Review: HTC Desire (2013)

By Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla

HTC continues its roll out of smartphones in different segments. The mid-tier HTC Desire blends the familiar front aluminum fascia of the HTC One with the polycarbonate rear casing of last year's HTC One X and X+. With a 4.5-inch qHD display, 4G-LTE connectivity, a 1.4Ghz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage, the HTC Desire is available from Bell, Virgin Mobile, Fido, Rogers, Koodo and Videotron in Canada.

The first thing one notices about the HTC Desire is that it looks very similar to the HTC One and HTC One mini. The biggest difference in construction is that the desire isn't a unibody device and actually has a removable backplate. You wouldn't know this at first glance since the HTC Desire is very well integrated and solidly put together. Getting the backplate off takes some doing and it is pretty seamless overall.

The edgeless rounded corners, smooth contours and feel make the HTC Desire feel very good in the hand and it seems to be sized right and well balanced. The rear of the device features the large metal circle surrounding the 5 megapixel camera.

Note that this isn't the UltraPixel camera that ships with the HTC One and the HTC One mini. HTC has also omitted the once -prominent Beats audio logo no that it has extricated itself from that company it once owned a part of. You still get the front-facing BoomSound speakers which are the best in breed when it comes to smartphone sound.

The HTC Desire also features HTC Zoe and BlinkFeed, two aspects of its Sense Android overlay that give the HTC Androids a distinct look and feel. Zoe automates slideshow creation by taking video and photos and pretty much auto-awesoming them into a short music video. 

BlinkFeed is HTC's news and social media push-service that on the homescreen each time you unlock or refresh it. It has become a trademark for HTC devices this year.

So, the HTC Desire really offers most of the advantages of its 'One' branded siblings without compromising much on performance. It also offers microSD card expansion and removable battery which are features that the HTC One does not have.

Battery life and call quality are very good, just like with the HTC One. HTC's Sense 5 overlay has become quite good at managing resources and I managed to get a day's worth of use on the HTC Desire without any problem. This is pretty impressive for a $300 smartphone (off contract).

The HTC Desire continues using the winning formula of great hardware, decent software as well as impressive speaker and great overall functionality. There's now a viable HTC smartphone in almost every price segment (and carrier) in Canada offering some of the best value for money in devices right now.

Rating: 4.5 out of 5