to enhance its online performance. The email client is easy to set up too. We were also pleased with the phone’s sturdy battery performance.What we dislikedThe call performance was surprisingly lacklustre. The lack of 3G connectivity limits data speeds when using online applications, although the Opera Mini app pre-loaded does offer a speedier alternative to the Nokia software.The camera put in a mediocre performance image quality is limited and video recording is distinctly low-grade. Without GPS technology inside, the Maps software is limited too. Verdict The Nokia X3 is a tidy budget music mobile that concentrates on the audio performance and music player features. Slim on other higher-end features and lacking 3G, it doesn’t demand centre stage, though some will nab it based on its tune playing highlights alone.Related LinksTechRadar’s Reviews GuaranteeMore mobile phone reviewsRelated StoriesReview: LG Chocolate BL20Review: Acer Liquid S100Review: Nokia E72Review: HTC HD MiniReview: Nokia 5230